Liberal democratic torture

British Journal of Political Science

Volumn 36, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 1-16

  Lukes, Steven ^a  

^a NEW YORK UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 29144481680     PISSN: 00071234     EISSN: 14692112     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007123406000019     Document Type: Article

References (69)

1. S. Žižek, Welcome to the Desert of the Real (London: Verso, 2002), pp. 103-4.
2. See the brilliant, Swiftianly satirical essay on this theme by John Gray reprinted in his book Heresies: Against Progress and Other Illusions (Cambridge: Granta, 2005), chap. 15: 'Torture: A Modest Proposal'.
3. M. Danner, ed., Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror (New York: New York Review Books, 2004), p. 10.
4. S. Hersh, Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib (New York: Harper Collins, 2004), p. 50.
5. A. Lewis, 'Introduction', to K. J. Greenberg and J. L. Dratel, eds., The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. xv.
6. Since then there have been numerous reliably reported cases of interrogators employing standard techniques of torture. For example, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a top al-Qaeda operative apprehended in Pakistan in 2003, was reportedly subjected to 'water-boarding', which simulates drowning and asphyxiation (Jane Mayer, 'The Experiment: Is the Military Devising New Methods of Interrogation at Guantanamo?' New Yorker, 11 and 18 July 2005), 60-71, p. 65.)
7. Bernard Williams, 'Conflicts of Values', in Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973-1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 71-82, at p. 74.
8. See G. Calabresi and P. Bobbitt, Tragic Choices (New York: Norton, 1978).
9. Williams, 'Politics and Moral Character' in Moral Luck, p. 58.
10. M. Walzer, 'Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands', Philosophy and Public Affairs, 2 (1973), 160-80,
11. reproduced in part in S. Levinson, ed., Torture: A Collection (New York: Oxford Univesity Press, 2004), chap. 3, p. 68.
12. Walzer, 'Political Action', p. 69.
13. M. Weber, 'Politics as a Vocation', in H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1948), pp. 125-6.
14. Weber, 'Politics as a Vocation', p. 123.
15. Weber, 'Politics as a Vocation', p. 121.
16. M. Ignatieff, The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 8-9.
17. Ignatieff, The Lesser Evil, pp. 12-13.
18. Ignatieff, The Lesser Evil, p. 18 (italics added to the original).
19. Ignatieff, The Lesser Evil, p. 143.
20. I. Khawaja, 'Do We Have to Get Our Hands Dirty to Win the War on Terrorism? And What Does That Mean, Exactly?' History News Network, George Mason University, 3 February 2005, hnn.us/articles/4997.html.
21. See Steven Lukes, Marxism and Morality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), chap. 6.
22. Hersh, Chain of Command, p. 28.
23. Kant's position is referred to in Jean Behtke Elshtain's chapter, 'Reflections on the Problem of "Dirty Hands'", in Levinson, ed., Torture, chap. 4, p. 291.
24. Richard Posner, 'Torture, Terrorism and Interrogation', in Levinson, ed., Torture, chap. 16.
25. Hersh, Chain of Command, p. 71.
26. Since these documents were written, the Office of Legal Counsel has issued a new memorandum with a less restrictive definition of torture, but this new memorandum contains a footnote stating that the office does not believe that the conclusions of the earlier memoranda 'would be different under standards set forth in this memorandum.' As Noah Feldman suggests, the purpose of this seems to be to give legal protection to any who have already acted on the basis of the early memos (Noah Feldman, 'Ugly Americans', The New Republic, 30 May 2005, pp. 23-9).
27. Danner, Torture and Truth, p. 84.
28. Danner, Torture and Truth, p. 89.
29. Danner, Torture and Truth, p. 113.
30. Danner, Torture and Truth, p. 126.
31. Danner, Torture and Truth, p. 174.
32. Danner, Torture and Truth, p. 176.
33. Danner, Torture and Truth, p. 179.
34. Danner, Torture and Truth, p. 194.
35. Danner, Torture and Truth, p. 194.
36. Danner, Torture and Truth, pp. 202.
37. Danner, Torture and Truth, p. 12.
38. Danner, Torture and Truth, p. 76.
39. Danner, Torture and Truth, p. 76.
40. K. J. Greenberg, 'From Fear to Torture', in Greenberg and Dratel, The Torture Papers, p. xvii. According to the still-classified Church Report into detainee abuse, there was 'no link between approved interrogation techniques and detainee abuse', and some of the more extreme arguments in these memos were never adopted as policy by the adminstration. But, as Feldman argues, it is plausible to associate the thought-world of these memos with the abuses that took place. Furthermore, the memos can be seen as having had the function of protecting the CIA, which is not bound by the Uniform Code of Military Justice (Feldman, 'Ugly Americans').
41. Danner, Torture and Truth, p. 6.
42. Danner, Torture and Truth, pp. 18-19.
43. Seymour Hersh reports that a book by the cultural anthropologist Raphael Patai, The Arab Mind, was said to be the bible of the neoconservatives in Washington, encouraging them in the belief that Arabs only understand force and that their biggest weakness is shame and humiliation (Hersh, Chain of Command, pp. 38-9).
44. In 'The Experiment' (from the New Yorker), Jane Mayer details how ideas acquired through training Americans to resist abuse, through a Pentagon-funded programme called SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape), have been 'spread to Americans who used them to perpetrate abuse'. These include the 'religious dilemma', involving the desecration of a holy book and the use of sexual gambits (Mayer, 'The Experiment', fn. 3, p. 64).
45. Posner, 'Torture, Terror and Interrogation', p. 292.
46. Posner, 'Torture, Terror and Interrogation', p. 293.
47. C. Mackey and G. Miller, The Interrogators: Inside the Secret War against Al Qaeda (New York: Little, Brown, 2004), p. 284.
48. See Alan M. Dershowitz, Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002), chap. 4,
49. and also his chapter 'Tortured Reasoning' in Levinson, ed., Torture, chap. 14.
50. Elaine Scarry, 'Five Errors in the Reasoning of Alan Dershowitz', in Levinson, ed., Torture, chap. 15, p. 284.
51. Henry Shue, 'Torture', in Levinson, ed., Torture, chap. 2, p. 57.
52. Cited by Sanford Levinson in his 'Contemplating Torture: An Introduction', in Levinson, ed., Torture, chap. 2, p. 33.
53. Robert D. Kaplan, New York Times Book Review, 23 January 2005, pp. 11, 12.
54. Dershowitz, Why Terrorism Works, p. 137.
55. Corey Robin has made the point to me that these cases all leave elements of doubt and that 'no-one has conclusively demonstrated anything regarding the ticking time bomb scenario'. True, but, first, what would such a demonstration look like? And secondly, why presume that, in its absence, we should assume such scenarios to be fantastical?
56. See Dennis Thompson's discussion of this question in D. F. Thompson, Political Ethics and Public Office (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), chap. 1: 'Democratic Dirty Hands,' to which the ensuing discussion is indebted.
57. See my discussion of these cases in Steven Lukes, Liberals and Cannibals: The Implications of Diversity (London: Verso, 2003), chap. 5: 'On Comparing the Incomparable.'
58. Shue, 'Torture', p. 51.
59. Which is what gives force to John Gray's satirical 'modest proposal' that we recognize that torture is inherent in liberal democracies (cited in fn. 3).
60. E. Durkheim, 'Individualism and the Intellectuals' (1898), translated by S. and J. Lukes, Political Studies, 17 (1969), pp. 21-2.
61. Durkheim, 'Individualism and the Intellectuals', p. 24.
62. Durkheim, 'Individualism and the Intellectuals', pp. 26-7.
63. This raises a question, too large to be embarked on here, of whether the idea of inviolability and the affront to conscience that torture creates is foundational to other traditions than the liberal-democratic and thus available for the consolidation of transnational norms depending upon a sort of international 'overlapping consensus'. I thank Albert Weale for this intriguing thought.
64. Posner, 'Terrorism, Torture and Interrogation', p. 296.
65. Posner, 'Terrorism, Torture and Interrogation', p. 297.
66. Posner, 'Terrorism, Torture and Interrogation', p. 298.
67. D. Gambetta, 'Reason and Terror: Has 9/11 made it hard to think straight?' Boston Review, April-May 2004, pp. 32-6, at p. 33.
68. Gambetta, 'Reason and Terror', p. 35.
69. Gambetta, 'Reason and Terror', p. 36.