Charles Krauthammer Argues for Torture - the Weekly Standard

Torture

Charles Krauthammer argues for Torture in his essay in the Weekly Standard. Krauthammer is writing against McCain’s proposal for banning all forms of “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of any prisoner by any agent of the United States.” According to Krauthammer torture should be legalized because it is sometimes necessary to do evil to produce something good. Krauthammer assumes that the law must include provisions for every reasonable actions such that a reasonable person acting for the best interest of the community should also be acting within the law. Therefore for Krauthammer to admit that torture is sometimes the best alternative means that it has to be legalized. This argument has both strengths and weaknesses.

The standard form of the argument is

Premise: Torture works

Premise: Torture is sometimes the best alternative

Conclusion: Therefore, we should make torture legal.”

The strength of the argument is seen when Krauthammer cites evidence of the Palestinian, captured by the Israelis, who knew the whereabouts of a kidnapped soldier. (The soldier was killed anyway, but as Charles Krauthammer says, that doesn't alter the fact that the torture prompted the captive to give information that was crucial.) This is based on the inference that with the facts of the situation he has come to the conclusion that it was the torture that brought about the confession. Another incident were torture actually worked was with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who was the mastermind behind the 9/11 attack that killed nearly three thousand people in a day. Mohammed was tortured by the water boarding technique, “in which the prisoner has his face exposed to water in a way that gives the feeling of drowning”. According to CIA sources cited by ABC News, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed "was able to last between two and 2 1/2 minutes before begging to confess." Incidents, such as the ticking time bomb scenario and the waterbaording technique, shows the reader that torture indeed do work to gather data.

The weakness of the argument is seen when Krauthammer criticizes McCain for incoherence in his position but he himself is incoherent when he criticizes McCain for arguing "no torture under any circumstance" while holding up Israel, which uses physical coercion as a standard practice, as the model for how nations should deal with terrorists. And then Krauthammer is equally incoherent when he says "there is no denying the monstrous evil that is any form of torture," while claiming that torture can nevertheless be a moral duty. According to Krauthammer torture is justifiable only as a means to avoid a greater evil such as when we extract information during a crisis and he makes clear that we torture someone not because of who he is, but because of what he knows. The moral character of the person does not come into play. So if the person does not know anything, then we do not torture him. But this reasoning can also be applied to an innocent kid, or a women who might be working for a terrorist group for some financial gain. This is something that is unjustifiable because children and sometimes women who work for the terrorist group is not doing this on their free will but might be coerced into it out of fear for their lives.

Krauthammer uses the rogerian strategy such as when he is kind and sympathetic to McCain probably because McCain also endured torture at the hands of North Vietnamese or it could be that McCain totally does not disagree that torture is always worse than the alternative. McCain does give instances where torture is acceptable such as the ticking-time-bomb situation, where someone has to step up to the situation and do whatever it takes to get the information out of someone. For example, the Israelis were able to find Nachshon Waxman from Palestinian terrorist by torturing the driver of the car used in the kidnapping.