Permissible Torture?

Recently an Australian academic, Mirko Bagaric, mounted a defence of torture as “justifiable in some cases” [NZ Herald, 8/9/09]. One of his arguments was that, as killing is accepted as permissible “to kill in self-defence or defence of another, it must surely be acceptable to ‘inflict lesser forms of harm, including torture, to achieve the same result’. What he called “life-saving torture” was permissible to save innocent lives.
He began the piece by welcoming the investigation into the torture tactics used by the CIA to take place in the USA, and to which former Vice-President Dick Cheney has been objecting, as something that ‘may assist in demarcating the permissible limits of torture’. But if torture is to be used to save innocent lives, how can one define permissible limits against the utilitarian motive of saving lives? At what point can the limit be drawn, for it the “permissible limit” does not achieve the desired effect, does one abandon the use of torture or move beyond the permissible limit?
Bagaric’s article was answered by an Auckland academic, John Ip, who put up a counter-argument in an attempt to demonstrate that the proposal had “no logical stopping point” [NZ Herald 17/9/09, A13]. If by reason of nerve damage and intense training, the terrorist from whom the information was required was impervious to physical pain, but the authorities had his beloved three-year old son, whom they could torture in front of the terrorist, should they indeed do so? On Bagaric’s ‘utilitarian logic the answer is “yes”, assuming that the benefits (lives saved) outweigh the cost (pain inflicted on child plus mental pain inflicted on terrorist)’.
What both worthy academics missed in their utilitarian-based, legally-acute arguments, was an equally important and fundamental question, and that was the question of the effect of torture on the torturer. And the effect of a culture of torture on the society that accepts torture, even a carefully modulated and well-defined limited use of torture (if such a thing is possible). For the use of torture surely degrades the humanity of the torturer every bit as much as that of the tortured. If there are personalities who derive satisfaction from inflicting pain on others, ought a society to be encouraging such proclivities, be they ever so finely regulated? And can ordinary, “decent” human beings be expected to learn to engage in permissible and limited torture?
No doubt it is possible for a society to rationalise the use of torture in certain circumstances. Recent events, the attitudes of some members of the previous US Administration, and perhaps some functionaries and officials even now, not to mention Bagaric’s article (and for that matter Ip’s inadequate riposte) worryingly suggest it is all too possible: and in an era of moral panic, very likely. But the society that takes that road is surely regressing: its civilization, its civility, its compassion is surely being degraded. Societies’ and institutions in the past that have resorted to torture have not been free, and open, and democratic: they have been fearful, and repressive, and totalitarian in nature. A society that resorts to torture does not generally do so to save lives: it does it to maintain the status quo and, generally, to preserve the place of an elite that does not care for “innocent lives” if it means losing power.