Tragic Choices in the War on Terrorism: Should We Try to Regulate and Control Torture?

What should be done about the problem of torture in the war on terrorism? Which is better?or worse: the continuation of a principled but ineffective "ban" on torture, or an effort to seriously regulate and control torture, at the price of its partial legitimization? Until 11 September 2001, the issue scarcely arose. Since the end of the eighteenth century, nearly every civilized society and moral system, certainly including the Judeo-Christian, or Western, moral system, in principle (although not always in practice) has regarded torture as an unmitigated evil, the moral prohibition against which was to be regarded as absolute.1 Since September 11, however, many Americans?not just government officials, but a number of moral and legal philosophers, as well as media commentators?are far from sure that torture must be excluded from our defenses against truly catastrophic terrorism. In any case, there no longer can be any question that since Septem ber 11, agencies of the American government, particularly the armed forces and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), have systematically used vari ous forms of physical and psychological coercion, beatings, or even outright torture (especially "waterboarding," or near-drowning) on suspected ter rorists, both directly, as in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, or indi