Why do we torture (and how can we stop)?

Speaking of torture (and the causuistry by which it is now being officially countenanced), the Human Rights Watch report on those U.S. military interrogation practices that meet the legal definition of torture (though perhaps not the Bush administration's redefinition of it) found:

These soldiers’ firsthand accounts provide further evidence contradicting claims that abuse of detainees by U.S. forces was isolated or spontaneous. The accounts here suggest that the mistreatment of prisoners by the U.S. military is even more widespread than has been acknowledged to date, including among troops belonging to some of the best trained, most decorated, and highly respected units in the U.S. Army. They describe in vivid terms abusive interrogation techniques ordered by Military Intelligence personnel and known to superior officers.

Most important, they demonstrate that U.S. troops on the battlefield were given no clear guidance on how to treat detainees. When the administration sent these soldiers to war in Afghanistan, it threw out the rules they were trained to uphold (embodied in the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation). Instead, President Bush said only that detainees be treated "humanely," not as a requirement of the law but as policy. And no steps were taken to define what humane was supposed to mean in practice. Once in Iraq, their commanders demanded that they extract intelligence from detainees without telling them what was allowed and what was forbidden. Yet when abuses inevitably followed, the administration blamed only low-ranking soldiers instead of taking responsibility.

A standard assumption within jus in bello (the part of just war theory that addresses conduct during wartime, not the justice of wars themselves) is that military command and control (including the nation's political leadership) is to be held responsible for the conduct of soldiers operating under their command, as the latter merely follow orders and therefore must depend upon the good judgment of their superiors in avoiding morally repugnant conduct (whether ordered or allowed). According to the HRW study, though, it appears not only that the military and civilian leadership was guilty at least of inadequate oversight (and very likely of granting an explicit approval of torture, as the administration's "torture memos" and the Vice President's hardline stance against rules prohibiting torture suggest), as the only evident display of any moral conscience (recognizing the wrongness of the acts in question) manifested among some of the soldiers themselves. As one officer in the 82nd Airborne (proudly known as the "Murderous Maniacs" for their treatment of Iraqi prisoners) is quoted in the report as saying:

If I as an officer think we’re not even following the Geneva Conventions, there’s something wrong. If officers witness all these things happening, and don’t take action, there’s something wrong. If another West Pointer tells me he thinks, "Well, hitting somebody might be okay," there’s something wrong.

There is indeed something wrong here. Contrary to the assumption within jus in bello, soldiers (and especially officers) ought to know the difference between right and wrong (and often do, even if they are not provided with explicit instructions not to act wrongly, or even if they are explicitly ordered to act wrongly), and evidence suggests that many are capable of making this distinction in fact (despite contrary norms within the military itself). Though this in no way exonerates those high ranking military and civilian officials that have obviously failed to prevent (and may well have encouraged) the illegal and reprehensible conduct that the various torture investigations have revealed, it does suggest a problem with the assumption that the moral conscience of the military is monopolized by those in positions of command (and therefore that moral responsibility for actions by the military resides exclusively with those issuing orders). What appears practically necessary, then, is a vastly improved system of accountability by which soldiers may report (without fear of reprisal) such conduct to relevant authorities (the International Red Cross, HRW or Amnesty International, etc.) when systems of domestic political accountability (e.g. those found in international law, Congressional oversight, basic procedural rights of prisoners) collapse (as is arguably the case now). Especially given the apparent refusal by the current government (legislative, executive, and judicial, though with varying degrees of complicity and dissent) to recognize (let alone enforce) international law governing conduct during wartime, some alternate mechanism of accountability appears to be warranted.

A political system built around maintaining multiple points of access - ensuring that legitimate grievances are able to be heard by some authority even if others are for various reasons inaccessible to them - ought to regard international NGOs as a valuable source of accountability and therefore as a critical check upon abuses of state power during those times (well known to exist) in which the rule of law fails to hold sway over domestic political institutions. The need for effective checks and balances has been a cornerstone of American political thought since Federalist 51, and recent events suggest that Madison's celebrated separation of powers (itself significantly weakened in recent years) may provide inadequate safeguards against some kinds of abuse. Though I don't expect that this will be the case, I would hope that this report (and others like it) will be recognized for the invaluable service which they may now be uniquely (in contrast to the "official" reports on such controversies) able to provide.