Thoughts About Torture

"In 1978 a terrorist group kidnapped Italy's former Prime Minister Aldo Moro and threatened to kill him. A summary of the case described the decision not to resort to torture: "During the hunt for the kidnappers of Aldo Moro, an investigator for the Italian security services proposed to General Carlo Della Chiesa that a prisoner who seemed to have information on the case be tortured. The General rejected the idea, replying "Italy can survive the loss of Aldo Moro, but it cannot survive the introduction of torture."

This passage from Dershowitz's article stuck with me. What did the General mean when he said Italy cannot survive the introduction of torture? My mind immediately jumped to the United States War on Terror...let me explain.

After 9/11, the US declared a War on Terror. At first, the concept seemed simple enough. We had been attacked by "terrorists," namely Osama Bin Laden and Al-Queda, and we were waging a war against those same terrorists who attacked us. We waged this war by gathering intelligence on high-level Al-Queda operatives, and conducting nighttime raids into villages where we believed those terrorists to be. We had a "kill list," a list of terrorist targets who had to be killed before America was safe again. As the US military conducted more and more raids, killing more and more people, the war on terror became a self fulfilling prophecy.

US Army Officer Andrew Exum illustrates how this happened: Exum draws on an incident where his unit was fired upon by two Iraqis. Exum's unit returned fire and killed the Iraqis, only to discover later that the two were civilians guarding the town generator. "From a strategic perspective," reflects Exum, "that's a loss."

"If you see a fledgling insurgency start to develop, then it doesn't take a genius to realize that by dragging people out of their homes in the middle of the night, by doing so in a way that you are not communicating to the neighbors why this person is being dragged out in the middle of the night... how this could inflame tensions, how this could actually exacerbate drivers of conflict." One might start with a "target list" of 50-200 people, but by the time those targets had been apprehended or neutralized, there would be a new list of 3,000 targets.

While we have been conducting night-time raids all over the Middle East (over 1,700 during a 3 month period during 2010!!!), we have also been torturing prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. This War on Terror is costly- not just in money, but in American lives, the lives of innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire, and because it creates an ever stronger anti-American sentiment. On 9/11, Al-Queda had only a handful of members, who were in hiding and controlled virtually no territory. Now it has thousands of members and controls territory in Somalia, other parts of Africa, and Yemen. 

Is the War on Terror the same thing as torture? Not exactly, but I hope you can see the comparisons that I'm trying to draw. It all leads me to wonder if when General Carlo Della Chiesa said Italy could not survive the introduction of torture, he was not speaking figuratively but literally...

Argentina - Setting Governmental Precedence in Pardoning Mass Murder and Torture

As odd as it might sound, America has a very peculiar social-economical-governmental behavior compared to its south american neighbors. Americans usually trigger change based on economic scenarios, such as the socialist tendency of the Hoover Bills triggered by the Great Depression.

On the other hand, South American revolutions (see definition of revolution below) tend to follow social change triggered by government regimes; economic circumstances are not factored in the equation.

This leads us to the analysis of a particularly interested set of incidents that happened in Argentina on the late 1900s: The Dirty War. These events basically consisted in a de facto regime ran by military officials, where in an effort to avoid a trend of bankruptcy and national catastrophe happening throughout South America, the regime leaders ended up wiping out "liable" cities, torturing citizens, and nationalizing private industries.

(If you're curious enough and not that well versed in the topic I'll suggest http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_War)

These events do not surprise me at all. South America was going through a phase where mono economies (especially those based on agriculture) were failing almost as much as Apple's first tablet, Newton, failed when it was first released to the market. However, once the Argentinian conflicts were resolved a series of trials were performed in order to evaluate the regime leaders' penalties.

After having clear allegations of terrorism and torture, the national judicial system and the inter-american court of human rights (plus all the passive bystanders that knew about these incidents) decided that it was rightful to pass a law of pardon to everyone involved in the regime and its criminal actions (extra reference here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_stop_law).

That being said, I ask the following question: If a country, ruled with "contemporary" laws and a functional judicial system decided that it was acceptable to forgive civil war crimes against humanity, what does this imply in future engagements of these same infringements of the law?

People sometimes assume that the world we live in is always fair and just, and that law is always executed in the most rightful way; this is just a subtle reminder that regardless of that law mandates, it is always officially possible to get around it.


Definitions:
revolution: In the words of Alexander Berkman, "social revolution means the reorganization of the industrial, economic life of the country and consequently also of the entire structure of society."

Who would Laws Pertaining to Torture Protect?

In the most recent reading about torturing terrorists, the author opines that our governing laws must accommodate torture if we see it necessary in certain situations. Creating laws pertaining to and allowing torture will bring the acts of torture into the public view and create checks and balances in hopes of protecting the suspects being tortured. Both of which are evaded when torture happens off the grid. However, is it foolish to imagine that these laws may be abused by officials torturing suspects? Could there be cases where officials find protection in the written laws by finding justification for their actions and subsequently jump the gun by torturing more suspects, maybe innocent people? It may be that being off the grid grinds the fact that torture is condemned in our country into the minds of officials. Torturing off the grid may be the best protection for suspects in this hypothetical case. Laws on the other hand may take this mindset away. I am not saying that we should or shouldn't create laws to regulate torture. These are simply some ideas to consider when discussing that argument.

Overlooking the harm inflicted on others with drug use.

As I was reading the assignment for class today by Huemer and after thinking about his argument during and after class I really think that he falls short on the harm drugs have on others. In a theoretical sense his argument really wouldn't have any objections towards it. However if his argument is based around somebody who is a member of a society (i.e. the U.S.) than I don't think drug use can ever not affect others. 

I worked as an Aide in a hospital where I directly took care of patients, many of them were there because of sustained drug use. I won't go into the more graphic details, but they were all very incapable people that needed help to do the very smallest of things. In the United States as well as in the majority of developed countries universal health coverage exists, a system to cover people in cases of health problems. These patients that were in the hospital for drug use had no way of paying for their expenses so that falls on the tax payers in a universal health system. This type of situation certainly affects others not just the person themselves. 

In ways like this I think Huemer overlooks all the angles that really occur in cases of the use and misuse of drugs. In a realistic sense, and acting as a member of society, I can't think up any case where one persons drug use has absolutely no impact on anybody but themselves. Although I am not totally opposed to the idea of legalizing drugs I just don't think it can ever be proven to only impact the user. Any thoughts?

Can a rational, physically and mentally healthy person ever truly be suicidal?

Suicide was mentioned today in class as an example of a person's right to bodily autonomy. Most of the examples used were with people who are terminally ill, and we sort of dismissed cases where somebody is in some type hysterical psychological state which results in them being admitted to psychiatric care if they are discovered before they are successful. But, I think that there are some much more ambiguous cases in between those extremes.

Consider the case of a completely physically healthy 25 year old man who is no longer particularly interested in living. There isn't anything going wrong in his life, in fact he's generally quite happy, has job/friends, and activities that he enjoys participating in. Perhaps he's merely bored with life or feels as if he has already done everything that he wanted to do. Maybe he's really committed to existentialism. Is it possible for him to want to die and be mentally healthy (and thus capable rationally deciding that he wants to die)?

I'm not sure. At the very least, it seems as if being suicidal or having a disinterest in life in this way is essentially inherently categorized as depression or some other type of mental illness (but lets stipulate for the sake of this example that he does not demonstrate any of the other classic symptoms of depression such as hopelessness, diet changes, disinterest in activities once enjoyed, sleep issues, self-loathing, etc.). I think we categorize it in this way because its inconceivable most of the population that somebody would ever be healthy and happy, yet actually want to die. So, at least on terms of society's definition of mental illness, I would say that most would categorize him in this way and therefore view him as irrational.

Perhaps a more interesting question is whether or not we should. It seems wrong to decide that somebody is ill simply based on society's opinions about what is and is not normal, or common. I'm certain that if this were more common, we would not classify it as an illness. Consider that most people would think that a desire to commit suicide is completely acceptable if the person in question were a healthy, happy 100 year old man who had done everything he wanted to in life and wanted to die with dignity before dementia or severe health issues set in. The only difference is the norms about what constitutes a long enough life for us to believe that he had done everything he wanted to in life. I think that's because we can understand it, and perhaps that's an unreasonable basis for deciding which types of bodily autonomy are and aren't acceptable. Perhaps the component of mental illness is based on harm, but I'm not sure that everyone truly thinks that suicide is inherently harmful.

If you agree with my analysis, then the question now is how we should decide what it means to be rational or mentally healthy. I don't know the answer to that. On the other hand, perhaps the most compelling argument against my case is that there are many people who have been suicidal, and believed at the time that their decision to attempt suicide was rational, yet are relieved that others intervened before they were successful and live happy, fulfilling lives that they now very much want to continue living. For instance, those who have survived suicide attempts from jumping off the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge are relieved that they have a second chance at life. From this (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/10/13/jumpers) article: "Survivors often regret their decision in midair, if not before... He counted to ten again, then vaulted over... As he crossed the chord in flight, Baldwin recalls, 'I instantly realized that everything in my life that I'd thought was unfixable was totally fixable - except for having just jumped.'" Kind of a dark testimony to the likely feelings of many who jumped yet were not so lucky. Perhaps then, it actually is essentially impossible (or at least, in a vast majority of cases) to be both mentally/physically healthy and rationally want to commit suicide. If so, it implies that we the extreme efforts that we put into preventing people from killing themselves (such as forcibly admitting them to psychiatric wards) is a justified violation of one's bodily autonomy.

Licensing Parents - I think LaFollette glosses some important practical objections

The most glaring flaw I found in LaFollette's analysis is not the theoretical/philosophical case for licensing parents, but rather he struck me as somewhat naive about the realities of implementing a political policy. He asserts that there is no real reason why there would be more corruption in this realm of licensing compared to others, but this seems to neglect the immense power that somebody holds when creating this policy. Children tend to adopt the political and religious attitudes of their parents. If you control who reproduces, you can influence the political demographics of future generations. I think this potential would be very tantalizing to a lot of politicians, so it seems like there is a high risk of corruption or subtle biases in approval - much more so than the political influences of deciding who gets driver's licenses. I thought the article that Tresan posted was also revealing of the logistical issues of navigating governmental bureaucracy with this type of really serious policy. There's also the issue of the temptation to expand it beyond simply just an outright, obviously physically or emotionally abusive parent. For instance, there's a lot of parents that seem likely to be negligent or not ideal parents. The most obvious example that comes to mind is young teenagers. Do they still get a license if they just aren't violently abusive? Single 15 year old girls aren't typically ideal parents, and it feels very tempting to create restrictions against having children in that sort of situation, even if it isn't under a traditional definition of abuse. But, if we do that we will have more issues with infringing upon personal freedom even further and questions as to what it means to be a good parent. There are probably some teenage mothers who are very good parents, whereas older adults can still be irresponsible parents regardless of their theoretically increased maturity.  And if we're expanding restrictions, there's all sorts of factions that yield a surprising amount of political power (such as Christian fundamentalists in the United States) or new-age millitant atheists who might believe that raising a child without/with a certain religious upbringing is abusive. The whole thing seems like it could get really messy really quickly.

I thought the notion of eugenics that got brought up in class was really interesting. I'm inclined to agree that eugenic tendencies could definitely develop from a proposal like this. But, I'm not actually sure that this is a bad thing (I know, I'm evil, but hear me out). Tresan mentioned that the screening test could just explicitly not look for genetic things that somebody doesn't really have control over. But, I don't think that this is necessarily a good thing.  I had the impression that this proposal was about improving the quality of life for future people/those who don't currently exist. Even if a parent isn't trying to be abusive, knowingly creating a child who will suffer immensely with some type of genetic disorder is undeniably harmful towards that child. If we're already doing this policy, we could just be careful about what we select against, and only make it really severe genetic disorders which seem to almost undeniably impair one's quality of life that people wouldn't ever choose to have. Perhaps its horribly wrong and I'm just ableist and evil, but its at least not obvious to me why it would be so harmful to limit people from passing on really severe genetic disorders that make it impossible for people to live a normal life (perhaps the standard of being unable to ever support one's self independently). I kind of like it because it seems more objective and predictive than any type of subjective 'parenting' test would likely be. You could probably even find a potential genetic basis for violent/abusive tendencies.

I can't decide whether or not it would improve social attitudes towards parenting. Currently, I think many people have a very flipping towards the very serious undertaking of raising children. If we required licensing, it might make people think more carefully about the notion of having kids since they have to work a little bit harder for it. On the other hand, LaFollette continuously expresses how basic or easy to pass this parenting test would be. Unfortunately, those who hold licenses tend to be endowed with an (perhaps inflated) sense of competence. This could generate a very insidious belief that if one passes a parenting test to receive a license, they are entirely prepared, infallible, and qualified to a parent. Ultimately, I worry that this would detract from the very important understanding that parenting is very difficult and parents are undeniably going to make mistakes and will have to learn from their mistakes or modify their strategies. The only way to avoid this would be to make the test more rigorous, which has its own host of problems (namely, the difficulties surrounding deciding what it means to be a good parent). A weird idea I had for this type of test could be a simulation of sorts. That is, especially as we improve at AI, we could make a somewhat realistic 'robot' that the parents have to successfully 'raise' for a month (or 6 months or something) and grows up at an accelerated rate. It could try to simulate all of the obnoxious things that children inevitably do, and then measure/analyze parental responses to those situations. There can be more than one right answer, but this might be a revealing way to determine who is prone to violence or abuse. It also might encourage parents to carefully consider whether they truly want to have a kid if they've been exposed to the less idealized reality of it.

He also kind of glosses over the implementation of the policy, but I have some ideas. Obviously forced sterilization for those who fail is ridiculous and inhumane. The notion of just taking away the children of parents who aren't licensed might work, but should probably be kept to a minimum unless we make substantial improvements to our foster care system and increase adoption rates (which are relatively low). Otherwise, the child still has a heightened chance of growing up in a less ideal, unstable environment if they end up being passed around between foster homes often. I think his idea of financial incentives is far too weak to the point of almost making a policy meaningless - it seems like it would simply hurt vulnerable children further, since the children of those who do not qualify would not only grow up in an environment with a potentially abusive parent, but also deprived of additional resources. But, modern medicine is getting pretty good at modern forms of birth control. We already have a variety of methods, at least for female birth control, which can last up to 10 years (such as IUDs). We're also getting pretty good at injections, and that struck me as something that could probably be easily further developed if this policy started to get serious political traction (which it probably never will). They already have birth control injections for women that can last several months - we could probably improve this to last several years or more. There's also a form of male birth control in development called RISUG (reversible inhibition of sperm under guidance) which is essentially an injection which researchers believe could be effective for about 10 years. Perhaps (although this is kind of stretching it) if we could get it down to a very non-invasive injection, we could make it a really routine, normalized procedure kind of like vaccinations, and it wouldn't have to be very frequent ideally. Perhaps we couldn't quite force people to do it, but we could make it really normal/expected and make it inconvenient not to do so somehow.  Then, if somebody passed their parenting test, they could have approval to get the procedure or whatever legally reversed. This whole thing still sounds like a political nightmare, particularly with the obvious infringement upon bodily autonomy that my proposal implies. Nonetheless, I think that if LaFollette and other proponents of this idea need to have some type of practical plan for implementing this policy if they want to be taken seriously and currently there is not an obvious proposal that seems politically and ethically feasible. It is a nice philosophical concept though - and, at least on a personal level, I'm inclined to agree that most people who have had kids probably really shouldn't have and probably really aren't qualified for that type of responsibility.

Regarding our Reading for Tuesday 1/20/15 (despite it being almost Thursday)

Something that got me thinking in class (that I really didn't take much heed of while actually reading) is something we, and our author, take for granted, even though upon (my own) further contemplating seems to be anything but a given--namely, that one has a human right to procreate. Now, LaFollette does in fact argue rather convincingly from this point, even if we accept it as true (which I'll get into presently), yet its falsity serves, in my opinion, to even further strengthen his claims. To the meat of this post, though:

Why is it that it is assumed that it is an inherent right, a right inalienable, to use Constitutional language, so much a part of the human experience that it is a universal right, for an adult to have children? Part of it actually ties into the article we're reading for Thursday's class: having children falls under the category of controlling one's body, and, because of this, nothing ought to be preventative of exercising that right. However, Professor Tresan mentioned, in passing, that it would not due to discredit an argument or strain of thinking due only (or, primarily) to a deficiency of imagination or sympathy, and that is exactly what got me to thinking about imaginative ways this "right" could be contested. First, most obvious (possibly the only one I dredge up, as I'm thinking a bit on the fly in making this post), is that it's absolutely within the realm of possibility that no one would consent to have a child with someone. In this case, then, is it their right to in fact have a child? Certainly not, either socially or logically. Now, as I said not so long ago, this does not by any means weaken LaFollette's argumentation (again, either socially or logically), so this isn't quite a consideration strictly speaking pertinent to the text, but rather merely something I had churned around for the past 24 hours, and may, in some way, help us think more creatively about some of this engaging topics.

very interesting article relevant to parental licensing

http://www.propublica.org/article/should-a-mental-illness-mean-you-lose-your-kid