As newspapers and documentary films continue to discuss waterboarding and other controversial treatments of suspected terrorists, the debate over torture remains intense. Some insist that desperate times call for desperate measures, but others are baffled that such methods could exist in a civilized society. Is physical persuasion ever an appropriate means of interrogation?
The media’s conversations about torture often focus on the methods of interrogation—on which methods may be permissible and which should be off limits. Less time is devoted to perhaps the most fundamental factor in issues of violence: intent. In many places in the world, and throughout much of human history, torture has been used as a means to punish, to humiliate, to exact revenge or to intimidate. All these intentions should be rejected by any just society. There are specific instances, however, when certain methods of interrogation—what some would call torture—can be justified. Specifically, when the intent is to save innocent human lives, force may sometimes be justified.
Just War Theory offers a good set of criteria to bear in mind when considering when torture may be justifiable. Under Just War Theory, a war is just only if it is defensive and meets four strict conditions. The requirements are: that the damage inflicted by the aggressor must be lasting, grave and certain; that all other means of ending the war must be impractical or ineffective; that there must be serious prospects of success; and that the use of force cannot produce evils graver than those to be eliminated.
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