Center for the Study of Catholic Social Thought
Graduate and Undergraduate Student Article Award
Spring 2011
OBJECTIVE
The Center for the Study of Catholic Social Thought at Duquesne University is committed to creating a forum of research and scholarship to address social justice problems in the world today. The aim is to bring students in contact with Catholic Social Thought as a religio-ethical resource as it is interfaced with various academic disciplines. While it claims a vision of the world informed by its specific ethos, Catholic Social Thought seeks a moral resonance in all earnest inquirers of the truth and seekers of justice, regardless of religious, ethical, and cultural affiliations. The principles of Catholic Social Thought are addressed to all men and women of good will.
The Graduate and Undergraduate Student Article Award is envisioned to encourage students to do serious thinking and writing on global social justice issues and problems from the critical lens of various academic disciplines and from the perspective of Catholic Social Thought. It aims to deepen their consciousness and sensitivity to global concerns, which would hopefully translate into a greater participation and commitment as citizens of the world.
Torture, Human Rights, and the War on Terror
The terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 in New York revealed a new face of war—the “war on terror”. This is the war that was unleashed in Iraq and now in Afghanistan. And in the face of the “war on terror” we are confronted with one of the deepest and darkest challenges to human rights: the use of torture. The legal and ethical issues surrounding the use of torture in the war on terror are profound and complex. They require in-depth information, critical analysis, and discerning reflection.
CONTENT OF THE ARTICLE
Primary and Subsidiary Questions
The primary question that the article addresses is: Is the use of torture in the war on terror legal and ethical? Your answer to this question should be founded on answers to the following subsidiary questions:
1. What is torture? What is the ongoing discourse on what is considered or not considered torture? How has the meaning of torture been limited? How has the International law against torture been circumvented by some governments? What is your position on this discourse? Why?
2. Is torture effective in extracting the truth? What are the varying positions on this issue? Which side do you take? Why?
3. What are the consequences of torture for the victims, the torturers, and the society that allows this practice? What is your stand on this issue?
4. Should the prohibition on torture be absolute or should it be subjected to a moral calculus as the situation demands like the “ticking bomb” scenario? Should torture be legalized so it can be controlled, managed, and restricted to use only in extreme situations? What are the varying positions of ethicists on these questions? What is your ethical stance?
5. What is the position of International laws on torture? What is the position of Catholic Social Teaching? On what basic ethical and religious principles is the Catholic Social Teaching founded? Do you agree with these principles of both the International laws and Catholic Social Teaching? Why?
6. Based on your research on the preceding five questions, state and explain your concluding position on the question: Is the use of torture in the war on terror legal and ethical?
The six questions are offered to guide you in developing the main content of your paper and your concluding statement.
Research Resources
To plan your research strategy, read first the annotations of all the recommended articles and books. Choose the articles and books you will use. At minimum, your article must be based on your research on the following:
1. Three scholarly journal articles
2. Three web link articles
3. Catholic Social Thought references
4. Two books
The content of the references which you use must be reflected in the text of your paper, and be cited in your footnotes and bibliography. This is a minimum requirement; you may use more sources than required. The books are available at the reserve shelf of the library.
ELIGIBILITY
All Duquesne undergraduate and graduate students are eligible to participate in the Article Award Competition. Students who are taking courses which are particularly related to these topics are especially encouraged to join this academic endeavor.
REQUIREMENTS
1. Submit an Application Form on or before February 1, 2011 to the Center for the Study of Catholic Social Thought at 18 Chatham Square, or by e-mail to toriskyt@duq.edu
The application form can be downloaded from the Center’s website: http://www.duq.edu/cst (Save application as a Word document and e-mail to address provided);
2. Optional but highly recommended: Attend the Monsignor Rice Lecture, “Torture, Human Rights, and the War on Terror” on March 16, 2011 at the Power Center Ballroom (3:00-4:45 P.M.);
3. Final Submission of Paper: April 15, 2011. Submit to toriskyt@duq.edu with Article Award Competition in the subject line.
4. Announcement of Winners: May 2, 2011
CRITERIA
1. All papers should be typed using 12 font, double spaced, Times Roman.
Graduates: maximum pages: 20, minimum pages: 15;
Undergraduate: maximum pages: 15, minimum pages: 12;
Rules of citation for footnotes and bibliography must be strictly followed; The students may use the system of citation that they are familiar with;
2. The use of required minimum references, in terms of category and number, with explicit use of Catholic Social Thought;
3. Quality and substance of research, clarity of presentation, and depth of insights;
4. Writing: correct grammar and good style.
AWARDS
- First Place Graduate and Undergraduate Article Award: $ 150 and trophy
- Second Place Graduate and Undergraduate Article Award: $ 100 and trophy
- Third Place Graduate and Undergraduate Article Award: $50 and trophy
Winning articles will be posted on the Center’s website.
ANNOTATED RESEARCH RESOURCES
Articles from Scholarly Journals
Daniel Kanstroom, “On “Waterboarding”: Legal Interpretation and the Continuing Struggle for Human Rights,” Boston College Third World Law Journal 28/2 (2008) 269-287.
In the view of the author, the matter about waterboarding is not an essentially political question. Nor is it an especially close call as a matter of law. It does, however, shocks one’s conscience, as it cuts to the heart of the most profound legal and ethical questions of our times, founded on the inalienable dignity of the human person.
David Luban, “Liberalism, Torture, and the Ticking Bomb,” Virginia Law Review, 91 (2005) 1425-1461.
The article criticizes the liberal position on torture which assumes that torture can be allowed in exceptional ticking-bomb cases—cases where it is differentiated from acts motivated by cruelty and tyranny-- as its sole purpose is to gather intelligence to save lives. The “ticking bomb” scenario, the article asserts, is an intellectual fraud and delusion. It takes one’s attention away from the real questions about torture—questions about the morality of consequences and about what it does in creating a culture of torture.
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~jwcwolf/Papers/Luban%20torture%20and%20the%20ticking%20bomb.pdf
Manfred Nowak, “What Practices Constitute Torture?: U.S. and UN Standards,” Human Rights Quarterly 28.4 (2006) 809-841.
The article is a response to the attempts of the US government under the Bush presidency to redefine torture in a highly restrictive sense and at the same time distinguishing it from other forms of cruel inhuman or degrading treatment (CIDT) that may be allowed. This is to circumvent the absolute prohibition against torture in the fight against global terrorism. Other strategies were adopted to circumvent this prohibition. Examples of such strategies include the practice of enforced disappearance in secret places of detention; the establishment of detention facilities outside US territory for the purpose of avoiding the applicability of constitutional and internal human rights standards; the “extraordinary rendition” of suspected terrorists to countries known for their systematic torture practices or the outsourcing of interrogation functions to private companies.
http://130.102.44.247/journals/human_rights_quarterly/v028/28.4nowak.html
Mark Bowden, “The Dark Art of Interrogation,” The Atlantic Monthly (Research Library Core, October 2003, 292, 3) 51-76.
The article addresses the following questions: How does one define the line between torture and coercion. It might be clear that coercion (moderate physical pressure and not violent psychological pressure) is sometimes the right choice in extricating vital, life-saving information. But how does a country regulate behavior in its dark and distant corners, in prisons, in battlefields, in interrogation rooms? How can the most effective way to gather intelligence and thwart terrorism not become the route to barbarism, brutality, and sadism?
http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~stables/Bowden03.pdf
Mark Danner, “Abu Ghraib: The Hidden Story,” New York Review of Books 51/ 15 (October 7, 2004) 1-18.
Was the brutal scandal of Abu Ghraib a responsibility of a few soldiers called “animal house on the night shift” or does it implicate official US policy under the Bush Administration regarding the treatment of enemy prisoners in a war against terrorism? The article asserts that Abu Ghraib is a microcosm of the Iraq war in all its failures. In fighting a guerilla war, the essential weapon is not tanks or helicopters but intelligence, and the single essential tool to obtain it is reliable political support of the people. Was the strategy of “cordon and capture” a strategy of desperation and weakness, which undermined the political support of the people and led to the adoption of tactics that corrupted the military culture founded on the adherence to law?
http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/oppenheimer/djtheory/agimplications.pdf
Scott R. Paeth, “Dirty Hands” Revisited: Morality, Torture, and Abu Ghraib, Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 28, 1 (2008) 163-181
The goal of this essay is to offer an analysis of the U.S. torture policy in light of a Christian conception of moral responsibility. It grapples with the moral ambiguity of what good people are permitted to do in “borderline situations” where the ordinary categories of morality fail. The assertion of the article is that political officials accept the risk of acquiring “dirty hands” in the fulfillment of their duties in the public realm. This means that they sometimes perform acts that are, in themselves, morally repugnant, yet nevertheless necessary. But they must, however, recognize the moral guilt that comes with choosing to do evil in the name of good, which can only be expiated by the acceptance of moral responsibility and the ownership of one’s guilt. The article poses a critique of the Bush administration in its approach to the use of torture.
http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=scott_paeth
Metin Basoglu, MD, Ph.D., Maria Livanou, Ph.D., “Torture vs. Other Cruel Inhuman and Degrading Treatment: Is the Distinction Real or Apparent?” Archives of General Psychiatry, 64 (March 2007) 277-285.
Following reports of human rights abuses by the US military in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, and Afghanistan, questions were raised as to whether certain detention and interrogation procedures do not constitute torture. The article concludes that aggressive interrogation techniques or detention procedures involving deprivation of basic needs, exposure to aversive environmental conditions, forced stress positions, hooding or blindfolding, isolation, restriction of movements, forced nudity, threats, humiliating treatment, and other psychological manipulations do not seem to be substantially different from physical torture in terms of the mental suffering they cause, the underlying mechanism of traumatic stress, and their long-term psychological outcome. Thus, these procedures do amount to torture, thereby lending support to their prohibition by international law.
Alex J. Bellamy, “No pain, no gain? Torture and Ethics in the War on Terror” International Affairs 82/1 (2006) 121-148.
The article discusses why torture is prohibited by International law. The possibility, however, of an extreme “ticking bomb” scenario puts this prohibition to question. The “lesser evil” calculation and the terror warrant proposals are posed as possible legal and ethical ways to justify the use of torture. The article submits a critical assessment of these two ways and warns against the use of torture in violation of the non-combatant immunity and the possible slippery slope case of torture being normalized as a core tactic in the war on terror once it is allowed for exceptional cases.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2346.2006.00518.x/pdf
Jeremy Waldron, “Torture and Positive Law: Jurisprudence for the White House,” Columbia Law Review 105 (2005) 1681-1740.
The main contention of this article is that torture is not just one rule among others, but a legal archetype. “The idea of an archetype is the idea of a rule or positive law provision that operates not just on its own account, and does not just stand simply in a cumulative relation to other provisions. It operates in a way that expresses or epitomizes the spirit of a whole structured area of doctrine, and does so vividly, effectively, publicly, establishing the significance of that area for the entire legal enterprise.” In the broadest sense, the prohibition of torture is expressive of the following fundamental underlying values: law is not brutal, savage; law does not rule through fear and terror. When torture is, thus, practiced, the barrier that stands between us and barbarism is broken down.
http://escholarship.org/uc/item/23d27577;jsessionid=BD79FDD955C3DEF98B0B4A08D0AAEF53#page-5
Articles from Web links
Billsco v Alan Ryan, Use of Torture in War on Terrorism:
Political Debates and Polls Forum
The article presents quite lucidly the arguments pro and con regarding torture in a robust exchange of two protagonists. The basic argument of the pro side is the need for a reasoned and coherent policy when the moral calculus demands that torture be allowed to save countless lives and needless suffering. To do anything less is reprehensible. And in this moral calculus, one must make a difference between soldiers and terrorists. Terrorists should not be protected by the Geneva Convention when the purpose of the Convention is to protect the innocent. Torture, thus, must be a tool in the war on terror, used sparingly and judiciously. The basic argument of the con side is that human rights are rights due to every person by the fact that he or she is a human being; thus, the treatment of terrorists is not only a legal issue, it is a moral/human issue. Besides the question on the effectiveness of torture in extracting the truth is its destruction of the core values of the American heritage. The protection of the welfare of the American people does not consist only in lives and property; it includes aspirations, ideals, moral, and social values.
Mark Bowden, Mark Danner, Darius Rejali, Elaine Scarry, Aryeh Neier:
Question of Torture
The article contains the edited transcript of a panel discussion held at the New York Public Library co-sponsored by the Carnegie Council, Live from the New York Public Library, and the New York Review of Books. The panel is composed of distinguished experts on the question of torture. They discussed the nature of torture, the legality and ethics of torture, torture as a strategy of weakness, the use of coercive interrogation in intelligence gathering; torture being regulated by legalizing it; the phenomenon of slippery slope relative to the consequences of torture; and the use of torture as damaging the moral standing of United States in the world.
http://www.carnegiecouncil.org/resources/transcripts/5207.html
Sunday Forum: Two Problems with Torture
It’s wrong and it doesn’t work, according to interrogation expert Stuart Herrington
This article is about Stuart Herrington, a Duquesne graduate, who served 30 years in the U. S. Army as an intelligence officer, including extensive experience as an interrogator in Vietnam, Panama, and during the 1991 Gulf War. Herrington believes that the debate on torture should not be fundamentally framed by the question: “Does torture work or not?”, but by the question, “Is torture right or wrong?” Is brutalizing helpless prisoners a practice that will advance or harm our nation’s position as it wages a just war against Islamist extremists? He says that interrogation demands skills to obtain information, and those who do not have the skill resort to brutality. He and his team collected mountains of excellent, verified information, without having laid a hostile hand on a prisoner.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07294/826876-35.stm
Interrogation: Torture Techniques and Technologies
Gale Encyclopedia of Espionage and Intelligence
The article gives some basic information about the techniques and technologies of torture classified according to three categories: hardware, software, and liveware. This gives the reader useful knowledge of the nature and practice of torture, as a cruel, inhumane, and brutal crime against the humanity of another.
http://www.answers.com/topic/interrogation-torture-techniques-and-technologies
Torture and the Law
Compiled by Vienna Colucci
The article clearly defines what torture is as defined by International law; it states that every act of torture is a crime. The prohibition of torture has a special status in International law: “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether as a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency may be invoked as a justification of torture.” (Article 2 of Geneva Convention). The prohibition of torture is also a “peremptory norm,” which means that it cannot be overruled by any other law or by local custom. It is part of customary International law, which means it is binding on all states, whether or not they have ratified any of the International human rights.
Taking on Torture:
Benedicta Cipolla
Torture degrades the torturers who are stripped of their capacity for sympathy and for empathy. The goal of torture is to break down the morale of the captive, but it ends breaking down the morality of the torturer. One cannot argue in favor of torture on the grounds of utilitarian ethics which calls for desperate measures in extreme “ticking bomb” situations. By focusing on hypothetical scenarios, attention is taken away from the issue of torture from an ethical perspective—the human significance of the act of torture itself.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week921/exclusive.html
Steven Lukes, “Questions about Torture” European Political Science 7 (2008) 404-410.
Large questions confront us when we contemplate the history of the treatment of prisoners incarcerated by the Bush Administration since the War on terror began after September 11, 2001. There has been no accountability up the chain of command. Instead there has been a continuing process of damage limitation and cover up in the face of the accumulating evidence of a whole secret world of systematic and officially sanctioned and often uncontrolled acts of extreme cruelty and humiliation. The primary question raised is the issue of responsibility—causal, legal, and moral responsibility. A second large question is the issue of the consequences of torture. And a crucial question is the justifiability of torture. The article concludes with this statement: “When the authorities of a state enter the dark side by allowing, let alone encouraging, the practice of torture, the moral fabric of the society they are defending begins to unravel.”
http://www.palgrave-journals.com/eps/journal/v7/n4/full/eps200843a.html
Uses of Torture in Recent Times
The article describes the uses of torture in recent times in different parts of the world, even as it is absolutely prohibited by International law. In the United States, the CIA has anonymously confirmed that they routinely use so-called stress and duress interrogation techniques which human rights activists condemn as acts of torture. It has not been denied that United States uses third party states to carry out torture by proxy to obtain intelligence; it is alleged that terror suspects are arbitrarily and illegally arrested, then transferred to other countries to be interrogated and then tortured. Torture destroys the humanity of the torturer who behaves as a sadist, pervert, and criminal.
http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/Uses_of_torture_in_recent_times/id/2027928
Catholic Social Thought and Torture
Torture is a Moral Issue: A Catholic Study Guide
This is a four-chapter discussion on torture. The first chapter is devoted to the God-given dignity of a person, which is the foundation of human rights. Torture is the violation of this most sacred right which belongs to every person by the fact that he or she is a human being. The second chapter focuses on torture itself as an immoral option not only because it denies dignity to fellow human beings, but because it saps the humanity from those who employ it. Chapter 3 examines the profound meaning of the Gospel’s teaching on love of enemies. The only way to peace is by destroying enmity, not the enemy. “Love is the light—in the end, the only light—that can always illuminate a world grown dim and give us the courage needed to keep living and working.”(Pope Benedict XVI’s, God is Love. 39). The fourth chapter promotes discussion of actions that individuals, families, and small groups in parishes, schools, and others might take to address the issue of torture, and to raise awareness of its importance as a moral matter.
http://www.usccb.org/sdwp/stoptorture/index.shtml
Appendix
Letter from Bishop Wenski to Senate on Torture
Letter from Bishop Wenski, Chairman of the Committee on International Justice and Peace of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to members of the Senate. This letter serves as a valuable overview of the reasons of the Catholic Church for opposing torture. The Catholic Church enters into the public arena and contributes to the discourse on torture from the profound depth of its moral-religious perspective. The voice of the Catholic Church regarding torture is a prophetic voice in the world today.
(This is found at the end part of “Torture is a Moral Issue: A Catholic Study Guide”)
Books on Torture
Sanford Levinson, Torture: A Collection (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2004)
This book contains an excellent collection of articles by experts which cover a broad range of issues on torture— philosophical considerations of torture; practice of torture; contemporary attempts to abolish torture through law; and debates about legalizing torture. It addresses the crucial questions and issues that surround the complex and profound problem of torture.
John Perry, Torture: Religious Ethics and National Security (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2005)
Reviewing the history and practice of torture and the arguments used to justify it, John Perry, a Jesuit priest, enters into the minds of both the torturers and their victims. From a specific Christian/Catholic ethical-religious perspective, he shows why torture is different from other acts of war, and why it is fundamentally immoral: “not only because it violates the dignity we owe to the human person, but also because it directly or indirectly degrades any society that would tolerate it.”
John Conroy, Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People: The Dynamics of Torture (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000)
John Conroy dared placed himself at the emotional center of torture as he identifies with the victims; grasps the rationalizations of the torturer; and questions the seeming indifference of the bystander. He exposes the occurrence of torture in democracies that value justice, due process, and human rights, and how those who perpetuate torture escape without punishment.
Matthew Alexander and John Bruning How to Break a Terrorist: The U. S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, not Brutality, to take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq (New York, NY: Free Press, 2008)
Matthew Alexander served for fourteen years in the U.S. Air Force. He has personally conducted more than 300 interrogations and supervised more than 1,000. The essential military tool in combating terror-bent fanatics would not be weaponry but knowledge. The book is a narrative of how, without the use of torture or coercion, a skilled interrogator can break the will of a captive and reveal critical and timely intelligence to save lives.
Mirko Bagaric and Julie Clarke, Torture: When the Unthinkable is Morally Permissible
(Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2007)
This is a controversial and provocative book, but important, as it brings to serious debate the moral legitimacy of torture in extreme situations where innocent lives are on the line. The authors basically hold that to condemn torture under and any circumstance is to live in a moral vacuum. “When we have a choice between saving the life of an innocent person and not harming a terrorist or other wrongdoer, it is indecent to absolutely prefer the interests of the wrongdoer…The brutal act of torture may be permissible if it has the potential to achieve compassionate outcomes in the form of saving innocent lives.”
Bob Brecher, Torture and The Ticking Bomb (Malden,MA: Blackwell Publishing,2007)
The book argues that the “ticking bomb” scenario remains a fantasy and the putative catastrophe that it brings about is spurious. This scenario, thus, does not offer the grounds for justifying the use of interrogational torture. Furthermore, the inimical consequences of legalizing torture and institutionalizing it far outweigh whatever calculated good it claims to achieve. In any decent society, torture must be abhorred in all circumstances, always, and everywhere.
Darius Rejali, Torture and Democracy (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2007)
Winner of the 2008 Best Book Award, Human Rights Section, American Political Science Association
“This is the most comprehensive and most chilling study of modern torture ever written. Darius Rejali, one of the world’s leading experts on torture, takes the reader on an eye-opening tour of the Western world from the late nineteenth century to the aftermath of Abu Ghraib. As Rejali traces the development and application of torture techniques, he shows that democratic countries not only engaged in torture, they also invented some of the most gruesome modern methods. Dictatorships may have tortured more people, but the United States, Britain, and France pioneered and exported techniques that have become lingua franca of modern torture: methods that leave marks.” The consequences of torture are always unpredictable and Rejali argues that torture fails when it is needed most—in last minute, “ticking bomb” scenarios.
Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000)
An enthralling book which documents the global rise of religious terrorism. It seeks to understand the dark side of religion and the dangers which lurk within religious extremism. Half of the world’s thirty most dangerous terrorist groups claim religion as their motivation. How can the word of God sanction acts of terror against human beings? How can violence become a sacred duty? These questions are at the heart of this book.
Robert Page, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (New York: Random House, 2005).
“While dozens of other experts have offered their opinions on the causes of terrorism, Page is the first to have concrete data backing his conclusions.” This book demystifies much of the conventional wisdom about suicide bombers and with authority proposes strategies to stop them. Scholarly yet provocative, it provides data and information which filter fact from fantasy.
