Torture and the Soldier

Former U.S. Army Captain Kevin Bell has written a fascinating article in ARMY Magazine regarding his deployment to Afghanistan, and the temptation he encountered to torture a local man when he learned that man was likely responsible for the death of one of his soldiers.

You can find the article here: How Our Training Fails Us When It Counts

I recommend reading the entire article if you have time, but the 15-second version is that the gunner on CPT Bell's vehicle was killed when he took multiple rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) to the chest in an ambush early in their deployment. A couple months later, CPT Bell was given the name of a local man that was likely responsible for the death of his soldier, and set up a mission to determine if his informant was correct under the pretense of providing humanitarian aid. During the mission, as his soldiers provided aid and as he conversed with the man, CPT Bell felt significant temptation to take the man inside his home and torture the information out of him.

CPT Bell did not succumb to temptation but left the meeting without the information he was seeking--confirmation that the man had been involved in the ambush that killed his soldier. He offers some valuable insight into the ethics and Law of War training he received prior to his deployment, and how he was not prepared for the emotions he felt to make it so difficult to make the right choice and fulfill his duty under the law.

CPT Bell made the right choice, but he acknowledges that it was a difficult choice. He also notes that he had previously known another Soldier who had been in that same situation and made the wrong choice, then soon found his career "went up in smoke."

In his article Liberalism, Torture, and the Ticking Bomb, David Luban acknowledges that torture can sometimes be an effective tool to force reluctant suspects into yielding information, naming a 1995 situation in which Philippine police were able to foil an al-Qaeda plot by torturing a Pakistani suspect. Is this right? Some, shockingly, argue that it is. In my next post I'll discuss the "ticking bomb" scenario and the use of torture as an interrogation tool.


References:

Luban, David. "Liberalism, Torture, and the Ticking Bomb." Intervention, Terrorism, and Torture: Contemporary Challenges to Just War Theory. Ed. S. P. Lee. Dordrecht: Springer, 2007. 249-262.