The US should allow the limited use of torture

Pro attacks the notion that allowing torture causes authoritarian regimes, explaining that the notion is not backed by evidence; thus I’ll provide some. In an essay on authoritarian regimes, B. Simmons finds that countries who continue to torture their citizens, “tend to have relatively authoritarian regimes.” [1] For example, after the military took over the government of Brazil in 1964, they maintained democratic normality until 1968 when the Institutional Act No. 5 was passed that made torture by the state allowed [2]. Note that the Act only allowed isolated circumstances of torture [3]. The law ended up being used routinely by the state to terrorize its citizens [1]. It is also important to note that the government passed it under utilitarian premises; justifying it with maintaining control, thus preventing riot and revolution: saving lives more lives in the end [4]. Another example would be the United States after the 9/11 tragedy. The threat of terrorists was used as justification of mass torture and terrorization of detainees throughout the world [16], most of which weren't relevant to the event [17]. We can also point to how Russia was transformed to a totalitarian society by torture. Alec Mellor explains that torture was introduced under public authority in order to establish a totalitarian state (the Soviet Union being the end-result) [18]. We also see that torture was allowed during the Spanish Inquisition based on utilitarian means: finding heretics and removing their sin would result in the eternal happiness of humans, an obvious utilitarian justification. In the end, there is more than enough historical evidence to believe that the introduction of torture leads to authoritarianism. Pro furthermore brings up that many liberal societies have used torture and haven’t cascaded into authoritarianism. If this notion is true, we should expect to see the countries that allow torture are still liberal ones. The Human Freedom Index comprehensively measures the personal, civil, and economic freedoms of the citizens of each country. The top 10 most liberal societies in 2012 was Hong Kong, Switzerland, Finland, Denmark, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, Ireland, United Kingdom, and Sweden [5]. In each of these countries, torture is illegal in *all* circumstances. Hong Kong [6], Switzerland [7], Finland [8], Denmark [9], New Zealand [10], Canada [11], Australia (in most circumstances) [12], Ireland [13], United Kingdom [14], and Sweden [15]. As we can see, Pro’s notion is false in its face as the most liberal societies actually do not allow torture.It is important to relate this back to the utilitarian framework. My argument is inherently utilitarian because my impact comes from the deaths that authoritarian regimes bring. For example, Josef Stalin alone took the lives of 49 million people [20]. This is obviously more than Pro’s proposed bomb scenario, thus this argument alone outweighs Pro’s entire case based on utilitarian standards. Pro then brings up three objections to my argument that allowing torture will result in strengthening terrorist regimes. Firstly, that the usage of torture would not be made public. This is false in and of itself because in order for the government to allow torture, it would have to pass legislation and/or policy changes which have to be made public. Pro even concedes that allowing torture would require a new law, in R2 he writes, “The *law* is just in case such a scenario occurs.” Since the notion that the government laws are made to the public is a given (we take it as true, we assume it as so), arguing that the government should make secret laws would have to be an independent argument, and by definition, a kritik. Yet, since the next round is the final round Pro can’t make such an argument thus the point is useless. Pro’s second point claims that there is no evidence terrorists use torture as a propaganda tool, especially since the US does not use torture. Yet both of these assertions are also blatantly false. Terrorists do use terrorism as a propaganda tool, and I argued such in R2 (although I forgot to paste my source, my bad, see [21]). There are multiple posters, videos, social media content, etc. that prove this as such. It's a truism. And the impact of abolishing torture will be large; it has been regarded as, “the greatest single action the United States can take to fight terrorism…” [23] Again, given how many lives terrorists take each year (21,000 for ISIS alone), weakening terrorist regimes will end up saving thousands of lives (which, again, would be more than the lives a hypothetical bomb would take.) And in response to Pro’s second point, the United States does openly use torture, writing a 500 page report on how the CIA uses it [22]. The third point Pro brings up is that a ticking time bomb scenario has only happened a few times in history, thus, the scarcity of torture wouldn’t leave terrorists much to work with. This is false because the amount of times that there is a number of innocent people that is greater than the people would have to be tortured is many times. Pro must advocate for this according to his R2 framework, thus the opportunities terrorists can seize on for propaganda is high. This is also false because the fact that torture would be allowed in the US is reason enough in itself for propaganda. Secondly, Pro’s advocacy allows for the use of torture. Thus, it opens the possibility for uses of torture, of which the terrorists can take advantage of. My advocacy eliminates any possibility for terrorists to use propaganda. Regardless, all these premises miss the fundamental point. The major justification for people becoming terrorists is of righting injustices [25][26]. Eliminating the things that terrorists perceive as injustices (e.g. torture), would result in a significantly reduced incentive to become a terrorist, thus saving thousands of lives in the process. I also want to note that Pro changes his framework of the bomb scenario from 24 hours to a few months. This is a moving the goalposts fallacy [24]. Disregard this new shift. Also note that if Pro argues for why the scenario should be extended to months would not only be a moving the goalposts fallacy, but also a new argument in the final round. Moving on to the effectiveness of torture: Pro brings up two isolated incidences in which torture worked. I concede these. But torture is ineffective the majority of the time. We can verify this by looking at the Senate Torture Report and the results of CIA torture. Of all the detainees the CIA had, “the overwhelming majority was innocent or had no meaningful intelligence.” Even in the cases where the CIA reported that the torture was successful the Senate committee found the examples wrong [28]. If the CIA 2002-2008 torture index is representative, then we can definitely conclude that torture is ineffective in the *majority* of cases. This is furthered by the evidence I brought up. Pro attacks my Kassin and Kiechel study that showed that 69% of people will give false confessions by explaining that the people in the study weren’t torture victims. I know they weren’t, I read the study but I should have explained it more clearly, my bad. The study is relevant because the bluff tactic is used in the majority of tortures [28]. Since Pro never proposed a CP eliminating this in torture (and since the next round is the last round he won’t be able to), we are forced to accept that the bluff tactic will be used in the majority of tortures. The study shows that this tactic produces false confessions 69% of the time, so we are forced to accept that most tortures will produce false information 69% of the time. For example, when the CIA tortured Abu Zubayda he made up false stories of planned attacks on shopping malls, nuclear plants, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty, sending hundreds of CIA and FBI investigators scurrying in pursuit of the phantoms [29]. FBI agent notes that 30-50% of counter terrorism is done on false leads [30]. Using torture in this scenario would more than likely result in misallocation of resources, wild goose-chases, etc. that would be detrimental to the investigation.We are faced with a bomb situation. How do we deal with it? Pro proposes torture, which will make the situation worse the majority of the time (69%). Pro still advocates for using it because we have to take chances. But we don’t, we have many other much better tools such as rapport-building which is 4 times more effective than torture [31]. And we can’t combine methods such as rapport-building and torture because we can’t politely negotiate and torture them at the same time. Thus, since torture is a net detriment to the scenario we ought to not allow torture. 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