In the article “The Case for Torture”, Michael Levin discusses how torture should be “morally mandatory” (1) when innocent human life is in danger and there is clear guilt. This text failed at being persuasive in every point of view. A large part of his argument is referencing admittedly unrealistic ‘what if’ scenarios rather than real world examples, there is little evidence presented outside of his own flawed logic and reasoning, and his complete dismissal of any potential counter-arguments towards his topic.
Over a third of the text in question is hypothetical scenarios in which terrorists take innocent life into their own hands, all of which have incredibly questionable validity. These feel like they were offered for no reason other than to induce emotion and possibly even alarm in the reader. One references a single terrorist hiding an atomic bomb in Manhattan only to be caught two hours before it is supposed to detonate, offering an ethical dilemma: should the criminal receive their right to counsel when there is a risk of detonation, or should that be stripped from them in favour of “subjecting them to the most excruciating pain” (2) until they give their torturers the information that they’re asking for? This, of course, assumes that the initially given option of simply giving the terrorist what they demanded in the first place isn’t at all reasonable once the terrorist is in custody. Levin admits within two paragraphs that this isn’t realistic at all, negating the validity of his example. He follows this admission with another wildly inconclusive example of a terrorist planting a bomb on a plane, assuming that a specialist in torture will just happen to be available and on said plane to neutralize the threat and wring the location of yet another imaginary bomb from him. The third example is nothing more than a complete farce of a scenario: a terrorist organization kidnapping a newborn baby, never mind the reasoning of why. Whose baby is it? Why are they taking it? The writer offered this example simply so that he could present the findings of his informally asking four mothers whether or not they would endorse the torture of kidnappers to get their newborns back. None of these examples hold any real merit in his topic and only distracted the reader.
Conveniently, this mentioned informal poll of his, no matter how flawed in its execution, is the only outside evidence given to support the entire essay. Everything else provided is the author’s own reasoning and logic from one point of view, with no credentials given to explain why his opinion should have any merit in the first place. Everything he mentions feels twisted and forced to support his opinion, or simply already is just that: an opinion. There are no direct references to exactly why torture is considered unconstitutional, only an indirect mention given only so that he can state that lives outweigh the constitution. No support is given as to why, possibly assuming that people will simply agree with this and move on. The same mention and dismiss tactic is used to hand wave away the claim of torture being barbaric. This paragraph ends with accusation of moral cowardice, an extreme version of the simple question “Why wouldn’t you do it?” He does later manages to offer a somewhat sound suggestion, arguing that terrorists have consciously revoked their rights while their victims have not. Had he focused more on this idea and backed it up with actual evidence, there may have been some validity in his argument. Levin speaks with authority, however none of the claims have any support that holds any merit.
When he addresses the other side, Levin doesn’t take any time to properly rebut them, simply dismissing them and moving on. He only minimally references counter arguments to his thesis in the first place, and every time it is to take advantage of it and offer more twisted logic and reason. In the statement “Torturing the terrorist is unconstitutional? Probably.” (3), he addresses the other side and even dismisses that he agrees with it in the first place, following it up with the suggestion that constitutionality shouldn’t matter in these cases. “But millions of lives surely outweigh constitutionality.” (3) He focuses on his argument and his argument only, weakening it significantly.
This could have been a great essay given actual research and acknowledgement of things other than his own train of thought. While the article argues for a very real moral issue, it is presented with unrealistic and fear mongering examples of terrorism, without any support from credible sources, and with complete dismissal to any view that isn’t that of the paper.
