Torture and Surrender: Which Way Does the Causal Arrow Go?
So here's the story I always heard about the Japanese in WWII: they brutalized their prisoners of war because they believed that surrendering was dishonorable, ergo that those who surrendered in battle did not deserve humane treatment.
But here's a hypothesis: perhaps the causal arrow really went in the other direction. That is, perhaps the Japanese tendency to brutalize their prisoners came first, and their aversion to surrender was a consequence. They knew what they'd be in for.
People who know about Japanese history might be able to judge the plausibility of the competing hypotheses...though, of course, we'd have to keep an eye out for the academic tendency to try to explain away brutality in other cultures. The second hypothesis would begin life with a kind of dialectical disadvantage...but waddaya gonna do?
The causal arrows often fly in both directions in cases like this, and you might get a kind of bootstrapping effect. But any element of the second hypothesis would be interesting...and relevant to us given the fact that the U.S. lately belonged to the brotherhood of torturous nations...
So here's the story I always heard about the Japanese in WWII: they brutalized their prisoners of war because they believed that surrendering was dishonorable, ergo that those who surrendered in battle did not deserve humane treatment.
But here's a hypothesis: perhaps the causal arrow really went in the other direction. That is, perhaps the Japanese tendency to brutalize their prisoners came first, and their aversion to surrender was a consequence. They knew what they'd be in for.
People who know about Japanese history might be able to judge the plausibility of the competing hypotheses...though, of course, we'd have to keep an eye out for the academic tendency to try to explain away brutality in other cultures. The second hypothesis would begin life with a kind of dialectical disadvantage...but waddaya gonna do?
The causal arrows often fly in both directions in cases like this, and you might get a kind of bootstrapping effect. But any element of the second hypothesis would be interesting...and relevant to us given the fact that the U.S. lately belonged to the brotherhood of torturous nations...
posted by Winston Smith at
6:20 AM
2 Comments:
Incidentally, speaking of the Japanese in WW2, did you catch what I thought was a pretty fine argument against torture based on its functionality?
Apparently the deal was that, towards the end of the war, the Japanese had a US serviceman captured when we dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He was some relatively low rank, and knew nothing about our nuclear program, but the Japanese tortured him nonetheless, and under torture he broke, and started making a up all kinds of shit about how we had hundreds of atom bombs in reserve, and could wipe Japan off the face of the map completely if they didn't surrender.
Of course, we only had two, and we'd just dropped them.
This is what happens with torture. You can generally be assured that the subject will say whatever they need to say, or whatever they think they need to say, whether or not they have the info you're looking for.
Excellent point, Myca. I've seen this in operation in another way. A friend likes to say, "Even a stopped clock is right twice a day." I've disagreed with him on the basis that it's not right since you can't count on it unless you have independent confirmation of the time.
When Darth Cheney asks for the release of particular torture "successes", he could be making the same error. But he has lived by cherry-picking for a long time.
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