Go ahead, punk. Make my day.

There’s a scene in the film Dirty Harry in which Clint Eastwood, having finally run the Scorpio killer to ground, proceeds to torture the location of a kidnap victim out of him. Not knowing whether Scorpio’s latest victim is alive, and if she is how long she might have to live, Clint declines to use due process and instead unilaterally take immediate and ruthless action to get information which might save the girl’s life.
It’s a scene which most viewers will nod at, admiring Clint’s steely determination to do the right thing at the expense of a villain who has been set up to be particularly evil and so to have it coming, but it isn’t a scene which one expects to come across in real life and so naturally I was interested when I came across just such a situation in the paper yesterday.
In October 2002, Wolfgang Daschler, police chief in Frankfurt-am-Man, had arrested Magnus Gaefgen as the principal suspect in the kidnapping of an 11-year old boy. Certainly Gaefgen was the most likely suspect - the handwriting on the ransom note had been positively identified as his, and the ransom money had been found in his house. The only thing missing was the kidnap victim, who hadn't been seen or heard from in 36 hours. Gaefgen steadfastly refused to talk. Knowing that the police could only hold him so long without charge, and not knowing where the victim might be or whether he might be alive or dead, Daschler took a unilateral decision. He drew up a memo recommending that Gaefgen should be tortured for information. “After being warned”, wrote Daschler, “he should be questioned again, under medical supervision, with the infliction of pain (no injuries).”

Machiavelli observed hundreds of years ago that if you make threats, then you should be prepared to carry them out, and this principle was formalised into modern-era politics by former US secretary of State and all-round loathsome sack of crap John Foster Dulles as ‘Brinkmanship’ – that is, being prepared to threaten and even declare war in negotiations if your opponent won’t back down. Brinkmanship led directly to the Vietnam war, but the US administration doesn’t seem to have learned any lessons from history. However, Gaefgen was left in no doubt that Daschler would carry out his threat. He would be tortured if he didn’t start talking, and fast.
Now, most modern states object to torture under pretty much any circumstances, and that’s an attitude I agree with for much the same reason I object to euthanasia and the death penalty – when you give the state the right to main and kill its citizenry, for whatever reason, it’s a state of affairs which can go badly wrong very quickly. Just looking at those states which retain the option of bumping off and torturing people is immediately obviously an object lesson in how not to do it, and I think we can all learn from that.
That said, I’m more ambivalent about personal responsibility. History demonstrates that I have a tendency to leap into the fray when I see people getting hurt (with a concomitant assumption that I’d be prepared to inflict injury to those doing the hurting), and I haven’t spent a third of my life pretending to be a ninja solely to look good when I get my shirt off, so a part of my mind sympathises with Daschler. In torturing Gaefgen he’d’ve been acting outside the law and would have been punished for it, but he also felt that in an extreme circumstance he was justified in taking an extreme measure whatever the personal consequence.

Before I get into how the case worked out, a poll - answer it before you read on. Put yourself in Daschler’s shoes in the situation and imagine that you are faced with a situation where by not acting, you could well be condemning his victim to death. What’s your position?

[Poll #862072]

So what happened?
Gaefgen, when faced with the actual reality of being tortured, folded like a pack of cheap cards. He confessed to the murder of the boy and took the police to the dismembered body, hidden in bags under a jetty. At trial Gaefner recieved a reduced sentence because, yes, he'd murdered and dismembered an 11 year old, but the police had threatened him with torture and his defense argued that as mitigating circumstances. Daschler was not punished.
What’s interesting is that this case gives the lie to the idea that torture, or its threat, never gives accurate information.
The thing about questions like Gaefner's is that no matter how you answered the poll, you can sit back, satisfied that your answer is the only right one and everyone who disagrees is manifestly wrong. If you voted for torture, you can slap yourself on the back and nod proudly at your strength, will and determination to make tough decisions^™. If you voted against torture, then you can clap your hands together in an attitude of sanctimonious self-satisfaction, secure in your moral superiority over those lesser peoples who don’t agree with you.
And if you read past the poll to find out how the case turned out before going back and voting for the ‘right’ answer after the fact, then you have a bright future in the Liberal Democrats in front of you.
There is no right or wrong answer in many situations and this situation is a particularly good example: both pro- and anti- arguments involve making a judgement which places ideology over actual people. One way, your ideology runs the risk of penalising a man unjustly accused. The other way, your ideology runs the risk of penalising the victim of an awful crime. With no answers ahead of the fact, there’s no way to know.
A wise philosopher* once observed that there are two sorts of leader: the first sort decides what people ought to be like and sets out to make people more like that. The second sort says that this is the sort of person we’ve actually got, so how can we make the best of it? He goes on to say, predictably enough, that the first sort is the one to watch out for. The sort of person who says “This is the way the world should be, so let’s make it like that”, rather than the one who says “This is the world we’ve actually got, how can we make the best of it?”, because if you don’t fit the vision of the first then you’re liable to have a pretty rough time of it.
The point I’m making here is one of philosophy. All decisions, one way or another, are decided by ideology – but it’s dangerous to place ideology ahead of actual people. Sometimes we are all faced with a situation that requires us to do just that – like Daschler, above. The question is: when you make decisions, and formulate ideas and philosophies and politics, how much of your thinking is led by the way you feel the world should be, rather than the way it actually is? And what happens to the people who disagree with your vision?


^{*Tom Baker as Dr. Who in The Horns of Nimon, if I recall correctly**
**And if I don’t recall correctly, I’m sure that someone with less of a social life than me will let me know about it in fairly short order.}