Tortured logic

What would we do if we suddenly caught Osama bin Laden and somehow found out that he just happened to know that some bad guys were about to explode a bunch of atomic bombs in American cities?

This patently false dilemma is brought to us by Michael Scheuer, the chief of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit from 1996 to 1999, in a column in today’s Washington Post:

“In surprisingly good English, the captive quietly answers: 'Yes, all thanks to God, I do know when the mujaheddin will, with God's permission, detonate a nuclear weapon in the United States, and I also know how many and in which cities.’ Startled, the CIA interrogators quickly demand more detail. Smiling his trademark shy smile, the captive says nothing. Reporting the interrogation's results to the White House, the CIA director can only shrug when the president asks: ‘What can we do to make Osama bin Laden talk?’"

As a college writing teacher for twenty-five years, I was frequently reminded that most people don’t know what a dilemma is. Students would often use the word to mean a simple problem: “The dilemma of illegal immigration,” for example. They didn’t understand that a dilemma is a choice between two options to solve a problem, each of them bad. The expression “horns of a dilemma” comes from the image of facing a charging bull; you can dodge left or you can dodge right, but unfortunately bulls have horns on both sides and you’re about to be impaled on one of them.

Still, choose fast.

A false dilemma is a scenario that overly simplifies or distorts one or both of the choices. What we want here is a bull with more or less only one horn. Scheuer’s dilemma is false in several ways, which is actually characteristic of most false dilemmas, but Scheuer raises what is generally considered to be a logical fallacy to a logical absurdity. It’s not a bull’s horns we’re facing here, it’s bullshit. Watch your step.

First, Scheuer ignores history. If torture will give us the answers we want, why is Bin Laden still free? We’ve been torturing Afghani, Pakistani and Iraqi prisoners since shortly after 9/11, and we still can’t find one guy hiding in a cave somewhere? If torture is one of the horns, it’s a really puny horn because of its proven ineffectiveness.

Another indication it’s a false horn is the perfectly contrived circumstance of the dilemma: It’s not just some terrorist, it’s Osama. It’s not just one attack, it’s multiple atomic bombs. We don’t have weeks or months to break up the plot, we’ve got hours. Who wouldn’t torture one guy to save millions of lives? I know I would. I’d poke out his eyes with a hot poker, I’d let savage dogs chew off his balls, I’d make him watch while I ripped off his wives’ burkas and laughed at their bad teeth.

The problem, of course, is any garden variety terrorist could hold out for a few hours and would happily give out false information, sending our highly trained and well-positioned atomic bomb squads out to get the bomb at Disneyland when it’s really ticking away at Knotts Berry Farm.

Ka-boom!

And this false dilemma has no downside on the torture horn. We never torture the wrong guy. We never torture several thousand wrong guys and piss off all their brothers and sisters still out there, hanging around Baghdad cafes putting the finishing touches on their atomic bomb plans. Or maybe just suicide belts. We never have to complain because their guys, (the fucking animals!), are torturing our guys.

But I’m missing the other horn, which for Scheuer is the overly delicate sensibilities of Poor Old Barack: “Or asked another way, is it moral for the president of the United States to abandon intelligence tools that have saved the lives and property of Americans and their allies in favor of his own ideological beliefs?”

So now renouncing torture is just one guy’s “ideological beliefs.” Again, I know what I’d do because Scheuer’s dilemma admits of only one possible response. If I’m facing a charging bull, I’m going to dodge right and bring out the thumbscrews. Who could possibly decide to take their chances with somebody else’s namby-pamby “ideological beliefs” and ignore the atomic bombs? Oh, yeah, and one of the atomic bombs is hidden under your mother’s bed.

(But wait a minute: The bull’s right or my right? Think fast! We only have seconds to decide! I just hate these needless complications when it really should be a simple choice.)

Some dilemmas actually are quite easy to resolve, which means they’re not really a dilemma to begin with. Shoot the pirates. Shoot my neighbor Walter. Shoot the bull, for that matter.

Me, I’d opt to torture Michael Scheuer until he admits that his torture-Osama dilemma is bullshit.

Then I’d head for the basement where I’ve stockpiled food, water, and guns and ammunition. It’s best to take cover until we impale all these wild bulls running around out there.