In 1970 the eminent sociologist Peter Berger penned the influential “On the Obsolescence of the Concept of Honor”, concluding that “the ethical test of any future institution and the codes of honor they entail will be whether they succeed in [] stabilizing the discoveries of human dignity [.]”
Not long after, in 1971, the Harvard behaviorist B.F. Skinner published “Beyond Freedom and Dignity”, in which Skinner argued that that “entrenched belief in free will and the moral autonomy of the individual (which Skinner referred to as "dignity") hinder[ed]” prospects of the effective use of scientifically-based behavior modification.
More recently, the appointments of former Bush administration officials John Bolton and Gina Haspel to Cabinet-level positions in the Trump Administration and the recent declassification of the 2007 Israeli operation that wiped out Syria’s nascent nuclear reactor brought questions of honor and dignity to the fore once again. The Cabinet appointments revived debates about the ethics and legalities of "enhanced interrogation" and the assumed unequivocal concomitant affronts to human dignity; one of the explanations for Israel’s operational opacity a decade ago was tied to the “honor culture” of the Middle East: as former IDF spokesman Peter Lerner wrote, “[b]y not disrespecting and publicly humiliating Assad, Israel played a game of chess that ensured victory, destroyed the reactor, and prevented a regional fall out.”
What might be deduced from these events is that the concepts of both honor and dignity have been distorted far beyond their actual meanings, and have been employed by both well-meaning and less-than-well-meaning actors in what might might be nothing less than a political form of gaslighting: that one is duty bound to afford honor and dignity to adversaries that have eschewed those concepts, while insisting that one is unequally bound to the concepts’ true definition.
In fact, the “honor” that Berger discusses--tied, in a Burkean sense, to the stability of institutions--resembles much less the era of Cervantes referred to in "Obsolescence" more than it does the “diss culture” imported from the Scotch-Irish Highlands to the American South as detailed most memorably by Fox Butterfield’s examination of the Boskets (and, in a lesser sense, the critical—if subtly so—attitude toward the culture depicted in The Offspring’s 1994 hit “Come Out And Play”.) Cultures so "honor"-bound should not be considered the least bit worthy of preservation.
Additionally, while Skinner would have like nothing more than to obsolesce both honor and dignity in favor of effective “cultural engineering”, his definitions of dignity was nevertheless both accurate and precise. Ironically, a possibly "Skinnerian" approach to interrogation might allow more for maintaining the integrity of "dignity", as opposed to more conservative if holistic notions of "moral repugnance" that might indicate for a more right of center based discomfort with the use of aggressive interrogative techniques. A response in defense of aggressive interrogation then becomes that much more bipartisan.
There are those who complain that Bolton’s and Haspel’s appointments highlight the failure to reckon with failings of the Bush administration and their ostensible cavalier attitude towards “enhanced interrogations”, which also are assumed to be “torture” that ipso facto “violate standards of humanity”. They are correct about the delayed reckoning, but for reasons in direct opposition to theirs: despite the efforts of John Yoo and others, the ethics and efficacy of clinically applied enhanced interrogation techniques were never appropriately delineated, partly because of reflexive "repugnance", partly because of the stupidity of Abu Ghraib and the ensuing fallout.
If one examines just a few isolated techniques—prolonged standing positions, sensory deprivations and/or overloads, cultural humiliations (e.g. interrogation by females), and even waterboarding—the notion that any of these are especially “cruel and unusual” and/or “direct affronts to human dignity” are well-nigh laughable. As long as any form of warfare is conducted with the use of firearms and high explosives; as long as there is a penal system in its current form; as long as capital punishment is legal—there are so many more obvious direct affronts to human dignity that ostensible insults portended by the aforementioned interrogative techniques pale in comparison.
Furthermore, the notion that these techniques shouldn’t even be attempted because they “won’t work” rest on two specific fallacies. The first is historical: the Enlightenment figures (Beccaria foremost among them) who proffered the notion that all a torture victim wants is for the pain to cease--and will therefore say anything to stop it--were referring mostly to cases of ecclesiastical torture, the object of which was to coerce certain metaphysical statements that could never be objectively confirmed. Conversely, contemporary “victims” involved in and informed about specific, verifiable activity universally determined to be especially heinous according to standards that are anything but theological might actually be motivated to speak truthfully under pain of extreme discomfort, to avoid further punishment for a proven false assertion given under duress.
The second fallacy might be more difficult to counter directly, because there are always ethical issues involved with the scientific study of humans; an ethical method of gauging the effectiveness of a clinically applied, more humane aggressive interrogation technique is, for lack of a better term, a minefield. Yet, Betty Ford once said that Roe got abortion out of the back alleys and into hospitals where it belonged; enhanced interrogation could benefit from a clinical setting, likely where military sciences are studied.
To determine eligibility for interrogation, a need for a very high bar would be called for, analogous to suggestions that capital punishment would require guilt beyond any doubt rather than reasonable doubt. It might be plausible that, even if certain techniques were eventually found to be technically legal, the standard of proof might yet be too high to apply them in practice; still, the mere threat of having these techniques on the books would serve as another possible counter to threats to the public order.
It should also be noted that the clinical and limited application of these techniques should serve as an effective rejoinder to those inclined to complain about these techniques serving as an effective recruiting tool for terrorists while possibly “making us like them”. The ostensible plausibility of that assertion far outpaces its actual validity, for several reasons.
First, no one is motivated to take up terrorism in that part of the world when the motivation is to redress the violation of Western standards of human rights, which are not regarded as the least bit relevant. The images of “torture” might possibly be any extra catalyst toward attitude hardening, but they are hardly ever a salient motivator when theofascist heretomisia is societally ingrained.
Second, while the preciously unfettered use of all sorts of techniques my have presented a PR problem which might be too thorny to solve—because it might preclude clinical study and application—it further points to the civilizational differences between the West and its enemies: the West will always take these concepts into account; their enemies will not; the difference will therefore always be present.
Finally, it bears mentioning that it isn’t the terrorists or their facilitators who actually believe that the analog is credible; a, if not the, major reasons they employ terrorism as a tactic is due to a wholesale rejection of any Western moral standard. However, Western multicultural intersectionalitarians who are either nonjudgmental of or outright sympathetic to the ostensible grievances and tactics of terrorists are at best inconsistent, and at worst hypocritical, when they attempt to draw the analog that would “make us like them”.
A clinical application of enhanced interrogation under heavily scrutinized conditions as a defensive tactic should further give the lie to the attempted "we'll be just like them!!!" analog, especially when at least some of the fault-finders would be hard pressed to disavow any empathy for honor culture. In fact, those who force the analog should be repeatedly and maybe publicly challenged to support aggressive military activity that would facilitate the kind of civilizational makeover that might be as warranted for contemporary honor cultures as they were for Germany and Japan in 1945.
By extension, it should be noted that in Israel’s—and Lerner’s—case, no criticism is warranted for taking Middle Eastern “honor culture” into account when planning for action against and subsequent responses from sworn mortal enemies of the Jewish State and people. As one small political entity—no matter how influential beyond its size and numbers—Israel is not to be held responsible for the “hearts and minds” of nefarious entrenched cultural tendencies that pervade its neighborhood; the fact that they have to deal with what’s there does not mean that they condone the culture in the least.
The irony is, what is considered to be one of the worst—if not THE worst—humiliations in the Middle East is suffering any type of perceived defeat and/or subjugation to Jews; overturning “honor culture” in the most poetic sense would call for said culture to be made over BY Jews. However, as logistics--at the very least--for the most part prevent that, the work will need to be done by the “bigger kids on the block”, while others pressure honor culture’s erstwhile enablers to choose sides, even at the point of painful coercion.
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