Blumner review: torture and stuff

I promised brief commentary on Robyn Blumner's columns. Time doesn't permit detailed commentary every week, but I want to have get at least something said around the time her column is published lest I fall too far behind.

I can always update later.

This week, the SPT Pinata was writing about torture. This time the column deals with psychiatric professionals participating in torture.

The following line was the first one to grab me:

Doctors take a Hippocratic oath to do no deliberate harm, so it is particularly chilling when a doctor is an agent of suffering, even if he's doing so in the service of perceived national interests.
(St. Petersburg Times)

Particularly chilling, eh? Something tells me she's not particularly chilled when a doctor euthanizes a fetus via a late-term "partial birth" abortion--but of course it's different when it's just a fetus, I suppose. Anyway, the right to choose is probably in the national interest.

The gist of the column is Blumner's praise of the APA for courageously condemning torture.

Here's a piece of the APA resolution.

WHEREAS in 2006, the American Psychological Association defined torture in accordance with Article l of the United Nations Declaration and Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment,

[T]he term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted upon a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official [e.g., governmental, religious, political, organizational] capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in, or incidental to lawful sanctions [in accordance with both domestic and international law];

WHEREAS in 2006, the American Psychological Association defined the term "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment" to mean treatment or punishment by a psychologist that, in accordance with the McCain Amendment, is of a kind that would be "prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, as defined in the United States Reservations, Declarations and Understandings to the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment done at New York, December 10, 1984." Specifically, United States Reservation I.1 of the Reservations, Declarations and Understandings to the United Nations Convention Against Torture stating, "the term 'cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment' means the cruel, unusual and inhumane treatment or punishment prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and/or Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States."ⁱⁱ

^{(bold emphasis added)}

While the APA supposedly accepts the UN definition that John Yoo exploited in a legal memo solicited by the Bush administration, the organization ends up barring almost everything (read on beyond what I quoted for full confirmation). The APA further offers an absolute condemnation of torture. If only that were confirmation that they condemn situation ethics and moral relativism I'd at least partially applaud the move. Unfortunately, it probably means nothing of the kind. The resolution, on its face, appears incoherent. Small surprise that Blumner applauds it.


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