Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts

by Carol Tavris

The universal justification for torture is the ticking-time-bomb excuse. As the columnist Charles Krauthammer put it, “A terrorist has planted a nuclear bomb in New York City. It will go off in one hour. A million people will die. You capture the terrorist. He knows where it is. He’s not talking. Question: If you have the slightest belief that hanging this man by his thumbs will get you the information to save a million people, are you permitted to do it?” Yes, says Krauthammer, and not only are you permitted to, it’s your moral duty.19 You don’t have time to call the Geneva Conventions people and ask them if it’s okay; you will do whatever you can to get the terrorist to tell you the bomb’s location. When put that way, most Americans might set aside their moral qualms and decide that torturing one person is worth saving a million lives. The trouble with that line of reasoning is that its pragmatic justification doesn’t hold up: tortured suspects will say anything. As one editorial put it, “Torture is a terrible way to do the very thing that the administration uses to excuse it—getting accurate information. Centuries of experience show that people will tell their tormenters what they want to hear, whether it’s confessing to witchcraft in Salem, admitting to counterrevolutionary tendencies in Soviet Russia or concocting stories about Iraq and Al Qaeda.”20 Indeed, the Senate Intelligence report confirmed that no information gained from torturing detainees had proved useful i...