Welcome to RCF - WHF

rb2d2 · Sep 25, 2004

I got an email ranting about keeping God in the Pledge of Allegiance, which is all well and good, but I suddenly recalled the report about Christians and the willingness to tolerate torture and I saw red!

The other day I had read the following article by David P. Gushee and decided to send it to her with the comment that I might be more likely to consider the plea of Christians on the God issue if I had reason to believe they really were Christians and what did she think of the following? I hit the Reply All button, there were a lot of addresses there, and since I'm almost positive they are all Republicans I may never hear from any of them again. LOL

At any rate I thought the article was excellent and should be posted here for "safe keeping". ... like fishead does on his forum. LOL

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5 Reasons Torture Is Always Wrong

Simply put, should our government have the option—even if used only rarely and in extreme circumstances—of torturing prisoners?

I believe Christians should say no, on the following five grounds.

1. Torture violates the dignity of the human being. Every inch of the human body and every aspect of the human spirit comes from God and bears witness to his handiwork. We are made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-28). Human dignity, value, and worth come as a permanent and ineradicable endowment of the Creator to every person.

Christians, at least, should be trained to see in every person the imprint of God's grandeur. This should create in us a sense of reverence. Here, we say—and we say it even of detainees in the war on terror—is a human being sacred in God's sight, made in God's image, someone for whom Christ died. No one is ever "subhuman" or "human debris," as Rush Limbaugh has described some of our adversaries in Iraq.

Because they are human, people have rights to many things, including the right not to be tortured. Christians sometimes question the legitimacy of "rights talk," correctly so. Just because someone claims a right does not mean that it really is a right. But among the most widely recognized rights in both legal and moral theory is the right to bodily integrity; that is, the right not to have intentional physical and psychological harm inflicted upon oneself by others. The ban on torture is one expression of this right.

Is this right absolute? Using Catholic moral reasoning, Robert G. Kennedy, professor of Catholic studies at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, has argued that even the most widely recognized human rights, such as the right to life or the right not to be tortured, can theoretically be qualified by other rights and by the requirements of justice. Kennedy argues that "defensive interrogatory torture" (and only this kind of torture) may be morally legitimate under carefully qualified conditions. Yet he goes on to argue that "it is quite likely that most instances in which interrogatory torture is employed would not conform to these principles and so would be immoral."

Whether we open the door to torture just a crack, as Kennedy suggests, or keep it firmly shut as an absolute ban, as I advocate, the principle of human dignity and correlated rights remains a transcendently important reason to resist the turn toward torture.

2. Torture mistreats the vulnerable and violates the demands of justice. In the Scriptures, God's understanding of justice tilts toward the vulnerable. "Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt. Do not take advantage of a widow or an orphan. If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry" (Ex. 22:21-23). Primary forms of injustice include violent abuse and domination of the powerless.

One reason our legal system has so many layers of protection for the accused and imprisoned is their powerlessness. This is important in any legal system that has the power to deprive people of their liberty and even their lives. The 83,000 people who have been detained by our government and military in the last four years are, as prisoners, vulnerable to injustice. Those who have been tortured are victims of injustice.

3. Authorizing torture trusts government too much. Human beings are sinful through and through (Rom. 3:10-18). We are not to be trusted, and we are especially dangerous when in possession of unchecked power. This applies to all of us.

So it is likely that authorizing even the "lightest" forms of torture risks abuse. As Richard John Neuhaus has put it, "We dare not trust ourselves to torture." Or as Gary Haugen recently wrote, "Because the power of the state over detainees is exercised by fallen human beings, that power must be limited by clear boundaries, and individuals exercising such power must be transparently accountable."

Given human sinfulness, not only must people be told not to torture, we must also strengthen the structures of due process, accountability, and transparency that buttress those standards and make them less likely to be violated. This is what is so dangerous about the discovery of secret CIA prisons in Europe and "ghost detainees" who are located no one knows where. As Manfred Nowak, U.N. special rapporteur on torture, said at the time the cia's secret prisons were revealed, "Every secret place of detention is a higher risk for ill treatment; that's the danger of secrecy." It is not enough for U.S. government officials to say they can be trusted to act "in keeping with our values"—not without due process, accountability, and transparency. No government is so virtuous as to overcome the laws of human nature, or to be beyond the need for democratic checks and balances.

Much ink has been spilled over how to handle the rare ticking-bomb cases, in which a prisoner has information that could save thousands of lives if only he can be made to talk by a certain deadline. Perhaps the most widely discussed proposal has been Alan Dershowitz's suggestion that we permit torture only through a "torture warrant" signed by a judge or a very high government official, such as the President himself, who would therefore bear full legal, political, and moral responsibility.

This would be better than what we are doing now. But I think any potential resort to torture in rare, ticking-bomb cases would be better handled within the context of an outright ban. The grand moral tradition of civil disobedience, for example, specifies that there are instances in which obedience to laws must be overridden by loyalty to a higher moral obligation. These are usually unjust laws, but not always. Dietrich Bonhoeffer participated in an assassination plot against Hitler, for instance, but he did not argue for rewriting moral prohibitions against political assassinations. He was prepared to let God and history be his judge. If a one-in-a-million instance were to emerge, in which a responsible official believed that a ban on torture must be overridden as a matter of emergency response, let him do so knowing that he would have to answer for his action before God, law, and neighbor. This is a long way from an official authorization for torture.

4. Torture dehumanizes the torturer. Mark Bowden, a military scholar and author of Black Hawk Down, believes that sometimes torture is the right choice. Even so, he worries, "How does one allow it, yet still control it? Sadism is deeply rooted in the human psyche. Every army has its share of soldiers who delight in kicking and beating bound captives. Men in authority tend to abuse it—not all men, but many. As a mass, they should be assumed to lean toward abuse."

Loosening longstanding restrictions on physical and mental cruelty risks the dehumanization not just of the tortured, but also of the torturers. What may be intended as carefully calibrated interrogation techniques could easily tempt implementers toward sadism—the infliction of pain for the sheer fun of it, especially in the heat of military conflict, in a climate of fear and loathing of the enemy, and in the context of an endless war on terror. How many of us could be trusted to draw the line consistently between the permitted "grabbing, poking, and pushing" and the banned "punching, slapping, and kicking"? How much self-control can we reasonably expect people to exercise? Once the line has been crossed to torture, as Michael Ignatieff claims, it "inflicts irremediable harm on both the torturer and the prisoner."

Frederick Douglass commented famously on how holding a slave slowly ruined the character of the woman who owned him. Martin Luther King Jr. frequently said that the greatest victims of segregation were the white people whose souls were deformed by their own hatred. And Alexander Solzhenitsyn, reflecting on the Soviet gulag, said, "Our torturers have been punished most horribly of all: They are turning into swine; they are departing downward from humanity."

5. Torture erodes the character of the nation that tortures. A nation is a collective moral entity with a character, an identity that carries across time. Causes come and go, threats come and go, but the enduring question for any social entity is who we are as a people. This is true of a family, a church, a school, a civic club, or a town. It is certainly true of a nation.

Sen. John McCain, who has led the Republican charge against torture, recently said, "This isn't about who they are. This is about who we are. These are the values that distinguish us from our enemies."

In a November Newsweek article, he put it this way: "What I … mourn is what we lose when … we allow, confuse, or encourage our soldiers to forget that best sense of ourselves, that which is our greatest strength—that we are different and better than our enemies, that we fight for an idea, not a tribe, not a land, not a king … but for an idea that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights."

No Exceptions

Long ago, German philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote about the perennial human tendency to find exceptions to moral rules when the rules bind a bit too tightly on us: "Hence there arises a natural … disposition to argue against these strict laws of duty and to question their validity, or at least their purity and strictness, and, if possible, to make them more accordant with our wishes and inclinations, that is to say, to corrupt them at their very source, and to entirely destroy their worth."

I believe this is the best explanation for what is happening with the issue of torture in our nation. We are tempted to follow the logic of a July 11, 2005, Time magazine cover story that said, "In the war on terrorism, the personal dignity of a fanatic trained for mass murder may be an inevitable casualty."

Yet we are queasy enough about this "inevitable casualty" that we do not want to call torture what it is. We do not want to expose our policies, our prisons, or our prisoners to public view. We deny that we are torturing, or we deny that our prisoners are really prisoners. When pushed against the wall, we remind one another how evil the enemy is. We give every evidence of the kind of self-deception that is characteristic of a descent into sin.

It is past time for evangelical Christians to remind our government and our society of perennial moral values, which also happen to be international and domestic laws. As Christians, we care about moral values, and we vote on the basis of such values. We care deeply about human-rights violations around the world. Now it is time to raise our voice and say an unequivocal no to torture, a practice that has no place in our society and violates our most cherished moral convictions.

David P. Gushee is professor of moral philosophy at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, and author of Only Human: Christian Reflections on the Journey Toward Wholeness (Jossey-Bass, 2005). A longer version of this essay can be accessed at www.davidgushee.com.

neljaz · May 19, 2009

When my daughter was in college she was always telling me about some study or another. Actually she still does. Smile

My daughter, the intellectual.

The one that this article brings to mind is the one where they took volunteer college students and divided them into jailers and prisoners. These kids knew each other; friends were separated into the two groups. The jailers or guards were required to do certain things... line prisoners up and make sure they didn't talk, lock them in cells... control them as though it was a real prison. They were told that the prisoners were no good, that they deserved to be prisoners. They were not required to torture or beat or hurt. The object was to study the what happens when one group has absolute authority over another group.

Over the days that this experiment went on, the guards became progressively less feeling. They began to abuse the prisoners, calling them names, pushing them, intimidating them. They talked among themselves, encouraging each other's abusive behavior. They began to believe the prisoners deserved their bad treatment. The prisoners became fearful, defensive. They changed as well. It got so bad they had to stop the experiment early and provide counseling for some kids who had seen a side of themselves they never knew was there.

Above, the article said, "Torture dehumanizes the torturer." It does.

In another study the test subjects were told they were to to assist the one in charge of the experiment. Their job was to adjust a dial that controlled the amount of electrical shock administered to the person they thought was the subject of the experiment. When instructed, they were to press the lever that sent the electrical shock. They were told the purpose of the experiment was to determine the level of electrical shock a person could tolerate. The one being shocked was, of course, acting.

The authority figure would make notes and tell the student to adjust the dial up and send a higher and higher current. The shocks started out mild; the subject would report how he felt. The upper part of the dial was red and marked "danger." The shocks slowly became greater till they were far into the danger zone. The "subject" would scream in pain, struggle to get out of his restraints, beg, cry, jerk convulsively. One (or maybe all) would beg the experimenters to stop, claiming a heart condition. The authority figure completely ignored all this. He would make notes and say, "adjust the dial up 2 degrees" and "apply the shock."

Most of the real subjects of the experiment became uneasy. Some pointed out that the dial was in the danger zone; some pointed out that the subject was in pain. But almost all did as they were told. Most adjusted to what they were doing, taking on the indifferent attitude of the authority. And the person they were torturing was not even a terrorist, he was just another student volunteer.

We, people, human beings, have the capacity to do things we would never have thought we were capable of, especially when told to by an authority figure. When my daughter told me about this I thought "I would not do that!" And I believe that, knowing what i know now, I would not. But in all honesty, when i was young, I probably would have. We take on the attitude of those around us. I would not have liked it, but just the pressure of authority might have been enough to make me do it.

I cannot imagine what effect it has on the soul/spirit/psyche of the torturer to coldly, or worse, tauntingly cause such pain. Even if you believe in what you are doing, it must leave horrible scars. You would have to force yourself into complete indifference to the suffering of another human being. How could you do that over and over and over again and not damage your own humanity?

And yet..... we have the capacity to do it...

"Torture erodes the character of the nation that tortures" Of course it does. Just as it damages the torturer, it damages those who stand by and let it happen... the nation. It makes us cold, robs us of goodness, destroys empathy.

I really thought we were better than that. It hurts to know we are not.

rb2d2 · Sep 25, 2004

Thank you for sharing that neljaz. Your story certainly gives one first hand insight of human behavior.

Crying or Very sad