When this blog was more active back in 2006 and 2007, I devoted several posts to the shame that was to come: the wider admission that we as a people engaged in systematic torture of those in our care, the damage that would cause to our international reputation and our collective psyche, and the need for us to both stand up against torture done in our name and to come to some form of justice/reconciliation about what we have done. I’ve been particularly grateful, and continue to be, for the work Andrew Sullivan has done on this topic over at his Daily Dish blog.

News has come out in the past few weeks that keeps this issue before us. It was revealed that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was subjected to waterboarding one hundred and eighty three times, begging the question of both the efficacy of the technique and the intended goal–as if torturing someone that much would yield better information that other (non torturous)  methods. And US News reported on a Pew poll that reveals a substantial number of people who self-identify as Christians–mainly Evangelicals and Catholics–think torture is justified in many instances. Only a slight majority of mainline protestants think it ought “rarely” or “never” be implemented.

Kevin Drum last week offered what I think to be a terrific summary rejoinder to the debate lately about the utility of torture–the idea that maybe we ought support the possibility of torturing a suspect if there is a ticking-time-bomb scenerio, or to extract certain vital intelligence. Not good blogging practice, but I want to reprint his post in its entirety. He’s right:

Christopher Orr weighs in with a utilitarian argument about why torture is bad:

When a group of combatants are badly outnumbered, or surrounded, or otherwise very, very unlikely to win a conflict, they have a considerable incentive to surrender — but only if they believe they will subsequently be treated with mercy. That is why individuals, and nations, surrender. The humane treatment of surrendered captives, therefore, is a crucial — arguably the crucial — understanding between adversaries if their conflict is to end in any way other than with the wholesale slaughter of the losers.

If arguments like this persuade anyone, I’m all for them.  Any port in a storm.  But ultimately these exercises in logic chopping never work.  Is torture OK against an enemy that refuses to give up?  Is torture OK in a non-combat setting?  Is torture OK if you somehow convince yourself that it will save the lives of your enemy in the long run by ending the war sooner?  In the end, you can always chop the logic a little bit finer if you’re minded to.  It just doesn’t work.

I don’t have either the vocabulary or the literary sensibility to explain with any eloquence why I oppose torture, so I usually stay out of conversations like this.  Besides, they depress the hell out of me.  But for the record, it goes something like this.

I don’t care about the Geneva Conventions or U.S. law.  I don’t care about the difference between torture and “harsh treatment.”  I don’t care about the difference between uniformed combatants and terrorists.  I don’t care whether it “works.”  I oppose torture regardless of the current state of the law; I oppose even moderate abuse of helpless detainees; I oppose abuse of criminal suspects and religious heretics as much as I oppose it during wartime; and I oppose it even if it produces useful information.

The whole point of civilization is as much moral advancement as it is physical and technological advancement.  But that moral progress comes slowly and very, very tenuously.  In the United States alone, it took centuries to decide that slavery was evil, that children shouldn’t be allowed to work 12-hour days on power looms, and that police shouldn’t be allowed to beat confessions out of suspects.

On other things there’s no consensus yet.  Like it or not, we still make war, and so does the rest of the world.  But at least until recently, there was a consensus that torture is wrong.  Full stop.  It was the practice of tyrants and barbarians.  But like all moral progress, the consensus on torture is tenuous, and the only way to hold on to it — the only way to expand it — is by insisting absolutely and without exception that we not allow ourselves to backslide.  Human nature being what it is — savage, vengeful, and tribal — the temptations are just too great.  Small exceptions will inevitably grow into big ones, big ones into routine ones, and the progress of centuries is undone in an eyeblink.

Somebody else could explain this better than me.  But the consensus against torture is one of our civilization’s few unqualified moral advances, and it’s a consensus won only after centuries of horror and brutality.  We just can’t lose it.

The Christian moral vision suggests that we always treat others as we want to be treated–even if they are criminals in our jails or terrorists in our care. It suggests that we never lose sight that these are human beings, who bear too the imago dei. It suggests that the danger to our own souls for engaging in acts like torture is also great.

Our action to make our nation, and the world, safe from those who would want to harm us is important and vital. But we can’t abandon our principles in the process…

Update (5/7/09): Not two hours after I posted the above, I came across two additional, important comments to the above. One is Andrew Sullivan’s blog post “Inhuman” which outlines well how torture dehumanizes the torturer, and then this post from Diana Butler Bass over at her Beliefnet blog on why it might be that mainline protestants seem to be on the leading edge of this particular moral issue.

Certainly, one aspect of my longing for a new administration has been my sense that we need to account for our use of torture (or “enhanced interrogation techniques”) in the Global War On Terror (GWOT). I blogged about my concerns about torture extensively, including its incompatability with Christian Ethics, its lack of utility as a tool for either protecting the homeland or prosecuting the GWOT, and the effects it has had on our relationship with other countries. More vital than our military might is the force of our ideas, and the hypocracy and moral injustice that our use of torture requires evicerates any standing we once had to be a “beacon of light for the world.” If that is something we think our nation ought to aspire toward, then the use of torture is simply incompatable (whatever else you want to say about the fact that Christian thought cannot theologically allow it, or the utter foolishness on relying on torture-derived information in a practical sense).

And so I am well pleased to read Josh Orton this morning, summarizing a portion of Obama’s interview on 60 Mintues last night pertaining to torture. Orton draws from this Think Progress report, which cites this relevant portion of the interview:

CBS: There are a number of different things you can do early on pertaining to executive orders.

OBAMA: Right.

CBS: One of them is to shut down Guantanamo Bay. Another is to change interrogation methods that are used by U.S. troops. Are those things that you plan to take early action on?

OBAMA: Yes. I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantanamo, and I will follow through on that. I have said repeatedly that America doesn’t torture, and I’m going to make sure that we don’t torture. Those are part and parcel of an effort to regain America’s moral stature in the world.

(emphasis in original at Think Progress)

And the video is also available on you tube:

Whatever your thoughts are on the election of Barack Obama to be our next president, I hope you can see this as a major advance, should Obama follow through with this, in America’s standing around the world. And even if it didn’t lead to that, it would be the right thing to do. Reconciliation can come, but it must follow a formal end to a policy that led us down that dark tunnel in the first place.

Andrew Sullivan can get under your skin every now and then if you’re a progressive like me, but he’s important and right on quite a bit of the time. He’s particularly insightful in his analysis of how America’s (somewhat behind-the-scenes but more and more a part of the public debate) acceptance of Torture in its response to terrorist attacks is destroying much of what we stand for.

For instance, read his analysis on Guy Fawkes Day, with this money quote:

From revulsion against torture, liberal democracy was born. And by acquiescing in torture, liberal democracy will die.

Spot on…

It just that I don’t have any time to say it. Been swamped between work and rest (yes, took some RnR last week, and went to the Emergent Village 2007 gathering while taking in the New Mexico sights…) and now have been busy busy busy watching my kids while my wife is out of town. Much has been on my mind. Mainly: torture is back in the news again with memos released showing how our government authorized simulated drowning (see waterboarding) and head slapping and extended cold exposure, and we as a nation continue to be largely shameless about how we treat those under our care and custody, whether innocent or terrorist. If there is something that ought to unify the Christian community in our outrage and shame–progressive to conservative, mainline to evangelical to orthodox to Catholic to radical/reformed–this ought to be it.

But today I can’t ruminate much about that. I’m swamped. But I’m listening to music while I’m working, and will share a taste with you, dear reader. So, I’ll leave you with these Zehnder lyrics (with a new webpage! Yay!).

All the Faces

© 2002 T.Zehnder and T.G.Zehnder
All the faces of the ages fanning out and broad like leaves
All assembled do resemble a great tree of light and fire
It’s the ancient and the naked and the new with the old
Bridging distance in an instant
through the spark the flames require

Let them shine a little longer
Let me see the light in their eyes
Cause when they shine we will remember
There is light and heat for all

And the elder takes the younger
and the younger takes the younger still
All the faces of the ages
turn to bless and then be blessed

Let them shine a little longer
Let me see the light in their eyes
Cause when they shine we will remember
There is light and heat for all

-break-
Let them shine a little longer
Let me see the light in their eyes
Cause when they shine we will remember
There is light and heat
and life and love
and faith and hope for all

Is there any other way to read this?:

Today the Council of Europe makes it official: Poland and Romania hosted secret detention facilities on behalf of the CIA.

In a just-released inquiry approved by the Council, investigator Dick Marty of Switzerland confirms Dana Priest’s Pulitzer Prize-winning report for the Washington Post that unnamed Eastern European countries allowed the CIA to hold suspected al-Qaeda detainees on their territory, without access to legal protections or the International Committee of the Red Cross. For the first time, the Council on Europe’s report names some of the detainees in the secret facilities: they include 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and former al-Qaeda military committee chief Abu Zubaydah. Both, Marty writes, “were questioned using ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’” making his report the first documentation by any public official to state definitively that such techniques have in fact been employed. In 2005, ABC News reported that such techniques include waterboarding, in which a detainee is forced to believe he is drowning.

Previous inquests by the European Parliament, most recently in February, stopped short of reporting definitively that the prisons existed, thanks mainly to lack of cooperation by U.S. and European intelligence officials, allowing the U.S., Poland and other suspected countries to maintain deniability over the prisons. In April, CIA Director Michael Hayden chastised the Parliament for what he called its “unbounded criticism” of CIA detentions, renditions and interrogations, which he and the CIA have consistently defended as both legal and necessary to combat al-Qaeda.

People of faith have something to say against torture. Let’s say it. Here’s a start by the PCUSA (pdf of Resolution Against Torture: Human Rights in a Time of Terrorism, A Call for a Commission of Inquiry adopted by the 217th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A).)…

I’m glad to read about this today:

The National Association of Evangelicals has endorsed an anti-torture statement saying the United States has crossed “boundaries of what is legally and morally permissible” in its treatment of detainees and war prisoners in the fight against terror.

Human rights violations committed in the name of preventing terrorist attacks have made the country look hypocritical to the Muslim world, the document states. Christians have an obligation rooted in Scripture to help Americans “regain our moral clarity.”

“Our military and intelligence forces have worked diligently to prevent further attacks. But such efforts must not include measures that violate our own core values,” the document says. “The United States historically has been a leader in supporting international human rights efforts, but our moral vision has blurred since 9-11.”

The statement, “An Evangelical Declaration Against Torture: Protecting Human Rights in an Age of Terror,” was drafted by 17 evangelical scholars, writers and activists who call themselves Evangelicals for Human Rights. The board of the National Association of Evangelicals, an umbrella group, announced late Sunday that it had endorsed the document.

…

“There is a perception out there in the Middle East that we’re willing to accept any action in order to fight this war against terrorism,” Cizik said. “We are the conservatives — let there be no mistake on that –who wholeheartedly support the war against terror, but that does not mean by any means necessary.”

…

The document says government and outside researchers have documented “acts of torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment,” against U.S. detainees, “especially in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, in Afghanistan’s Bagram Air Base, in CIA black sites and at the hands of other nations.”

The authors praise the U.S. Army for last year releasing a revised field manual that bans beating, sexually humiliating and threatening prisoners, among other interrogation procedures.

But the evangelical writers criticize the Military Commissions Act, which Bush pushed through Congress last year to set up a Defense Department system for prosecuting terror suspects. The evangelicals condemned provisions of that act that allow indefinite detention for some suspects and does not always hold intelligence officials to the same standards as the military.

Quoting a wide range of sources including the Bible, Pope John Paul II, Elie Wiesel and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, the authors say the federal government has a moral obligation to follow international human rights treaties that the U.S. has endorsed.

“As American Christians, we are above all motivated by a desire that our nation’s actions would be consistent with foundational Christian moral norms,” the document says. “We believe that a scrupulous commitment to human rights, among which is the right not to be tortured, is one of
these Christian moral convictions.”

The NAE says it represents 45,000 evangelical churches. However, it does not include some of the best-known conservative Christian bodies, including the Southern Baptist Convention and Focus on the Family.

Go hug an NAE member today! While you’re at it, check out the National Religious Campaign Against Torture.

Spencer Ackerman reports over at TPMMuckraker that senators Dodd and Menendez are going to introduce a bill that would ban torture and restore Habeas Corpus to detainees at Gitmo. That’s a hopeful sign; the approval of the detainee trial bill last September will be a black eye on America’s moral standing for decades, if not longer, and the removal of its sanctioning of torture and the abandonment of basic constitutional protections for those under our care can’t happen soon enough. For backstory, here is some of my posting about it then (in roughly reverse order): here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

I thank Andrew Sullivan in particular for his reporting on the issue. I think we share some of the sensibilities about how torture is incompatible both with America’s best ideals and with Christian ethics, and I agree with his concern about what our use of torture has done for our international image.

His most recent post on the subject is fascinating: taking a look at the approbation of torture on popular television programs like 24 and how it impacts thinking on torture. I’d suggest reading it all.

…Kevin Drum of the Washington Monthly also has a post up that reflects on Jane Mayer’s New Yorker piece on this subject and a LA Times entertainment article on ’24′. Money quote:

Pre-9/11: torture is used by bad guys.  That’s one of the ways you know they’re bad guys.

And today? Actually, nothing’s changed. It’s still how you know who the bad guys are. We just seem to have temporarily forgotten that.

William Stacy Johnson, in his October 9th commentary “Our Tortured, War-Torn Conscience” in the Presbyterian Outlook, writes:

Let me put it plainly. There is something wrong with a church that can whip itself up into a frenzy arguing about gays but then shrug its shoulders over war and torture. In 1933 Karl Barth said that if one is not preaching against the concentration camps, one is not preaching the gospel. Likewise, a church that is ambivalent or undecided about torture and unjust war is something less than a church of Jesus Christ.

The commentary has good food for thought (whatever your view about gays, frankly). I’d commend it.