The American inquisition?
Print Friendly Version| From Where I Stand by Joan Chittister, OSB | October 19, 2007 |
| Vol. 5, No. 15 |
There are some things that being born in the United States simply does not prepare a person to imagine. One of them is a headline on the front page of a local newspaper reporting a "debate" going on in Congress on the use of torture as a part of U.S. military policy. A debate? What's to debate about it? Unless, of course you, were working for the court of Philip IV in 14th century France.
But, no, it's here now. In the United States. In our generation. In fact, they're now making movies about it.
This column, be assured, is not a film review. Others closer to the industry will do that very well once the film is released Oct. 19. But film quality is not the issue at hand. Content is the problem.
"Rendition" is a film dealing with the newly refined U.S. practice of outsourcing U.S. military prisoners to other countries for incarceration and "questioning." (I use the word loosely.) "Enhanced questioning," the President calls it. "Torture," the rest of the world is calling it.
That such a thing can happen here, by us, with little public response to it, is almost impossible to believe if you grew up bathed in the honor, integrity and high moral ground of this country. In fact, to say otherwise -- to say almost anything about maintaining traditional national standards -- is to be accused of "blaming America first." So much for "removing the speck in your neighbor's eye and ignoring the log in your own." Let alone "freedom and justice for all." But what a log it is. And what an injustice it can create. Which makes you wonder who are the real conservatives here.
The most startling public awareness of U.S. torture came in 2006. But not in this country. Oh, no. Instead, the British Broadcasting Corporation released a documentary in London detailing the work of plane spotters from one end of Europe to the other who had traced the routes of secret U.S. aircraft involved in the transport of "disappeared' detainees to clandestine prisons. The sites ranged from Eastern European countries to Egypt, Syria and Yemen. And all of it with the support and collaboration of European countries that simply looked the other way as the U.S. crossed their airspace hauling men taken in a "sweep," meaning without clear cause to do it, to secret, unknown prisons for what Washington later called "aggressive interrogation." "This can't be true," I thought, as I watched the methodical detailing of British investigative journalism. "We wouldn't do such a thing."
But Amnesty International had also been gathering information on the process. April 6, 2006, AI published its damning and definitive report titled Below the radar: Secret flights to torture and 'disappearance.'
The article detailed with chilling specificity the systematic breaking down of human beings to gain information that they did --- or didn't have.
So, I give up, tell me again: What's the debate about?
The government says it's about "keeping the American people safe." But from what? From decency, from humanity, from morality, from law? Because by now, the stories of official U.S. atrocities are pouring out from all over the world. Just surf over to this page, www.thegully.com/essays/torture/torture2.html, skim the headlines. Surely that ought to be enough to tell us that we are up to our necks in tactics too close to sadism to overlook. Tactics that break the minds of innocents and decay the soul of those who call themselves victors.
But forget the morality question in an era when annihilation is a tactic on tap. What can we possibly hope for in human standards in an age when destruction of the globe is one possible option. And anyway, it's for a good cause, isn't it? After all, the very phrase, "the war on terror," is a magic phrase. It justifies anything we do, doesn't it? Peccadillos all, I'm sure, as long as we're the ones who are doing them.
For those with enough conscience left to question the project, however, maybe it wouldn't hurt to look instead at another news story from Oct. 13, 2007.
This story (Vatican to tell true knights' tale) records that the Vatican has just recently published secret documents about the inquisition and heresy trial of the Knights Templar in 1307. Pope Clement V, it seems, initially absolved the medieval religious order of heresy. But under pressure from King Philip IV of France, who saw the wealth of the Knights as a threat to his kingdom, Clement suppressed the order. Then Philip used the accusations to arrest the leaders of the order and extract, under torture, confessions of heresy that justified Philip's seizing of their property.
Now what's to regret? It was a good cause, after all. No doubt King Philip was "saving the church" as well as "saving his country." Just as we are. The confessions he got under torture, unfortunately, belied the findings of the trial. But they did, conveniently, even if wrong, give the king a way to seize the riches of the order.
I'm sure the Vatican was sorry about it all.
But therein lies the lesson: Material gained under torture is simply not credible, a conclusion reached by Eyemeric, the Grand Inquisitor of Aragon himself in 1357, who said, information gained under torture "is deceptive and ineffectual." Which means that the torturer isn't credible either. Or, to put it another way, how can we ever hope to stop the school shootings and gang warfare we abhor while we're doing it ourselves? How do we tell our children that their violence is bad but our violence is good?
From where I stand, torture is too unreliable an item to build the morality, the credibility, the integrity of a church -- or a nation -- on it. After all, we can't have it both ways. Either the Inquisition was good -- or it wasn't.
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It seems that we continue
It seems that we continue with debates in this Republic which make no sense. When our Founders debated they were looking to cure the ills of their former allegiances. All of the Founding Fathers were previously European. Reading the histories of these countries makes one wonder whether we are not retreating to Medieval Times in our thinking and actions. With the evolution of we humans and especially those of us who follow Jesus Christ more outrage should be expressed at much of what our Leadership? has gotten the United States into over the last seven years. There have been many impeachable acts committed and yet we stand by idly and hope that all will change in the future. The next President will push the envelope even more and the sins of this Administration will go unpunished but will they really?? What reprecussions will be visited upon our children and our grandchildren?? Treating people inhumanely or disrespectful is wrong whether they are individuals or groups. We must work and pray together to re-find the principles that formed this Grand Republic!!
Right on, Joan. Torture,
Right on, Joan. Torture, including waterboarding,is totally incompatible with a civilized society, which, judging by the Bush crowd, the U.S. is not.
About a month ago the
About a month ago the Associated Press published “Former POWs struggle with torture debate.� As the article summarized, “Haunted by the past, conflicted over the present.� Final word was given to 75 year-old Howard Ray of San Antonio, TX, who at age 19 was only 2 weeks into Korea in 1950 when captured:
“Does the end justify the means? I don’t know. Can I say that I wouldn’t do it? I don’t know. It would depend on the situation at the time.�
I’ll take his “I don’t know� over the “I completely, totally, and absolutely do know� of those who haven’t been there.
Ken
I would be willing to bet
I would be willing to bet that Howard Ray did not mean this point in history, but rather the circumstances of a moment in which he might find himself personally required to judge which means to use. A government policy of abductions and mistreatment hardly fits this test of ends justifying means, because the ends are all imaginary.
Dear MollyJ & Butterfly: To
Dear MollyJ & Butterfly:
To MollyJ:
You’ve taken our conversation to a highly personal place where you have to go alone. But more power to you for wondering about your own capacity to do evil. If only more people so smug in their virtue were willing to wonder as you do what a much better world this would be.
To Butterfly:
Torture unto death authored Christ’s atonement and your saints’ sainthood. And voluntarily Christ and the saints suffered torture unto death, nay, embraced it. Passively giving in to torture in order to defeat it is a legitimate Christian message, though it’s unlikely to appeal to the activists who post in these parts.
Ken
Ken, I can tell that my
Ken, I can tell that my example shocked and repulsed you. That means you are a man of heart which we can tell. But the point is this...all of those tortured souls at Guantanamo, Abu Grahib, the black sites, Jose Padilla in an American military prison...they were all someone's little child, someone's brother or sister, someone's grandchild. People really just like us. Torture by design depersonalizes. What is needed is a tremendous effort to PERSONALIZE people, make them into people like us.
Yes, we need to investigate, charge legitimately, interrogate humanely, try in open court with adequate representation, and sentence the guilty justly. But when interrogation is really nothing more than a series of cruel acts to get someone to admit to something...anything... And in the end, when you discover that they aren't chargeable with anything but you have treated them so badly that they are now nothing more than a liability to release and, due to their psychological crippling, now just someone in need of chronic mental health care, then THEN what are you saying about yourself?
What are we saying about ourselves as a nation when this continues?
Dear Marie R.: Let put
Dear Marie R.:
Let put "torture" into a larger frame for you.
Aren’t you aware of people saying we can’t be against "terrorism" because we can’t know all of it is bad?
Aren’t you also aware of people saying we can’t be against "evil" because one person’s "evil" is another person’s "good"?
Certainly "evil" and "terrorism" and "torture" are all perfectly fine grist for the morality mill. The problem is people say they’re talking "morality" when all they’re really talking is "politics". And it’s either because they don’t know that or because they won’t admit it.
The “completely, totally, and absolutely� crowd—whether of the Left or the Right—isn't just an annoyance. It's clueless. It's worthless.
Such folks bring darkness rather than light to any topic under discussion.
Ken
Ken, let's set the semantics
Ken, let's set the semantics aside and apply this test. Take any chosen technique you wish to discuss. Now imagine sitting idly by while it was applied to your child. Maybe you can even imagine that your child has been very naughty (but no one will tell you there crime). Imagine that your child might have that technique applied for hours or days on end.
And the king will say to them in reply, 'Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.' Matthew 25:40
Since I am a nurse and used to work in the ED, I can tell you I have applied full leather restraints to patients in circumstances, have helped to get 72 hour holds on patients, have restrained children for procedures. All of those were a careful balance of safety and patients rights and providing care for someone who could not make a rational choice on their own behalf. It included truculent teenagers who had overdosed and said, "You can't make me swallow that stuff..."
But we did those activities, what you might call borderline activities, in the light of day. Patients had family members at their bedside. Necessary consents were obtained from parents or guardians. A patient had recourse through the courts, which provided oversight to the 72 hour hold. There was a plan of care and hopefully the outcomes were in the patients best interests.
I think everyone operating in this realm knows we're at the edge of something here. The oversights are sometimes frustrating but it is a systems best attempt to monitor itself to make sure the interventions stay patient centered.
I'm not going to tell you the health care system has never failed to adequately police itself. Witness the Tuskegee Syphillis experiment. I'm reading Naomi Klein's _Shock Doctrine_ and she is talking about the research roots of torture and some of that took place in _hospitals_. It made me ill to read it.
But the safeguards for abuse are accountability, oversight, the light of day, reports to governing bodies. How much of that do you see happening at Guantanamo Bay? Black sites? Places America won't let the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) visit?
Yes, we understand about gray areas and hard choices. But when America embraces secrecy, creates systems that forbid oversight and the light of day, and turns its' back on the difficult "high bar" demands of the Constitution at the time when they are most required, that is a klaxon signal to all of us that something is just not right here.
I believe in just imprisonment but I believe all prisoners need representation, they need to know their crime and to be tried in an open court with representation, and they need dignity.
Dear Ken, I've been away
Dear Ken, I've been away from my computer lately and am only now able to catch up on NCR threads. I have found your discussion with MarieR., Molly J., Annie O., Elaine, and butterfly fascinating, as I find your observation about those who bring darkness rather than light to discussions.
I'm strongly persuaded by the position your dialogue partners have taken in this thread. To me, there's abundant light in the statement that Christians have a strong moral obligation never to stand on the side of violence, and in the contention that it's exceedingly dangerous to begin normalizing torture under any circumstances.
I find it grievous that I live in a supposedly democratic nation with humanistic ideals in which it's even possible today to debate whether we want to engage in torture. I say "we," because I take for granted that, as a member of this democracy, I am implicated when my government tortures anyone or delivers anyone to torture in some other nation.
It's not clear to me whether you are also implicated in this debate as an American citizen, Ken. If so, then I wonder if you are approaching these questions with that same existential awareness of complicity and guilt--something you appear to be challenging your interlocutors to think about.
If you are writing from that same existential standpoint of having to grapple with the mind-boggling question of whether you should be part of a society now legitimizing torture--an unthinkable question to ask!--I am very interested in your attempt to "contextualize" torture for Marie.
Your contextualization seems to assume that torture occurs only in situations in which "terrorists" and anti-terrorists are struggling for political control.
But I think it might be equally possible to contextualize torture by noting that there are situations in everyday life in which torture does take place, and in which, when these come to light, elicit a strong consensus in humane societies that such behavior needs to be ruled out as an option for civilized people.
Women are routinely beaten in their married lives. I have an aunt who, I have learned, was often thrown into either scalding hot baths or icy ones by her husband. He also often blacked her eyes and broke empty liquor bottles on her head.
I know of this only because her son has told me of what went on in his household when he was growing up. My aunt told no one, though we all knew the marriage was troubled. She lived in a social and religious framework in which divorce was unthinkable, though thankfully, she did eventually leave this madman.
My aunt was tortured. She is still imprisoned, in some ways, by the torture she endured in silence for many years. And I suspect many women find themselves in this situation.
As I think of the "context" of torture in my society (and yours?), Ken, I also remember an encounter I had the first summer I was home from college. My father arranged for me to do work as a plumber's helper.
We were called to the county jail to unclog toilets. I was surprised to find the occupants of the cell were two African-American youth who couldn't have been more than 14 years old. When the sheriff brought us to the clogged toilet, he said, in the presence of the inmates, "Look at them. They're animals. We used to be able to beat them up when we needed to. Now, we have to take them into a dark corner and turn the radio up."
That behavior constitutes torture, to my mind, as does what happened to Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., in Jasper, Texas.
Children are, in a very real sense, tortured in school when they are targeted, taunted, even beaten by classmates because they are perceived as gay. All too often, teachers turn a blind eye to this behavior in American schools.
Point of these examples: torture may not be so isolated and so far away as you seem to imagine, with your contextualization. And when it is near at home, we find it opprobrious.
As we should when it occurs in those isolated terrorist-vs.-defenders of democracy scenarios.
We live in a society riddled by violence, coarsened by our increasing willingness to accept the slide towards more and more violence. We surely need less violence--not more of it.
For me, the position of light is this: torture should be unthinkable, wherever it occurs. For me, it is darkness and not light to suggest that my government (which is to say, I myself) should be practicing, utilizing, or turning a blind eye to torture.
William D. Lindsey
Ken, This is not a matter of
Ken,
This is not a matter of labelling, as the Bush administration would like it to be. This is a matter of a government ordering its employees to mistreat people it has taken prisoner, as was done in Nazi Germany. It is not unavoidable or the result of human weakness and imperfection. It is a matter of cold-hearted policy, and it should not be permitted.
God forgive us for
God forgive us for Hiroshima,Blanket bombing in WW11, School of the Americas, Iraq, Rendition, and what else should we add. And yet we claim to be better--better than than what?
Dear Molly J: There’s a
Dear Molly J:
There’s a story in this morning’s news under the headline “Scientists Find Oldest Living Animal, Then Kill It�.
Seems a team of marine biologists from Bangor University in Wales, while dredging the waters off Iceland, hauled up from 250 feet down an exemplar of the species "Arctica islandica" that upon examination was discovered to be between 405 and 410 years old, the oldest ever recorded. This the scientific team learned only after cutting through the shell of the clam to count its rings—an act the news story slyly describes as having “made it more of an ex-clam.�
To London’s Guardian newspaper Al Wanamaker, one of the team, expressed regret over the killing: “Its death is an unfortunate aspect of this work [we do]�.
Then he added with frightening insouciance: “but we hope to derive lots of information from it.... For our work, it’s a bonus, but it wasn’t good for this particular animal.�
So must God’s creatures be probed and poked around and provoked and pressed and prodded and pushed and pulled and pressured and even put to death in order to understand them? The answer for many apparently is “Yes�.
There are consequences, of course, and some of us call those "evil". They creep into the work of scientists, educators, clergy, politicians, physicians, statisticians, nuns, librarians—and, yes, nurses too—and, in fact, of all of us. But the people most at risk of giving in are those who exempt themselves from any risk of giving in. They ever look for the potential risk in others but never in themselves.
To your credit you admit you can give no “guarantee� about how you’d respond in extremis, though you know what your training and instinct would want you to do.
Isn’t this the best a responsible person can say? Are any of us positively sure of what we’d do if tested?
I hear voices on this site fearlessly declaring they are completely, totally, and absolutely against torture.
Pray God you are spared ever falling into their hands ‘cause if you do, you’re likely a goner.
Ken
You know, Ken, I think I can
You know, Ken, I think I can readily identify those things that every field participates on and suddenly, no matter what the initial intentions, the outcomes are not good. They border on wrong, hurtful, poisonous. Those situations present opportunities for us to hone our understanding of our field and to actively seek methods to avoid escalating the discussion, deepening the hurts, imparting more harm.
But conversely, there are things that are just "Pandora's Box". To unleash the contents of Pandora's Box is to unleash reverberating evil. I believe embracing torture as a legitimate method is a legitimate example of a Pandora's Box.
And I DO understand your foreboding final sentence: "Pray God you are spared ever falling into their hands ‘cause if you do, you’re likely a goner." I have always been haunted by the horrors of torture. But,what would be far worse is for someone to say, "Pray God you are spared ever falling into 'MollyJ's' hands, cause if you do, you are likely a goner."
It is far worse to BECOME the feared thing.
Ken, In response to just a
Ken,
In response to just a sample of your comments such as (1) "I hear voices on this site fearlessly declaring they are completely, totally, and absolutely against torture." AND the grand finale of sentences (2) " Pray God you are spared ever falling into their hands ‘cause if you do, you’re likely a goner."
(1) I think that you believe you are hearing. But, for the safety of your own flesh and resistance to enter into the Kingdom of God and putting on the mind of Christ, you are stumbling and getting in your own way from understanding as Christian the voices on this site who are vehemently against torture for deeply spiritual and faithful Christian reasons, not worldly reasons or for "saving" even our own flesh if it were ever to come to that. It appears that even words that are quoted from the scriptures for your understanding are not heard yet. As a Christian we are called to be united to the heart and mind of Jesus Christ, but your comments seem to declare an absence from His Almighty presence.
(2) One comment to yours is from the Prayer of St. Francis: "It is in dying that we are born to eternal life." What do you really think of the Prayer of St. Francis as it pertains to dying? What do you really think of the lives of many Saints who were willing to serve God and to live and die for Him? Aren't we all going to be "goners" from this life one day? The question all Christians need to ask is when we are tried, and we are all tried on a daily basis, who do we follow for the answers?
I have many questions to ask you: what do you think of the life of Jesus and of His dying for us on the cross? Do you think He should have been spared from falling into the torturers hands? What would have been the consequence if He had run away, or taught His disciples to waterboard or torture those who were His enemies and were going to torture and kill him? Didn't Jesus know they were going to kill Him, and with ample time to escape? Then why did Jesus die on the cross?
Was Jesus tempted by the devil? How and when was He tested? Did Peter deny Him three times as Jesus had predicted he would? Who was the apostle who betrayed Jesus to His enemies and didn't Jesus know that he would? Why did He tell him to go quickly and did not prevent him?
Who did Jesus identify as the hypocrites of His day and warn them of the consequences of their sinful actions? Didn't He speak but they could not hear? Why did He speak to the hypocrites in parables, but to the disciples He spoke plainly? Didn't He heal, but the hypocrites did not see or think they needed healing?
Who are the hypocrites of our day? Who speaks out still from the Gospels with an eternal voice, but they still do not hear?
Whose voice cried out from the desert "to prepare the way of the Lord" but who was then imprisoned and beheaded?
I used the following in a
I used the following in a response in another thread, but I think it applies to this discussion also: Matthew 10:28, "And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna."
Ken, you make a good point that those who dismiss that it is possible that they might ever engage in torture could be fooling themselves. However, I think you might be a bit too cynical in thinking that no one can transcend this potential inclination, which might be possible if they keep these words of Jesus in mind.
It is incumbent upon citizens, no matter how imperfect they are, to speak out against our government's employing forms of interrogation that inflict pain upon those from whom it wishes to gather information.
People of faith are saying
People of faith are saying no to torture. Read: Faith groups hold screenings of anti-torture film
Dennis Coday, NCR cafe management
Torture harms both the
Torture harms both the tortured and the interrogator:
Check out this link:
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/19/624/
Author Brita Sydhoff writes: "The claim that there can be responsible use of torture ignores the fact that even in theoretical terms, foolproof safeguards against mistakes are not possible. It ignores the overwhelming fact that torture damages everyone and everything it touches: victims, torturers, societies as a whole. Few can simply shrug off the actions and walk away with their sanity (and conscience) intact."
...as is also the case in
...as is also the case in capital punishment. It damages people to kill others.
So it is always when the
So it is always when the Christian demands of love face the human conflicts. Sometimes we do a lot of different things...but God does forgive us our "relativities." Thank God.
But that doesn't mean we can give torture enthusiasts the easy pass they are getting these days.
The teachings of Christ are
The teachings of Christ are not for sale. They denounce ALL forms of violence, not the least of which is torture. It's sad that anyone in America could be convinced that torture or the war in Iraq will eliminate the violence of terrorist fanatics. On the contrary it has only fueled their hate-filled fire. What is more is that our relationship with the peaceful countries in the Middle East has been severely damaged by our actions, and people who might have provided intelligence information to us before will no longer do so.
It's hard to imagine the decisions that people we love have been forced to make out of their allegiance to our country. Their honor is born of their desire to serve and protect. I cannot even imagine the horrid decisions they must face. WE MUST continue to pray and believe that more of our elected officials will help get us out of this war. It's just not fair what these young men and women are being put through. EMAIL YOUR CONGRESSMAN. EMAIL YOUR SENATOR. EMAIL ANY AND EVERY ELECTED OFFICIAL IN YOUR REGION. TELL THEM TO BRING OUR TROOPS HOME NOW!!!!!!!!
Dear Molly J & Friends: The
Dear Molly J & Friends:
The casual reader might assume your comment is a reply to mine, but we two know that can’t be. Both of ours posted today were submitted for posting on the weekend or just prior to. You and I wrote independently, not knowing what the other was writing.
That said, you’ve given me a fine opportunity to comment further. I won’t pass it up.
It’s easy to condemn torture while relaxing at a computer far away from any torture chamber. So what I’m imagining right now is this experiment for you and your friends:
• inside a bomb-resistant enclosure your friends, every one of them wearing a tamper-proof explosive vest that can only be deactivated by someone knowing the correct alpha-numeric code to punch into the trigger mechanism;
• you in another room with that dastardly someone (in restraints, of course) who put your friends into their explosive vests and activated the detonation code;
• you with exactly one hour to persuade Mr. Dastardly to give up the code that’ll release from harm your friends, and
• you, as you conduct your interrogation, surrounded by a choice selection of traditional implements of torture (there, mind you, merely to tempt you away from virtue).
I kinda know, unfortunately, what I might do under the circumstances.
But it would be very useful for me (and, ultimately, for the safe home journey of my immortal soul) to be taught by your Christian behavior.
It’s you and your friends and the terrorist. Who wins?
Ken
We already know what you
We already know what you feel- now how about telling us how you're going to manage stop an individual who the believes that they'll get a ticket to Heaven by sawing your head off or blowing your children's school bus up.
Reasonable, informed and responsible people KNOW that Khalid Sheik Muhammed was a ticking bomb and needed to be apprehended. Reasonable, informed and responsible people also know that 30-35 SECONDS of waterboarding (which resulted in information leading to his capture) is proportionate to the thousands of lives saved and therefore is not only Catholic but is fact the charitable thing to do.
If you don't understand that simple moral calculus, then why be Catholic??? The Church not only sanctions proportional defence of the faith, it CELEBRATES it on its feast days. Just raining down zero ratings, ignoring the Church's hierarchy of truth, or undulging in the natural passions here is UN-catholic. You are allowed to have doubts. BUT. A Catholic is obliged to take any doubts which threaten the integrity of their faith (and thats the situation here with you three) and inform their conscience as to what and why the Church teaches what it does. You're obliged to do so until you understand it and it no longer presents a barrier to the assent of your will to the truths of the Church. All catholics have this OBLIGATION. You cannot continue to inhabit this shadow zone of moral ambiguity-no Catholic can and be in good standing. Nor is it even healthy psychologically when virtually everything one believes is directly shot down by the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
What I like about your
What I like about your scenario, Ken, is that, unlike real life, it is so contrived as to default to only one option. These kind of mental gymnastics make it possible for people relaxing at their computer screens to envision a justification for that which is both highly immoral and unnecessary.
Dear Ken, I am gravely
Dear Ken,
I am gravely disturbed by the themes of normalizing and accepting torture as the only possible response. This is far from a perfect world and I am old enough that I do not demand perfection, but neither do I think we should embrace evil. And I think accepting and embracing evil in the person of torture can only normalize more evil.
Below I have a link to the Washington Post.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/05/AR2007100502492.html
They carried an article reporting a gathering of WWII era interrogators who are gravely disturbed by our torture tactics. The whole article is worth reading but I was particularly impressed by this quote:
"We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture," said Henry Kolm, 90, an MIT physicist who had been assigned to play chess in Germany with Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess.
I do not think morality and acting in the interests of our Nation are mutually exclusive; they have not been in the past.
Like so many, your defense of torture relies on the so-called "Zero Hour" scenarios AND semantics about torture.
No one can say if the zero hour scenarios are very commen, but it seems apparent that the intervention of torture and coercion is. This suggests and indeed illustrates that torture as an intervention presents a temptation to use a very horrible intervention excessively.
Finally, your story intellectualizes whether torture that leaves no bruises or wounds is torture at all. Comes in comfortably under that bar of "severe enough to cause organ failure or damage." Below is a web site that talks about torture definitions:
http://www.notorture.org/torture_defined.html
Most people agree that torture can be either psychological or physical, but nonetheless remains torture.
Amy Goodman interviewed a psychologist who interviewed Jose Padilla:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/16/1416242&mode=thread&tid=25
I am sure his interrogators can boast that they left not one mark on him, but they have effectively destroyed a man; he cannot effectively make decisions in his own self-interest.
Finally, as to your "What would you do?" question. I pray that that particular dilemma is never handed to me. For I am a nurse, and I hope that I would have the fortitude to act in the interests of the person being abused. And yes, I can imagine having to make that decision knowing that my son or my husband had been tortured or killed. I would pray to have the strength to treat that poor soul as Jesus would have me do so. I can not guarantee my response but I pray that I would see the Lord in him.
As a former ED nurse, when I think of torture scenarios, I do not picture myself in the role of torturer. I identify with the victims. I have cared for victims of violence and rape in the ED. I know what that looks like. I know they will not feel safe, confident, in control for a long, long time to come--maybe never.
Finally, some research suggests (and I have tried to find the link without success) that torture exacts a toll on both victim and torturer. One interviewer related their work with torturers and talked about they often suffer from anxiety, shame and vivid dreams (ie blood on their hands). Why would embrace a policy that leaves so many victims behind?
Whatever the imperfections were with our image as a beacon of hope and freedom, I prefer it to being out-right the nation being linked to torture, extraordinary rendition, failure to grant habeus corpus to prisoners, etc, etc. I want America to embrace the constitution. I want us to show the way to living in the shrinking world in an honorable way that treats all peoples as worthwhile. I'm not suggesting that's easy but it's perferable to the annihilation that is predicted with the other choice.
"In a community of cannibals
"In a community of cannibals it is difficult to raise the issue that cannibalism is against the will of God."
Thanks so much, Molly. Your response demonstrates so very eloquently the moral and EXISTENTIAL Christianity of a person reacting with revulsion against torture. Thanks also for naming the facile abstractions that characterize the discourse of those who seek to "normalize" acts of torture, depicting it as some sort of head-game. You keep clearly in view the PEOPLE - both tortured and torturing - whom we must keep in prayer during these dark times.
Thanks also for the very useful citations.
Here's one that you may be interested in. I shall be attending a gathering on Thursday where the Rev. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy will speak. He is one known to you I am sure; a Roman Catholic priest, author/lecturer, Nobel Peace Prize nominee, and former U.S. Marine.
Father McCarthy has said, "In a community of cannibals it is difficult to raise the issue that cannibalism is against the will of God" to explain how Christians have developed an acceptance of violence and have rejected Jesus as a consequence: "If we cannot know from the New Testament that Jesus rejected violence, then we can no nothing about his personal message."
You can access a discussion between McCarthy and John Carmody at the Peacemaking Report site (http://www.peacemajority.us//myview-interviews.htm) or at:
http://www.aibtv.com/ECAPC_016.wmv
In the interview "... McCarthy, a co-founder of PaxChristi USA, interviews John Carmody, Director of the Center for Christian Non-violence. This interview comes to you in 2 parts ... In both episodes, John Carmody, a neuroscientist and highly decorated Viet Nam era Marine, explains how the young are recruited into the military at an age when the brain centers of higher reasoning, compassion and empathy are still immature, and while the lower brain functions of aggression and violence more developed and is more susceptible to the training to kill without mercy or conscience. John explains how he became a subjected to the skillful mind games used by the military to recruit him and join the Marines. Both Fr. McCarthy and John Carmody discuss the inherent conflict of the mind of Christ (compassion, forgiveness, empathy) and the mind of a combat soldier ( aggression, violence, conformity, lack of sympathy, survival) and the effort required by the military to subjugate the Christ-like mind into developing "a good soldier."
God's peace to you.
The Rev. Dr. E. McCoy
Jesus said, "You are the light of the world. ... let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven." (Matthew 5:15-16)
Thanks for the important
Thanks for the important link and the kind words.
I have ventured onto Google
I have ventured onto Google to find examples of apologists for torture...(and they are there)...But I should have never worked so hard!!!
They are ALSO HERE!!!
The main repetitive themes are:
*The semantics of what constitutes torture
*That it's dirty work but someone's gotta do it---because sometimes we just have to. And then they point to some "high value" suspect that couldn't have been gotten any other way. Never mind that the way is strewn with damaged people, both victims and those that participate in the interrogations.
*The minimization of the harms of methods that leave no scars--or don't cause "organ failure". We're in great company here; the Nazis used the smae rationalization.
Above all Catholics and Christians should not let themselves be used as apologists for torture.
Those who are trying to find
Those who are trying to find justification for torture, or who hope that by calling it something different, it becomes something different, should be aware that what has been done and likely is still being done in the name of US citizens is worthy of criminal prosecution. These people who are detained and tortured are not even necessarily terrorists. In some cases, children have been detained and tortured as well. Not only are specific actions torture, but so is the indefinite detention of civilians who are not charged with anything, who cannot contact their families, and who do not have legal representation. November 2008 cannot come soon enough.
Torture we mustn’t.
Torture we mustn’t. Interrogate we must.
So, what’s the difference?
Maybe there’s a clue or two (or more) in “The Man Who Liked Dickens,� a short story (l933) by the Brit Evelyn Waugh.
• detainee eats same food, wears same clothes, and lives in same accommodations as captor;
• detainee and captor receive same medical care;
• detainee free from any hand ever laid on him or any device ever used to hurt him;
• detainee unrestrained from moving about and even from leaving at any time he wants.
But if detainee of his own free will chooses to leave confinement, he must make his way out of surrounding impenetrable jungle all by himself.
If, on the other hand, detainee chooses to stay, he must hold daily discourse with his captor and, since that fellow is illiterate, read to him the collected works of Charles Dickens from beginning to end, over and over, afternoon after afternoon, year in and year out until....
True, this might drive to insanity someone who likes, say, only romance novels. But, in a best-case scenario, he’ll blurt out absolutely everything he knows to win his freedom.
There’ll be folks ready to think of this as torture, but that’s only because anything and everything they happen not to like is to them torture. They can be cured of such silliness by being made to read aloud the collected works of Charles Dickens from beginning to end, over and over, afternoon after afternoon, year in and year out until....
Ken
Ken, I've puzzled about this
Ken,
I've puzzled about this posting of yours for a while. I don't think anyone would consider this scenario equivalent to torture. It does not seem comparable to having an official government policy to abduct people and mistreat them.
Is what you are describing not like letting people know that they are under surveillance and occasionally approaching them for a conversation? -- something that is quite effective in the short term and does not produce any long-term negative consequences.
In my previous comment, I
In my previous comment, I said any society that engages in violence gets set back. It is more accurate to say that any society that initiates or persists in violence loses its edge.
In WWII, America went to war against the Germans and the Japanese as a last resort. Millions of people had been killed. The Japanese declared war on us. If the Bush administration feels that going to war in Iraq was a "last resort," then the Bush administration acted out of sheer ignorance. America is much stronger than that. Our technological capabilities are unbelievable, and America would be safer if our military were here.
How many people have to die before President Bush will admit that he made a very grave mistake?
Another heartbreaking
Another heartbreaking setback for America - I can only encourage our Catholic Church leaders to send the current administration a letter that denounces torture in NO UNCERTAIN TERMS. If we've already done it, we must do it again.
When America tries to justify torture, it tells the world just how incompetent and frightened America is. It tells the world how far America has strayed from the teachings of Christ.
The teachings of Christ and the history of humanity both tell us unequivocally that violence will set back any society that engages in it. It's not a coincidence that the American economy has started to take a back seat to war.
Whoever would save his life will lose it and whoever would lose his life will save it. The fact is: if we take all the money earmarked for violence and torture and put it into increasing homeland security and peaceful initiatives, which help people "pull themselves up by their bootstraps," hundreds of millions of people would benefit worldwide, possibly more.
I said above that any society that engages in violence gets set back. It is more accurate to say that any society that initiates or persists in violence loses its edge.
In WWII, America went to war against the Germans and the Japanese as a last resort. Millions of people had been killed. The Japanese declared war on us. If the Bush administration feels that going to war in Iraq was a "last resort," then the Bush administration acted out of sheer ignorance. America is much stronger than that. Our technological capabilities are unbelievable, and America would be safer if our military were here.
How many people have to die before President Bush will admit that he made a very grave mistake?
Dear Sister Joan: Simply
Dear Sister Joan: Simply put, before we can address the question of torture, there has to be an attitude change in our country: Love must replace Hate, Forgivness must replace Revenge, "We" and "They" must be replaced by "One Human Family", "We are always right and they are always wrong" must be replaced by inquiring minds, investigation, negotiation, and compromise", apathy must be replaced with active participation. And the big one, greed has to be replaced by compassion. Concerned Citizen
Dear Sr. Joan: “How do we
Dear Sr. Joan:
“How do we tell our children...?� you ask.
Do we even have to?
Consider those youngsters who’ve gone through wilderness therapy and boot-camp programs for troubled youth. The testimony of the GAO’s Gregory Kurz and Andy O’Connell before the Committee on Education and Labor (published less than two weeks ago as "Treatment Programs; Concerns Regarding Abuse and Death in Certain Programs for Troubled Youth," #GAO-08-146T) spoke of thousands of allegations of abuse, some leading to death, in facilities across the country and in others abroad American-owned and American-operated between 1990 and 2007. In 2005 alone 1,619 people staffing them were cited for serious violations.
Offenses cataloged include employment of staff with prior convictions on child endangerment charges and for stints in prison, insufficient scrutiny of enrollees’ medical histories for life-threatening vulnerabilities, inadequate health care (particularly in cases of emergency), substandard diet, deficient safety codes for taxing physical activities, neglect, unavailability of essential life-support equipment, bodily injury, and verbal assault. These are among 30 different types recorded.
Tough-love academies deal with youngsters everyone has already given up on, which is no excuse for maltreatment of course. But ordinary schools too knock down the not-quite-so-troubled youngsters they’re supposed to uplift.
Consider the report “Sexual Misconduct Plaguing U.S. Schools� published by the Associated Press only last weekend. It draws from school disciplinary records in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
“Students in America’s schools,� says AP, “are groped ... raped ... pursued, seduced.....� Its investigation “found more than 2,500 cases over five years in which educators were punished for actions from bizarre to sadistic.� And the number of “abusive educators� was, on average, “nearly three for every school day.�
The AP’s most startling conclusion (derived from a study mandated by the U.S. Congress) is: “as many as 4.5 million students, out of roughly 50 million in American schools, are subject to sexual misconduct by an employee of a school sometime between kindergarten and 12th grade [including] verbal harassment that’s sexual in nature.� Further, “the larger shame is that the institutions that govern education have only sporadically addressed a problem that’s been apparent for years.�
“A person’s love lives on in the action of those he touches.�
This was the motto of Michael G. Barletta, a theology teacher who preyed on students at Erie’s Cathedral Preparatory School (PA). “He made being a Catholic fun,� said one of the students not targeted by him. For some others, however, Barletta made it very "unfun."
So to circle back to the opening question in its full form, “How do we tell our children that their violence [i.e., by foreigners’ against us] is bad but our violence [against them] is good?�
I doubt we have to because “our violence�—of the various kinds a goodly number of our children face in their young lives—is violence they know to be not very “good� at all. I doubt they associate it with the torture they hear about and see on television, though they may have an inkling it somehow feeds into that torture and allows it to thrive. But I have no doubt they know they don’t have to pay a visit to any War on Terror POW camp to find “our violence�. For this they have to travel no farther than to their school a very few miles from home.
From where I stand, our children in the know (and, even better, those of their teachers and other school functionaries who’ve put them in the know) can give good pointers to anyone in the CIA and in the U.S. military and even to someone in civilian life who’s so inclined as to set up a torture shop and keep it state of the art.
Ken
Ken, On the subject of kids
Ken,
On the subject of kids knowing violence: "For this they have to travel no farther than to their school..." So true Ken, and so very sad.
The other night I heard the horrifying news that a college student from my son's school was beat up and killed by a group of local non-students. My son was beat up last year by a non-student who showed up uninvited with his non-student friends to a party just off the campus. One of their girlfriends was going into neighboring student’s residences and taking beer out of their refrigerator. My son, of legal age to drink, caught her in the act of stealing and said something to her. She went back to the party and told her boyfriend. The boyfriend, along with another friend then went and beat up my son who was alone just outside his residence. My son did not know who they were and they fled so could not identify them to the police.
Also, when the students are not on campus during breaks, some locals familiar with the territory and the school's routine break into their apartments and steal whatever is of any value; computers, tv's, radios, stereos, etc. The students have to pack everything up for all their breaks and haul it all home and then back again for the next semester.
As if the thefts, beatings and murder were not bad enough, a student was raped on the campus recently. The school officials and the local police are more concerned about giving out parking tickets than they are in creating a safe environment for them on and just off the campus. There is a police presence that is more interested in looking to pick on the students for petty offenses, but is not doing anything to keep the trouble makers out to protect the students from murder, beatings, rape, and theft. My son stated very simply: "they have their priorities wrong." His comment rang a familiar tune in my ears of a very familiar theme of the times.
On the news tonight there were students protesting that they feel their school has become a "jail." I didn't catch the entire story or details, but from other reports and my son's account the youth today in schools are tired of the constant harassment and the immense distrust of the students that the school officials have developed since Columbine and the attitude of police towards youth in general. It's a very, very sad situation. And as you have pointed out, the adults have not been acting like responsible adults and some are committing crimes, and children are judged as adults in the courts if they're caught doing anything wrong and the kids today are not being allowed to just be kids.
The problem lies, in this case, in protecting the students from local youth who have no future and are jealous of the students for what they have, or what they think they have and for the future that they think they will have. Little do the perpetrators know about the students and the sacrifices they make to go to school. To them it’s just “not cool� to go to school. It's sad also that after graduating from college in May that only three students out of a few hundred from his class have found jobs, and many of them have student loans to pay off and the amounts are staggering for anyone, let alone our youth just starting out in the world. It's an overwhelming situaton for young people today as much as it is for the adults.
The town's youth, and I would guess their parents too need a future and that must be addressed in order to address and get rid of the crimes. The answer is simply not more police or more invasive security measures for the students or the townspeople or creating more jails. In the days since the murder of the student on campus, students that are still there report of swat teams of police cordoning off areas and conducting searches.
Since the focus and more resources are put into "Homeland Security" there seems to be an increase in all sorts of crime in general all across the country? I don’t know – anyone have the statistics? It seems “our way of life� is deteriorating at an accelerating pace?
“So to circle back to the opening question in its full form, “How do we tell our children that their violence [i.e., by foreigners’ against us] is bad but our violence [against them] is good?� “Do we even have to?� Ken asks.
Well Ken, yes, we do have to tell our children that violence is not the answer to violence, even if they've experienced violence. Example: my son and his friends and other people who might want to seek revenge could have violently ganged up on any outsiders at the school (foreigners) in revenge for what happened to him. That did not happen, because I put my child "in the know" by encouraging him in the Christian manner to “forgive them, they know not what they do� and to see violence and the anti-Christian answer of revenge by violence, or correction by violence in its many forms, in its broader social context.
The students as a result did not form a gang to gang up on the intruders and suspected lawless and become lawless themselves. If we teach them violence is the answer to violence, such as Bush/Cheney and their supporters do, they will unfortunately learn to be just as violent and perhaps even more so & to the detriment and annihilation of true Christian spirit.
The use of torture by any
The use of torture by any group, church or a nation or its hirelings, besides being unreliable and also damning for the perpetrator, is barbaric, paganistic, sadistic, and full of all that is evil. There's just no excuse for it to in any way be justifiable, especially for a nation and its Churches that espouse and politicize "values" that are said to be based on religious or Christian ones!
Sr. Joan brings up a very important point about what we are teaching our children. What do we teach them when we say that it is ok for a nation or a state to kill people by supporting the death penalty, or to torture people to supposedly "get information" or "to help our country" while we are at the same time teaching them about morals and values and the teachings of Jesus Christ?! We certainly are not teaching them anything that is virtuous or commendable or good or that is the truth of the Gospels by upholding an example that Jesus does not want us to follow. Instead, we are teaching children how to be good old self-righteous sadistic hypocrites.
Why should we wonder then that kids who are bullied in school justify their sadistic violence back onto those who were verbally sadistic to them, when the culture says it can justify violence on its "enemies"?
It is no wonder to me that when the message of Jesus Christ is essentially obliterated by hypocrisy that terror and evil are delivered back to us in more sadistic and evil ways by our enemies. It's a vicious cycle and the wheels are spinning almost out of control due to this hypocrisy, and the ignorance and denial of their hypocrisy.
President Bush, whose Christian identity I highly doubt, now calls torture "enhanced questioning." How convenient to call it something else so he does not have to be honest and identify it or call it by its real name. Also, how convenient for the military to hire and pay mercenaries from Blackwater, but those mercenaries don't call themselves mercenaries, but call themselves by another name which is also dishonest. But, we teach our children to be honest, despite the dishonesty of giving a dishonest name, while dishonestly fashioned names are used to try to deny the true meaning for political, military and sadistic convenience.
I believe we could "keep America safe" by not being hypocrites and by being able to identify hypocrisy.
I believe we could "keep America safe" by recognizing that The Bush/Cheney Agenda and their war pushing, sadistic torture machine, are the biggest bunch of "christian" hypocrites on the planet. AlQueda, on the other hand, are the biggest bunch of "moslem" hypocrites on the planet. Both share this: they dare speak about evil leaders in other countries or groups, when they are their own example of evil witnessed by the rest of the world as evil.
Even their allies and enemies know that they are hypocrites. They speak about protecting "our way of life" while at the same time they are destroying all ways that would lead to life, bring life, by their war-mongering and appetite for sadistic torture and destruction, selfish greed in general.
The fruits of their hypocrisy can be witnessed in the death, destruction, torture, mental illness and physical disabilities of returning soldiers, exponentially growing national debt, devaluation of the dollar, global warming, practically collapsed real estate and mortgage market, jobs that provide less money, more hours and no medical coverage.
What a legacy! War, death, torture, debt, mental illness, physical disabilities, global warming, poverty and a collapsing economy! What more could you ask for in reportedly "Christian" leadership or any leadership? Does any of this make anyone proud to be an American now?
Our Inaction speaks volumes
Our Inaction speaks volumes from the electorate!!!
Drs. John & Karen Dwyer Pax
Drs. John & Karen Dwyer
Pax Christi Naples
Thank you Sister Joan for the excellent hot button links. An amazing mine of information normally inaccessible! I, like Camus, call for _Ni victimes ni bourreaux_.
...lots of material in this
...lots of material in this column but lets start with the low hanging fruit.
"Material gained under torture is simply not credible, a conclusion reached by Eyemeric, the Grand Inquisitor of Aragon himself in 1357, who said, information gained under torture "is deceptive and ineffectual."
It's Eymerich, not Eyemeric, and ol' Nicholas should not be surprised to find his theory proven wrong by the CIA of today.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the murderer of 2,752 Americans on 9/11, was waterboarded by the CIA for two-and-half minutes until he pointed the way to the capture of Riduan Isamuddin (aka Hambali), the Indonesian terrorist responsible for the 2002 bombings of night clubs in Bali.
I think Hambali, (who thankfully rots in some unknown CIA prison) has a better grasp than Eymerich or Sr. Chittister of how credible these interrogation techniques really are. God bless the the dedication of all the unsung heros of our intelligence community for keeping innocent American lives safe from foreign terrorists and their fifth column in this country.
Didn't Jesus, when speaking
Didn't Jesus, when speaking of His torturers and executioners say "Father forgive them for they know not what they do." Did He not also have a hand in converting Paul from persecutor of the faith to inspired member of the faith? Why would His Father now bless those who engage in these same tactics? Forgive, yes, bless, I doubt it.
We are obliged to protect
We are obliged to protect ourselves and our children, and yes, it does mean we use every means neccessary to protect ourselves-Including coercion.
This week's column is a liberal emotional pitch meant to introduce situational ethics in place of a clear moral stand. The first step to ignore this latest sedition from Hollywood-Rendition the movie has one purpose-to allow real terrorists to continue to plot death and dismemberment with less risk of detainment.
Four Myths about (actual) Rendition
1. Rendition is something the Bush administration cooked up.
Wrong. Beginning in 1995, the Clinton administration turned up the speed with a full-fledged program to use rendition to disrupt terrorist plotting abroad. According to former director of central intelligence George J. Tenet, about 70 renditions were carried out before Sept. 11, 2001. For example, some of the people they rendered to Egypt were: Talat Fouad Qassem (Clinton); Ahmad Ibrahim al-Sayyid al-Naggar (Clinton); Shawqi Salama Mustafa (Clinton); Mohamed Hassan Tita (Clinton); Ahmad Ismail Uthman (Clinton); and Issam Abd al-Tawab (Clinton)
2. People who are "rendered" inevitably end up in a foreign helhole prison— or worse.
Not really. Alvarez was brought to the United States. So was Mir Aimal Kansi, who killed two CIA employees in their cars outside the agency's headquarters in 1993, and Ramzi Yousef, the architect of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Both were apprehended in Pakistan, whose leaders decided that the nation would rather not have those two " folk heroes" sitting in jail, awaiting extradition. Pakistan's leaders feared that cooperating with the United States would be dangerously unpopular, so they wanted the suspects out of the country quickly. For many pro-U.S. Muslim leaders, that concern has only deepened as anti-Americanism has soared. In fact, most renditions since 1995 have involved moving individuals from one foreign country to another -- not grabbing someone in Washington and carting them off to North Africa, as happens to Witherspoon's onscreen husband.
Such operations typically occur in secret because, again, Muslim leaders (especially in the Arab world) want to shield their cooperation with Washington from their anti-American publics. The CIA has acted as a go-between, arranging the transfers and providing transportation. Usually those being rendered are not brought to the United States because, while the U.S. government may have an abundance of intelligence showing their malfeasance, it doesn't have enough courtroom evidence. There's a big difference between the two.
3. Step one of a rendition involves kidnapping the suspect.
A person may "feel" as though he's being kidnapped, but that's not usually what's going on. In most cases, the person is arrested by the authorities of the country he is in. They will then hand him off to the CIA, which will fly him to his destination. In RARE cases when the country of residence is
Sr. Joan, As a military
Sr. Joan,
As a military veteran, I am absolutely ashamed of the insatiable appetite of the U.S for torture, war, abuse and injustice. I work at a Catholic school and saw a poster that said: "Tolerance is seeing with the heart instead of the eyes". That floored me and made me realize just how intolerant I've been. Want to see Jesus? Close your eyes and open your heart! Part of that open heart is supporting groups like Pax Christi USA and Benedictines for Peace. Maybe, just maybe, peace can finally reign. PAX.
Let there be peace on Earth and let it begin with ME.