Cause and Effect World

The Torture Question

To torture or not to torture, that is a question that was successfully avoided during the 2006 election cycle.  It is, nevertheless, a question that will not go away. 

Is torture an effective way to get information?

Newsweek reports that U.S. intelligence officers say they have little—if any—evidence that useful intelligence has been obtained using techniques generally understood to be torture.  They say that the FBI favors (and has long experience with) slower, more benign interview techniques, like establishing long-term, personal relationships between interrogator and subject, while the CIA is ‘more gung-ho.’

Even if it is effective to get information, should America use torture?

Is the use of torture justified?  This is a question that has simply not been part of the national debate, particularly during the 2006 election cycle.  However, with the lawsuit recently filed against Donald Rumsfeld in Germany for war crimes, it most certainly will.  And, recently, the October 2006 issue of the journal Theology Today featured several articles on just this issue.  The articles stemmed from presentations made at a conference held last January called the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, which resulted in several prominent religious leaders, Protestant (both mainline and evangelical), Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Jewish and Muslim, issuing a statement, “Torture Is a Moral Issue,” that was seven sentences in length:

“Torture violates the basic dignity of the human person that all religions, in their highest ideals, hold dear. It degrades everyone involved — policy makers, perpetrators and victims. It contradicts our nation’s most cherished values. Any policies that permit torture and inhumane treatment are shocking and morally intolerable.

“Nothing less is at stake in the torture abuse crisis than the soul of our nation. What does it signify if torture is condemned in word but allowed in deed?

“Let America abolish torture now — without exceptions.”

Of course, torturers themselves believe their actions to be not only successful, but justified.  In their program We Have Ways of Making You Talk, the BBC interviewed torturers who believe it is an inevitable part of war and an act of righteousness.  Nevertheless, these torturers, from countries such as apartheid South Africa, Uruguay, and French Algeria, often live double lives, not willing to reveal to their occupation to friends and family.  This reticence suggests that even they have an unease with their actions.

No, torture is not acceptable

Even if it works, it is not acceptable in our country.  We are better than this.  We lose the moral high-ground, which makes us less safe in the long run.  And, as a friend said Dwight D. Eisenhower said, “…don’t do anything that will make us have to apologize to them…”