It seems that many people of faith become silent when it comes to the issue of torture. There is even a nation poll which reveals that Evangelical Christians are more in favor of using torture than non-believers. Strange in that Christians follow Jesus who was unjustly tortured and killed by the state. Therefore, wouldn’t Christians have a certain abhorrence (or at least a distaste) regarding the use of torture? But perhaps being a supporter of torture may be more about a person’s politics than their faith.
Nevertheless, I want to say one thing to the folks in Congress, the Pentagon and the CIA – I don’t want you to use torture to carry out our nation’s objectives. No torture. Did you hear that? Never!
I was a cop for over thirty years and I always distinguished smart cops from dumb cops when I was a young rookie by whether or not they would use torture to obtain a confession from a suspect. I liked to think of myself and those whom I worked as smart cops who could get both information and confessions from suspects by treating them with decency and respect and using our brain rather than our brawn. Torture seemed like such a distasteful thing to do to another human being. I found that some police officers, who were little short on intelligence, would often resort to torture – use it as a way to “get the job done.” I always questioned their results along with that of their basic intelligence.
Prof. Darius Rejali, one of the world’s leading experts on torture, has recently authored a comprehensive work called Torture and Democracy. In it, he acquaints the reader with the history of torture from the late 19th century to the present time. Rejali argues that democracies not only tortured, but set the international pace for torture – moving from torture which left “marks” on the subject to a style of torture which left no marks (electric shock, waterboarding, sensory deprivation, etc.).
While dictatorships may have tortured more people and did it more indiscriminately, the United States, Britain, and France pioneered and exported torture which left no external scars or broken bones. Rejali also examined the controversial question of whether or not torture works. Citing the lack of documentation on whether torture is effective, Rejali concludes it is not. Torture does not achieve what some believe it does. It is grossly inefficient in gathering verifiable intelligence or true confessions of wrongdoing.
Lest we forget, on the domestic front, torture is illegal and if the police use it what they obtained could not be used in a court of law. And police who used torture on suspects could find themselves in court facing charges of criminal assault. Does that mean that while it’s illegal to torture our citizens it’s okay to torture citizens of other countries?
But what we must never forget is that torture not only has a devastating, long-term effect on those who are tortured, it also destroys the lives of those who do the torturing. In addition, the use of torture by a democratic society tears away at values on which it was founded – due process of law and the dignity of the human person.
Recently, legal scholar Alan Dershowitz proposed that if we in America are serious about using torture, then we should develop a legal process to do it, remove it from secrecy, and never allow low-level people to administer it. Dershowitz proposes the use of “torture warrants” (similar to court warrants for an arrest or a search or seizure of private property). Yet he also believes that torture should only be used as a last resort – like in the case of a “ticking time bomb.” And each and every time torture is used by the state it needs to be authorized by a court of law and documented.
While I remain an absolutist with regard to torture, Dershowitz has an interesting solution. If we chose to do torture, we should do it openly and with accountability. Then, Dershowitz argues, we perhaps would not appear to be such hypocrites in the eyes of the rest of the world.
While his argument is intriguing, I am still not convinced that under any circumstances our nation should torture. My first reason is that it a terrible assault on a human person and, as a Christian, I cannot condone such treatment to a human being under any circumstance. Secondly, in all the years torture has been used there is no evidence that it works. And, finally, torture has a devastating life-long impact (and this can be documented) on both the tortured and the torturer
I guess the question here is that if we cannot speak out against torture, what does that say about us? What does it say about that which we say we believe about the human person? What does it say about our nation’s word when we are signatories to the Geneva Convention?
If we remain silent and cannot speak out against torture it may mean that the ways of the world have greater influence upon us than what we say we believe about God, Humankind, and the World to Come.
