I agree with you, Matt, that there are several questions surrounding this issue that, while disturbing, are disputable. “Should we allow torture?” and “Is torture effective?” are two examples. But the question of whether waterboarding is torture is not one of them. There is no serious dispute about whether waterboarding is torture. As for the other issues you raise:
1. Michael Mukasey was one of the chief architects of Bush’s [insert euphemism for torture here] program. He recognizes that John McCain is essentially calling him a liar and naturally feels the need to protect his reputation. I’m not saying that he is wrong, but he is not exactly an impartial observer.
2. The debate about whether waterboarding is torture is a false one. If a foreign enemy waterboards a U.S. prisoner of war, they will be charged under international law with committing the war crime of torture. If a deputy sheriff waterboards a murder suspect in Nebraska, he will be charged under U.S. statutes with torturing a prisoner. Until 2001, there was never a serious dispute about whether waterboarding was torture. It was only after America adopted a utilitarian stance to warfare that the question was even raised. This is a relatively recent development. As John Hutson, former Judge Advocate General of the Navy, who says “Waterboarding was devised in the Spanish Inquisition. Next to the rack and thumbscrews, it’s the most iconic example of torture.”
The legal definition of torture to which the U.S. subscribes can be found in the UN Convention Against Torture:
For the purposes of this Convention,torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.
There is simply no legitimate dispute about whether waterboarding fits the historic and current definitions of torture. Those who claim otherwise need to explain why the standard has changed.
3. During the U.S. Army Trials of Japanese War Criminals Conducted in Yokohama, Japan, Yukio Asano was charged with “Violation of the Laws and Customs of War: 1. Did willfully and unlawfully mistreat and torture PWs.” Among the specifications listed were “beating using hands, fists, club; kicking; water torture; burning using cigarettes; strapping on a stretcher head downward”
What differences between the Japanese “water torture” (simulated drowning) makes it radically different from the CIA’s method of waterboarding (which is also simulated drowning)?
4. Here is what Malcolm Nance, counter-terrorism and terrorism intelligence consultant for the U.S. government’s Special Operations and a former Navy SERE school instructor, said in Small Wars Journal about the difference between waterboarding in training and what was done by the CIA:
The carnival-like he-said, she-said of the legality of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques has become a form of doublespeak worthy of Catch-22. Having been subjected to them all, I know these techniques, if in fact they are actually being used, are not dangerous when applied in training for short periods. However, when performed with even moderate intensity over an extended time on an unsuspecting prisoner – it is torture, without doubt.
Also, the CIA’s own Inspector General says that what they did and what is done in SERE training are completely different:
A footnote in the recently released 2004 CIA Office of Inspector General’s review of the government’s interrogation program appears to undermine a key legal justification that allowed the spy agency to use the controversial technique of waterboarding against suspected terrorist detainees.
A central legal—and polemic—argument for use of waterboarding has been the fact that some U.S. soldiers are subjected to the procedure during training. In 2002, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel wrote a memo approving the technique, based in part on the fact that it had produced no long-term ill effects on soldiers who had undergone waterboarding during training. Those memos were later withdrawn by the DOJ.
But the latest review shows the waterboarding technique used on suspected terrorists was different in technique and duration from that administered to U.S. soldiers.
The OIG report says that experts’ initial analysis of waterboarding “was probably misrepresented at the time,” according to the CIA’s Office of Medical Services, because “the SERE [survival, evasion, resistance, and escape program] waterboard experience is so different from the subsequent agency usage as to make it almost irrelevant.”As a consequence, the OIG found, “according to [the Office of Medical Services], there was no a priori reason to believe that applying the waterboard with the frequency and intensity with which it was used by the psychologist/interrogators was either efficacious or medically safe.”
You wrote, “But others are welcome to theirs, and free to try to induce such pangs in me. I don’t promise them much hope of success.” A reverse argumentum ad misericordiam is probably not the best means for determining how we should treat other human beings, even if they are “unlawful enemy combatants.”
The issue of torturing prisoners cannot be divorced from other issues of human dignity. As our own Russell Saltzman wrote in 2009,
[T]orture is wrong because it can never serve a moral purpose. It serves instead only an immoral purpose: the destruction of an individual’s personhood. It is violence against the imago Dei, the image of God carried by every person.
Crucial to the use of torture is the intentional, systematic, step-by-step reduction of identity and selfhood, the purposeful diminution of the person as person, as the image of God cheapened to something less, to something “unperson.” The “other” is depersonalized. It is this process of thinking which gives us license for abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, and torture—everything that strips the person of personal humanity.
Do you disagree?
May 13th, 2011 | 12:56 pm
Yes, I do disagree, Joe. The technique is not the same as the Japanese “water torture,” even if the bland description “simulated drowning” applies to them both. The technique is the same as used in SERE training. The question then is whether the degree of its use passed over into another kind of thing. That, I submit, is not established. The thing about which you repeatedly claim there is no reasonable dispute is, I assure you, reasonably disputed. (The cases of legitimate POWs, or murder suspects in custody, are altogether different because of the rights they enjoy. Whether we would call such ill treatment of them “torture” by some legal definition, I have no idea.)
And with respect to Russell Saltzman, this is a judgment about torture. We are here talking about whether something belongs in that category. Or is there some principle at work that is against all forms of coercion?
May 13th, 2011 | 1:07 pm
Matthew,
No offense, but what point are you trying to make? You claim there is reasonable dispute on the point, but then you completely fail to offer it.
Joe has provided numerous sources for the fact that the particular method (a) is and has always been considered torture and (b) that it is like the thing that we prosecute war criminals for doing. If it is somehow different, please explain. Maybe I’m dumber than a bad of rocks, but I cannot see the difference nor can I see where you’ve even attempted to explain what that difference is.
Multiple commenters — and Joe — have explained how waterboarding suspected terrorists is morally unlike what people go through for SERE training in that it is voluntary and for limited duration. Where, then, do you find support for your assertion that it is the “same?”
Finally, what distinction are you trying to make regarding legitimate POWs or murder suspects in custody? They may have certain government given rights, but we are talking about something which precedes government-given rights: human dignity.
May 13th, 2011 | 1:45 pm
I don’t think it matters whether or not waterboarding of terrorist suspects is physically identical to SERE training. It’s entirely possible for an action to be torture in one situation and not torture in another. Much depends on the psychological state of the subject, the environment in which the action is performed, and the purpose of those carrying it out.
A US soldier undergoing SERE training knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that those waterboarding him are his allies. They’re training him to withstand mistreatment and torture by enemies, and at the end of the day, they want him to come out stronger than before. A prisoner knows, without a shadow of doubt, that those waterboarding him are his enemies, they want him to come out of the experience weaker than before. At the end of the day, if they go a little too far and actually drown him, they won’t lose much, if any sleep.
May 13th, 2011 | 2:11 pm
I find it hard to apply legal definitions which were arrived upon in an essentially “intra-mural”, for lack of a better term, war situations with our current existential conflict with jihadist Islam. Wars between traditional nation-states that operated under basically the same codes of honor and duty and wartime propriety strike me as incomplete guidance for a clash of civilization in which one side seeks not merely to gain bounty and power but to fundamentally eradicate another way of living. The customs of war which became laws of war arose out of the basic treasure-and-power conflicts between similarly constructed nation-states which sahred many common values. The stakes were not total in the way they are between the liberal, capitalist West and jihadist, fundamental Islam. I don’t mean to say we throw out everything we stand for just that it seems morally obtuse to point to standards arrived at in a completely different context and apply them to the current conflict, full stop. Because the enemy in this situation is unconstrained by any shared sense of honor, duty or propriety we simply do not have the luxery of taking certain techniques which may be effective and/or necessary to save innocent lives, off the table. In fact, in defense of our civilization I would argue that it would be immoral to do so. Enhanced interrogation is certainly not appropriate for every situation but it is also not inherently inappropriate in any situation.
My own view is that “torture” is by definition gratuitous, sadistic and without any utilitarian component. In this way, the exact same technique can be torture in one context and necessary interrogation in another. What happened at Abu Grhraib was indisputably torture, it was all degradation for no purpose. Waterboarding KSM, a known planner of terrorist attacks against civilians which seek not win a “declared war” as envisioned by the Geneva Conventions but rather to destroy and deligitmize an entire way of life, strikes me as extreme but not necessarily immoral. I don’t presume to know where the line is exactly, but I don’t think reference to standards employed by traditional wars between traditional nation-states is the end of the discussion.
May 13th, 2011 | 2:23 pm
The “legal” definition of torture has evolved to the point where sneezing in someone’s face could be considered torture.
So, a question: is physical pain equivalent in value to the loss of an innocent’s life?
If so, then we, in the West, are truly doomed.
May 13th, 2011 | 2:36 pm
When exactly did we all agree. World War I before the Geneva convention? World War II after the Geneva Convention (but both Japan and Germany tortured and were prosecuted). Korea, our soldiers again were tortured. Vietnam, yes torture. I am not sure there is any major conflict in history that one side or another did not torture. Violation of an agreement, the other side not having the same values as we do, etc., do not change the reality of tortue.
There has never been some ‘magic’ time when everyone agreed to and held to the rules during war. However, we at one time believed that we, because of who we are, should be held to a higher standard than others. It seems that time has expired.
May 13th, 2011 | 2:43 pm
Joe,
Your history is way off the mark, Mukasey was NOT “one of the chief architects of Bush’s [insert euphemism for torture here] program.” At least get the facts right.
May 13th, 2011 | 2:52 pm
Mukasey was became AG in November, 2007, the administration stopped using waterboarding in 2005. You torture opponents are starting to sound like ‘birthers.’
May 13th, 2011 | 2:57 pm
Joe,
Since George W. Bush authorized the use of torture, is he a war criminal? One of your readers already established in an earlier post that Harry Truman was, do you believe GW Bush was?
May 13th, 2011 | 3:01 pm
Publius Mukasey was became AG in November, 2007, the administration stopped using waterboarding in 2005.
The EIH program has three components: the pre-use authorization, the actual torture by the CIA interrogators, and the subsequent defense of it after the fact.
In his role as AG, Mukasey was a constitutional officer tasked with defending the laws of the land. Instead, he became (and still is) and apologist for a program that had only the thinnest fig leaf of legal cover.
You torture opponents are starting to sound like ‘birthers.’
You’re obviously running out of arguments if you’re resorting to such silliness.
Listen, if you want to defend torture, that is your prerogative. At FT we welcome all religious views, so if you want to defend pagan ethics that is your right. But you can’t expect those of use who subscribe to a Christian view of morality to agree with you.
May 13th, 2011 | 3:04 pm
@RayMidge: You write, “My own view is that “torture” is by definition gratuitous, sadistic and without any utilitarian component.”
This is a tautology[1]—given that torture results in information that cannot, by any reasonable standard, be trusted as accurate, performing torture cannot therefore ever be utilitarian.
[1] I think I used that word correctly, but formal logic isn’t my strong point, so somebody correct me if there’s a better word.
May 13th, 2011 | 3:08 pm
OK, so people who defend the use of waterboarding are simply unprincipled “apologists.” Instead of admitting you made a mistake, you just move on to another ad hominem attack. Now that’s a principled response.
Listen, if you want to live in a free country and publish a blog from a cozy air conditioned office and second guess those who have to make the tough, real world calls, that’s your right. At least acknowledge that these are tough calls before you condemn the rest of us as ‘pagans”. Very Christian of you…
BTW, is George W. Bush a war criminal?.
May 13th, 2011 | 3:18 pm
@Publius: As I said on another thread, assuming that he really did order the things most people believe he did, yes, in my view, Bush is a war criminal by modern standards. As was Truman. As was Lincoln.
May 13th, 2011 | 3:19 pm
Publius Instead of admitting you made a mistake, you just move on to another ad hominem attack. Now that’s a principled response.
If I had made a mistake I would have I have admitted it. I don’t believe Bush’s EIH program ended when the CIA stopped waterboarding prisoners. It was a legal structure that was created , modified, and defended to this day. Mukaskey has played a key role in that.
UPDATE: Okay, I see what you were saying. My use of the word “architect” could be construed to imply that Mukaskey was involved in creating the original torture memos. That’s not what I intended and architect was the wrong word to use. Mea culpa.
Also, I didn’t make an ad hominem attack. Torture is an act that can be consistent with pagan ethics but not with Christian ethics. I’m not saying you’re a pagan. I’m simply saying that you are defending a pagan principle.
Listen, if you want to live in a free country and publish a blog from a cozy air conditioned office and second guess those who have to make the tough, real world calls, that’s your right.
I served almost half my life in the Marines. One of the reason I (like most veterans) oppose torture is because, as John McCain noted, it will be our brothers and sisters that are tortured in the future by countries that adopt a “The U.S. did it, we can do it too” attitude.
And there is no “tough call” about torture. It doesn’t work. I suspect the real reason that folks like you defend it so vehemently is that you just like the idea of those “terrorist bastards have it coming.”
BTW, is George W. Bush a war criminal?.
Is Bush a war criminal? Technically, no, since he was never convicted of a crime. Did Bush authorize the use of techniques that are considered war crimes by U.S. and international standards? Absolutely.
May 13th, 2011 | 3:23 pm
“Wars between traditional nation-states that operated under basically the same codes of honor and duty and wartime propriety strike me as incomplete guidance for a clash of civilization in which one side seeks not merely to gain bounty and power but to fundamentally eradicate another way of living.”
The argument that our current foes among the radical Islamicists are a greater threat to Western Civilization than the Nazis is rank silliness.
We have enemies, and they should certainly be defeated. But somehow those “airy-headed idealists” of the 1930s and 1940s managed to simultaneously defeat two massive aggresive, fully industrialized state-of-the-art war machines over a period of a few years without throwing the moral values of that same Western civilization that is supposedly being threatened out the window.
May 13th, 2011 | 3:31 pm
I understand this is a Christian blog. That’s why I read it every day. There’s simply too much abstract commentary from people who have never held positions of responsibility — when I see terms like ‘war crimes’ and ‘war criminal’ (not from you, from your readers) I find these people so detached from reality it’s truly shocking. If you want to live like Gandhi, who advocated pacificism in response to Hilter, then do it, don’t just write about it. But don’t condemn people like Lincoln, Truman, Bush, or FDR (who allied the US with Stalin and thereby saved American lives) without at least acknowledging that for those responsible for the safety and protection of millions of Americans, there are not simple black and white answers.
May 13th, 2011 | 3:33 pm
@sd: You write “We have enemies, and they should certainly be defeated. But somehow those “airy-headed idealists” of the 1930s and 1940s managed to simultaneously defeat two massive aggresive, fully industrialized state-of-the-art war machines over a period of a few years without throwing the moral values of that same Western civilization that is supposedly being threatened out the window.” (emphasis added)
Except for the firebombing of Dresden. And Tokyo. And a couple of nuclear bombs. All of the above targeting mainly civilians.
I’m certainly not going to argue that it’s a bad thing that the Allies won. But let’s not lie to ourselves about how it was accomplished.
May 13th, 2011 | 3:37 pm
If torture is intrinsically immoral and unChristian, then why does Augustine affirm that the judge MUST torture in Civitas Dei, Bk XIX, Ch. 6 (http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120119.htm)?
“And what is still more unendurable… is… that when the judge puts the accused to the question, that he may not unwittingly put an innocent man to death, the result of this lamentable ignorance is that this very person, whom he tortured that he might not condemn him if innocent, is condemned to death both tortured and innocent.”
In spite of these necessary calamities of the legal process, Augustine goes on to ask: “will a wise judge take his seat on the bench or no? *Beyond question he will.* For human society, which he thinks it a wickedness to abandon, constrains him and compels him to this duty. And he thinks it no wickedness that innocent witnesses are tortured regarding the crimes of which other men are accused; or that the accused are put to the torture, so that they are often overcome with anguish, and, though innocent, make false confessions regarding themselves, and are punished….”
May 13th, 2011 | 3:42 pm
Publius without at least acknowledging that for those responsible for the safety and protection of millions of Americans, there are not simple black and white answers.
I think a lot of FT readers are savvy enough to make a distinction between someone who commits an immoral act for a greater good and one who commits an immoral act because they are evil. The distinction doesn’t change the immorality of the act, but it does affect how we view the person.
We also need to recognize that “war crimes” are a loaded word. The term merely means violations of a the laws of war. If you rape a civilian prisoner you have committed a war crime. But it is also a war crime to loot the bodies of dead enemies. Saying the latter is a crime is not implying that it is as evil as the former.
Targeting civilians is also a war crime. If FDR or Truman targeted civilians in bombing raids then they have technically committed war crimes. That does not mean, however, that they are morally equivalent to Hitler and Stalin.
May 13th, 2011 | 3:55 pm
@Publius: You write, “But don’t condemn people like Lincoln, Truman, Bush, or FDR (who allied the US with Stalin and thereby saved American lives) without at least acknowledging that for those responsible for the safety and protection of millions of Americans, there are not simple black and white answers.”
And that’s why we elect them: to make those decisions. If a leader—Truman, say—acts on the belief that using nuclear bombs to destroy primarily civilian areas is less immoral (in that less people would die) than allowing the war to continue via conventional means, then that is between Mr. Truman and God. That does not mean we it is wrong to describe the indiscriminate bombing of civilians as immoral.
I’m told that there are old church canons which provide for excommunicatory penalties for soldiers who kill in war, but that they are less than those for someone who commits murder. There are degrees to things. Just because something becomes necessary does not mean it is automatically good, just, or moral.
May 13th, 2011 | 3:58 pm
@DavidWL: And St. John Chrysostom railed against Jews. That doesn’t mean either were right. Even the Church Fathers aren’t right all the time—and nobody said they were.
May 13th, 2011 | 4:02 pm
Joe is absolutely right here. When someone is accused of torture because he ‘sneezed in someone’s face’, I’ll say he was innocent, but until then the whole ‘we just can’t define torture’ meme is pure sophisty… Likewise Ray’s assertions are romantic nonsense combined with special pleading. Al Qaeda is an enemy that should be fought and defeated, but they aren’t an ‘existentialist threat’ unless you mean by that they threaten the existence of moral reasoning skills in people like you.
May 13th, 2011 | 4:03 pm
Joe Carter: So you agree that waterboarding for instructional purposes over short periods is not torture. Would you also agree that the same is true of pulling out fingernails or burning with cigarettes or cutting off appendages? Clearly, there’s a qualitative difference between these latter forms of coersion and waterboarding. And that’s why blanket statements such as “There is no serious dispute about whether waterboarding is torture” inevitably miss the point.
May 13th, 2011 | 4:06 pm
@Carson Chittom:
1. So how do we know when they are right and when they are wrong?
:-0
2. Sorry, this is a difference of *kind*. So Chrysostom’s anti-Jewish rhetoric is now recognized as being unjustified, and unacceptable in Christian-Jewish relations.
In contrast, we are being told that an explicit ethical argument made by the foremost Latin Christian thinker of the patristic era was immoral and contrary to the fundamental relevant moral dogmas. Apparently Augustine did not believe in the modern formulae of “human dignity” that we are being told apply. Something’s off.
May 13th, 2011 | 4:09 pm
i was waiting for someone to make the comments RayMidge made. I think Ray is right on the money – context and intent are crucial. Everyone can recognize the Gestapo’s tactics as torture – “lets’s abuse everyone we arrest just for the sake of it and see what shakes out.” But this is very different from the few select cases of waterboarding we’re talking about today. If a cop shoots and kills a madman waving a weapon in a school, why is the cop not a murderer? Obviously because his intent was to protect the innocent, not take a life for personal reasons. However, if he shoots his wife, we would not say the same – because the context and intent are different. I would at least allow the possibility that the few select cases of waterboarding we’re talking about here are more analogous to the cop killing the madman than the Gestapo. Right?
May 13th, 2011 | 4:10 pm
JB in CA So you agree that waterboarding for instructional purposes over short periods is not torture.
No, I don’t agree. I think waterboarding for training is a form of voluntary torture.
Would you also agree that the same is true of pulling out fingernails or burning with cigarettes or cutting off appendages?
I suppose if some sicko were to volunteer to have those things done to them, then they too would be voluntary torture.
Clearly, there’s a qualitative difference between these latter forms of coercion and waterboarding.
Yes, there is. Those have the potential to cause serious and permanent physical harm while waterboarding has a risk of causing serious and permanent psychological damage.
And that’s why blanket statements such as “There is no serious dispute about whether waterboarding is torture” inevitably miss the point.
I don’t think it does. The idea that you aren’t torturing someone unless you are putting bamboo under their nails or something is a recent development. When waterboarding was done to our troops in Vietnam there weren’t too many people claiming that it wasn’t torture.
May 13th, 2011 | 4:17 pm
@DavidWL: Keep tossing me softballs. :) We know a specific Father is right when his or her writing is in accordance with the teachings of the Church—that is to say, with Holy Tradition, including the Bible.
May 13th, 2011 | 4:18 pm
@john: Was it less “torture” when the Holy Office hurt people to save their soul?
May 13th, 2011 | 4:28 pm
“Just because something becomes necessary does not mean it is automatically good, just, or moral.” Thanks for the lesson. I’ve never thought of it that way before. You’ve got a real handle on how the world works.
May 13th, 2011 | 4:31 pm
Reply to Carson: I acknowledge the point of your question – it is often too easy to rationalize and excuse evil actions because we have the “right” intention. On the other hand, do you mean to suggest – contra RayMidge and myself – that intention and context are irrelevant to this discussion?
May 13th, 2011 | 4:33 pm
The August 2008 issue of VANITY FAIR had an essay in which Christopher Hitchens described his experience of being waterboarded, twice. Hitchens titled his essay, “Believe Me, It’s Torture”.
Waterboarding may satisfy any useful definition of “torture”, but this citizen continues to be uncertain whether US policy ought to forbid waterboarding. Hitchens subjected himself to it in order to write a compelling essay.
In a ticking-bomb situation, must interrogators refrain from using a process that Hitchens arranged to have performed on himself?
In Nov 2008, a group of terrorists wrought havoc in Mumbai. Many innocents were already dead, rescuers were searching for wounded, booby-traps and more lurking killers were likely, perhaps attacks on other cities were planned. A wounded terrorist was taken into custody, and a few hours later the authorities disclosed that interrogation had resulted in valuable information. I think it likely that the wounded terrorist was subjected to very great pain, and I am untroubled.
May 13th, 2011 | 4:37 pm
Everyone can recognize the Gestapo’s tactics as torture – “lets’s abuse everyone we arrest just for the sake of it and see what shakes out.” But this is very different from the few select cases of waterboarding we’re talking about today
Actually that was NOT the Gestapo’s tactics, the Gestapo, like the KGB and other institutions that used torture did not simply make it a policy to torture everyone for the sake of it. Being highly selective about torture doesn’t clense the immorality of it.
May 13th, 2011 | 4:47 pm
@john: You write, “On the other hand, do you mean to suggest – contra RayMidge and myself – that intention and context are irrelevant to this discussion?”
Yes, I assert that context and intention are irrelevant in determining whether or not waterboarding is torture.
Note that in my view this is a separate question from whether torture is effective, or justifiable, or moral—and that these latter questions would be ones in which context and intention are relevant.
May 13th, 2011 | 4:54 pm
@Publius: You write, “Thanks for the lesson. I’ve never thought of it that way before. You’ve got a real handle on how the world works.”
Thank you for your kinds words—I’m very glad you found my words helpful. I think you said you’re in the military? I was a soldier once (never saw combat, thank God), and I think that, more broadly stated, this is a question every soldier, sailor, airman, and marine who takes his or her faith seriously must grapple with: how do I reconcile my faith and the acts I may well be asked to do?
May 13th, 2011 | 5:27 pm
reply to Carson #2:
You observe “Note that in my view this is a separate question from whether torture is effective, or justifiable, or moral—and that these latter questions would be ones in which context and intention are relevant.”
OK then. But I think most of the respondents in this thread assume that any act correctly labeled as “torture” is, by definition immoral. Thus if waterboarding is “torture”, then it is immoral. The dispute is whether waterboarding should be so labeled. You reply suggests that waterboarding is “torture” but you would allow the possibility that it could be moral, given the right context or intention. That’s not how the other respondents are reasoning, it seems to me. But if you are allowing that intention and context can be – or should be – relevant in evaluating the morality of waterboarding, then you are probably on the same page as RayMidge and myself. No? Good discussion. Thanks for your replies. Am signing off for the weekend now.
May 13th, 2011 | 5:31 pm
SD said:
“The argument that our current foes among the radical Islamicists are a greater threat to Western Civilization than the Nazis is rank silliness.
We have enemies, and they should certainly be defeated. But somehow those “airy-headed idealists” of the 1930s and 1940s managed to simultaneously defeat two massive aggresive, fully industrialized state-of-the-art war machines over a period of a few years without throwing the moral values of that same Western civilization that is supposedly being threatened out the window.”
I don’t think I said they are a *greater* threat, I said that they are a fundamentally different threat, i.e. their motives and goals and base assumptions about what is appropriate forms of warfare are different. Al Qeada is not a nation-state, they do not wear uniforms, they do not attack military in a conventional war-making way.
The example of the Nazis is an instructive one, however, because their systemic genocide certainly heralded an end to that era of “honorable war” that had led to the formation of “laws of war” in the first place. Our reaction to the Nazis, as pointed out by others, certainly pushed the limits of those laws/customs as well and many now argue that we in fact did go too far and violated the laws of war in an unnecessary and illegal way. I am not a historian, but my sense is that the gradual emergence of customs, then laws, of war in the time period from 1500-1914 always correlated with a transgression of those customs and laws. Something was considered beyond the pale, someone crossed that line, a new line was drawn etc….. It used to be dishonerable to even hide from the enemy or employ guerrilla tactics. I don’t know where the line is now, but I don’t think we do ourselves any honor by saying that we will confront them that would have us completely destroyed with one arm tied behind our back. When it comes to interrogation and intelligence gathering, I do not claim to know what is effective or not, I leave that judgment to the professionals. My stance is that as a Catholic and an American I think that there is morality in confronting evil and protecting the innocent and that this will sometimes involve very unsavory and painful undertakings. To call these things “torture” and to dismiss them as entirely illegitmate and never called for is any person’s right. My own view is that where necessary and effective under particular circumstances it is both moral and appropriate.
Carson,
my definition is indeed tautalogical . . . I wouldn’t say I meant it to be, but I do think that to call something “torture” is to identify it as done for its own sake, for the pelasure of simply inflicting pain. The very same rough or painful thing done for the purpose of eliciting information to protect innocent lives is therefore not “torture” in my mind. it is indeed “enhanced interrogation”. That said, I do not mean to evade through euphamism . . . we should call it what it is- simulated drowning e.g.- and recognize it as meant to frighten, disorient, break the will etc… in order to get information to protect the innocent. I don’t mean to deny what is being done, I just think that the last part, the protection of the innocent, is crucial and that context takes it outside of the simple infliction of pain for sadistic pleasure or to simply humiliate for its own sake, that I would define as “torture”.
May 13th, 2011 | 5:41 pm
Joe Carter:
Yes, there is. Those [pulling fingernails, etc.] have the potential to cause serious and permanent physical harm while waterboarding has a risk of causing serious and permanent psychological damage.
It’s interesting to note how my edition of the American Heritage Dictionary (1992) defines ‘torture’:
n. 1.a Infliction of severe physical pain as a means of punishment or coercion. b. an instrument or a method for inflicting such pain. 2. Excruciating physical or mental pain; agony: the torture of waiting in suspense. 3. Something causing severe pain or anguish.
Here, torture is defined as a kind of physical punishment or coercion. The application of the term to psychological cases is treated as a kind of metaphor. Now, I’m not claiming that the American Heritage Dictionary (of 1992) is the last word on this issue, but it does seems to favor those who believe waterboarding is not (literally) torture, whereas the other practices I mentioned are.
I think waterboarding for training is a form of voluntary torture.
Torture involves either punishment or coercion. But no one was being punished during SERE training sessions, and to say that someone was coerced voluntarily makes no sense.
The idea that you aren’t torturing someone unless you are putting bamboo under their nails or something is a recent development. When waterboarding was done to our troops in Vietnam there weren’t too many people claiming that it wasn’t torture.
But isn’t that the very point at issue? Were they right to make such claims?
May 13th, 2011 | 6:42 pm
@ Carson Chittom
1. Where does the Bible talk about torture or “human dignity”?
2. Where does the Holy Tradition talk about torture and “human dignity”?
Well, Augustine, one very important representative within that collective Tradition, *did* talk about about torture–in a positive sense–uh-oh.
So one wants to cite the teaching about “human dignity”. From what sources does one derive that tradition? It is certainly not directly found in the Bible. Indeed, the NT clearly suggests the contrary (Phil 2:7–the form of man is that of a slave; Romans 8:20-21–all creation is subjected to frustration).
The problem here is sometimes designated the “no true Scotsman” problem. What is the *real* tradition? And how does one know that, e.g., *this* tradition from a given representative (say, Augustine) belongs in the tradition, and *that* tradition does not?
You say: no true Christian endorses torture.
I reply: Augustine did.
You say: but Augustine’s teaching on torture is not what the Christian tradition *really* teaches about torture.
I inquire: and how do we know what the tradition *really* teaches?
You reply: Scripture and the Tradition.
I inquire: where does Scripture teach about human dignity and torture?
You reply: Tradition interprets Scripture
I inquire: which *parts* of the Tradition?
You can’t say the *whole* Tradition, since there is no whole without the parts. So first you must determine which parts before you can determine the whole.
May 13th, 2011 | 9:23 pm
@David WL: You write: “You say: no true Christian endorses torture. I reply: Augustine did. ”
Actually, I didn’t say that. I said that I didn’t think St. Augustine was right—just as I believe that St. John Chrysotom wasn’t right in his anti-Semitic rants. (I’m aware of the “no true Scotsman” fallacy, of course.) In fact, while affirming his sainthood and his place with the Church Fathers, it is my view that St. Augustine’s writing—with the exception of the Confessions—is largely not representative of Holy Tradition. So as a result, I don’t find him a “very important representative.” But then, I’m not a Roman Catholic or a Protestant. Perhaps you could engage in that argument with someone who is.
If you like, my own view is stated by Fr. Thomas Hopko in his The Orthodox Faith: Volume I, Doctrine: “The writings of the Church Fathers are not infallible, and it has even been said that in any given one of them some things could be found which could be quesitoned in the light of the fullness of the Tradition of the Church. Nevertheless, taken as a whole, the writings of the Fathers which are built upon the biblical and liturgical foundations of Christian faith and life have great authority within the Orthodox Church and are primary sources for the discovery of the Church’s doctrine” (p. 24).
I also didn’t say anything about human dignity; you did. I could have, naturally, but I didn’t.
You write: “You say: but Augustine’s teaching on torture is not what the Christian tradition *really* teaches about torture.
I inquire: and how do we know what the tradition *really* teaches?
You reply: Scripture and the Tradition.
I inquire: where does Scripture teach about human dignity and torture?
You reply: Tradition interprets Scripture
I inquire: which *parts* of the Tradition?”
Obviously, I didn’t say any of that, either. Scripture and Tradition are not opposed. Scripture is a part—the most important part—of Tradition.
You write: “You can’t say the *whole* Tradition, since there is no whole without the parts. So first you must determine which parts before you can determine the whole.”
Whyso? Must I know my organs before I know I’m a person? Must I know arcs before I know a circle?
I kindly suggest that if you choose to reply, you respond to what I’ve actually said instead of what you imagine I might say.
May 13th, 2011 | 9:51 pm
JB in CA
I think waterboarding would fit the definition of torture you provided due to the severe physical pain it inflicts. In fact, waterboarding has been used by torturers for ages because for its ability to inflict severe physical pain without leaving physical injuries or scars.
The question of whether SERE training is ‘voluntary torture’ or something else isn’t really relevant. Suppose as part of an advanced training program, a trainee had to endure being whipped, kicked in the groin or have a cigar put out on his arm? Just because that may be incorporated into a training program doesn’t magically make it all ok and ‘not torture’ when used against he unwilling.
May 13th, 2011 | 10:02 pm
@john: In the hope that you will return to the discussion come Monday, I reply.
You write: “You reply suggests that waterboarding is “torture” but you would allow the possibility that it could be moral, given the right context or intention. ”
I’m sorry; I was unclear. I can definitely see why you read it that way, though. When I said the “moral” nature of torture depends on context and intention, I was talking about what I wrote in my earlier reply to Publius above:
My point is that while I believe torture to be immoral, it’s conceivable—though unlikely—that it might be less so than some alternative, and that that determination would depend on context and intention.
May 13th, 2011 | 11:11 pm
I was ambivalent about the CIA rendition and torture program. I did not like it, but was it necessary in defense of the realm. I think now that we made a big, big mistake. The comments of two men turned me against torture which includes waterboarding: John Le Carre, the author and former MI6 agent, and Marcus Wolf. Wolf headed the East German foreign spy agency. In his biography he denounced torture because it was not effective and dependable. John McCain denounced it and he had first hand knowledge. Having suffered from insomnia for a period of my life, sleep deprivation and the other forms I have read about are inexcusable. As much as I disagree with Obama, he is right as rain to stop it.
May 13th, 2011 | 11:44 pm
It’s obviously not torture. Because torture only happens when we could care less if the person being tortured is in mental distress – in fact, torturers WANT their victims in as much pain as possible, and are only hesitant to do more/worse because it might prematurely kill or knock-out the victims. Waterboarding cannot be torture because we do, in fact, care about even the short term distress being caused, and the technique has been designed (hampered) to inflict as little physical damage as possible, as only the psychological impact is desired.
Whether or not it gets results? Beats me. But torture? No. My brother did worse to me at the swimming pool. *That* was torture. And the technique was called *dunking*.
May 14th, 2011 | 9:16 am
If memory serves me right, Gen. George Marshall was “waterboarded”, when he was a cadet at VMI. Only then it was called “hazing”.
In listening to stories my relatives brought back from Europe in WWII. If they caught an enemy who had info, that would save American lives, they would very definitely try to get that info, one way or another.
Not always pretty, but as Sherman said “War is hell”.
May 14th, 2011 | 9:17 am
P.S. Would “stoning” be considered “torture”?
May 14th, 2011 | 10:34 am
By Moe’s logic, let’s consider a device that can stimulate the nerve endings to feel exactly what would be felt if one held the flesh over open flame. But because this is only artificial stimulation, there’s no physical damage actually done to the body. If any of you remember the original Dune movie, think of that box that the Prince had to keep his hand inside.
This wouldn’t be torture, but if we actually held someone’s hand over open flame it would be torture. But what if you were captured by an enemy, blindfolded and exposed to this device? They lead you back to your cell afterwards but there’s a big explosion, a Navy Seal team is there to rescue you! But in the explosion you loose your hand.
You are asked when you get back home where you tortured? You don’t know if they really burned your hand or just subjected to the device? Hmmmmmmmm…
Extreme mental distress would be torture IMO, but waterboarding is clearly physical distress. Technically the sensation of being deprived of air and drowning may not be the same sensation as the physical pain of burning, stabbing or punching…but it may very well be worse. You’re correct that when the torture is being done by someone you know like a big brother or as part of a training program it may be different…. Likewise if you’re, say, doing it to yourself (such as holding your finger over a flame) there’s less of a fear element because you’re in control, but again I’m not seeing how this is relevant to the discussion.
May 14th, 2011 | 1:03 pm
“Because torture only happens when we could care less if the person being tortured is in mental distress”
Huh? Since when? Mental distress, even when the torture is overtly and painfully and destructively physical, is part of what motivates people to give up whatever the torturer is trying to extract. That’s why the threat of torture will endure a weaker victim to cave even before the torture happens — that part is ALL mental. If a person could endure pain with no mental distress, any form of torture would be far less effective.
May 14th, 2011 | 2:11 pm
Although I neither have first-hand experience nor research to support this notion, I strongly suspect that since time immemorial, certain forces of EVERY state have used tactics which clearly constituted torture (no matter how defined) and shocked the conscience, although many (for various reasons) have chosen not to do so openly.
However, that we live in a society capable of public introspection may be just good enough, for now, especially with other issues on our plate.
It’s what helps form the “collective conscience” that all societies need, but do not have.
May 14th, 2011 | 2:11 pm
For all the armchair quarterbacks here, who as Christians defend torture, why do you not listen to an ex-POW, Sen McCain? I think he knows a little more about it and has a profound concern for the example we set and the welfare of our own troops.
And on the other thread, re: Bin Laden and torture
Steve S.’s testimony should put the matter to rest
Steve S
May 13th, 2011 | 12:09 pm
“The United States military is not in the habit of subjecting its own troops to torture.”
As a former soldier, I’m not so sure I agree with this statement as it is presented above. Yes, the U.S. military is not in the habit of torturing its own troops, but the purpose of SERE training is, in fact, to expose trainees to experiences that they would probably encounter while in the custody of an enemy who, most likely, would expose them to “enhanced interrogation techniques”. Like every other type of training in the military, the purpose is to familiarize the trainees to conditions that mirror, as closely as possible, the “real thing”. That is why Ranger school, for example, withholds food and sleep from trainees. That is why live-ammunition is shot over soldiers practicing their low-crawl at Basic Training. For soldiers at a high-risk of enemy capture (Special Forces, certain pilots, etc), we apply this same principle. So SERE does, actually, expose them to situations that are unsavory and ugly.
A couple of anecdotes: 1) A show on the Discovery Channel about SERE reported that Army psychologists conducted a study that measured stress hormones in SERE trainees and compared their levels to the levels of people on other “high-stress” situations (sky-diving, etc). They concluded that the stress hormones were so high, that an over-whelming majority of SERE trainees actually became temporarily sterile. The stress shut down their sperm production.
2) My friend who went through SERE training once told me that that training was so intense that he would prefer to die rather than get captured by the enemy. Because of the classified nature of the training, he couldn’t elaborate. But he was absolutely serious. I can’t imagine that anything but “torture” would induce this attitude in him.
I suggest we not be naive as to what our own military does to our own soldiers. It’s ugly, yet necessary to give our forces the best chance at survival if they do ever get captured.[end quote]
Here are two faithful witnesses.
May 14th, 2011 | 3:11 pm
Boonton:
I think waterboarding would fit the definition of torture you provided due to the severe physical pain it inflicts.
You may well be right, depending on what the American Heritage editors meant by “severe physical pain”. I guess I’m inclined to interpret that phrase as pain that causes lasting physical damage. Otherwise, virtually anything could count as torture, as long as it resulted in severe physical pain. And I’m not inclined to think, e.g., that high school coaches are (literally) engaging in torture when they make their players run an excessive number of laps as punishment for sloppy play. They may be guilty of something else—callousness, perhaps—but not torture.
The question of whether SERE training is ‘voluntary torture’ or something else isn’t really relevant. Suppose as part of an advanced training program, a trainee had to endure being whipped, kicked in the groin or have a cigar put out on his arm? Just because that may be incorporated into a training program doesn’t magically make it all ok and ‘not torture’ when used against he unwilling.
Joe Carter denied that SERE training was something other than torture. He described it as “voluntary torture”. I was responding to that claim. By definition, torture is either (1) a form of punishement or (2) a form of coercion. Since the soldiers were being neither punished for an offense nor coerced into the program, it follows that they were not being tortured. A term other than ‘torture’ is required to describe the training they underwent. I was not claiming that the incorporation of waterboarding “into a training program … magically make[s] it all ok and ‘not torture’ when used against the unwilling”.
One thing I want to guard against in this debate is the tendency among some to treat waterboarding per se as a form of torture. It seems evident to me that at least some cases of waterboarding do not rise to the level of torture. If I’m right, what we need is a clear understanding of the concept of torture, not ostensive definitions of the practice.
May 14th, 2011 | 9:18 pm
JB,
Why would ‘lasting physical damage’ need to be part of the definition? I think you’re reading too much into it. Football players suffer ‘lasting physical damage’ from their years of practice as well as physical pain during practice and play, adding ‘lasting physical damage’ to the definition doesn’t save you from ‘cutsey’ types who like to play the ‘what is’ game.
Which brings to mind a quote from GK Chesterton that might be apt here:
I would be careful with this game. Those who ask too much “what is physical pain” aren’t asking because they are concerned that high school coaches will be tried as torturers for making the players run too many laps, that Harrison Ford be locked up at Gitmo for threatening to make another Indiana Jones Movie or that some poor old woman will be tried at Nurenberg for grating her in-laws’ ears with her incessant nattering on about what a fine fellow Glen Beck is, they are asking not be ’cause they want the limits clearly defined but because they want the limits to be fatally fuzzy. John Yo, the laywer for the Bush administration, asserted point blank that the President had the authority to have a terrorist suspects child’s testicles crushed in front of him if it was deemed to be in support of ‘national security’.
One thing I want to guard against in this debate is the tendency among some to treat waterboarding per se as a form of torture. It seems evident to me that at least some cases of waterboarding do not rise to the level of torture. If I’m right, what we need is a clear understanding of the concept of torture, not ostensive definitions of the practice.
Granted, some circumstances you may have things that are like or are waterboarding that should not be called torture. SERE training, ok. A big brother picking on you, ok. A pundit ‘volunteering’ for it to report about it, ok. A day at a waterpark, ok. But we are talking specifically about waterboarding done on people we have taken prisoners, not volunteers, kids, people playing games.
May 15th, 2011 | 1:10 am
[...] Waterboarding a captured enemy is torture, and thus contrary to international law, our American ideals, and (most importantly) our Christian faith. (Read this.) [...]
May 15th, 2011 | 10:28 am
The definition of torture is not so obvious as some people here would maintain.
First there is the question of purpose: torture is coercion, through pain, for the purpose of intelligence gathering.
There are, as has been mentioned, two types of pain you can inflict, physical, causing permanent physical harm, and psychological, causing fear, worry, and anxiety. I suspect everyone believes the former is torture. Confining someone in a room will cause the latter in a low degree, water boarding will produce it in a higher degree. At what point does it become torture? What principle determines when psychological distress becomes torturous?
This line of inquiry is not mere evasion, nor is it an attempt to blur the lines of morality, it is perfectly legitimate. Simply stating everything you feel is torture is actually torture does not make it so.
May 15th, 2011 | 11:54 am
This is an important discussion, and because it is it should be dealt with honestly and with a factual understanding of history and our ethical obligations. Yet this discussion began with a canard. It is not the first time this canard has been employed on this blog in the discussion of torture. The folks at FT should know better. The former Navy JAG use of the Black Legend was quoted. He said that waterboarding was devised by the Spanish Inquisition and was thus an iconinc example of torture. The problem is that the inquisition as an icon of tortue is an intentional bigoted lie, both anti-Catholic and anti-Hispanic. The legend was designed to falsely impugn those groups. The inqisition did employ torture, as did all European courts of the time, but much less often. Joe Carter ought to read the brief but informative essay The True Story of the Inquisition by former St. Louis Univ. history chair Thomas Madden. Torture was used in about 2% of the case, never for more than 15 minutes, seldom a second time and never a third. They were prohibited from cutting or causing lasting physical harm, which is probably why waterboarding was devised. The procedures of the inquisition was a move away from torture and inhumanity, not towards it as it is often falsely portrayed in the pedominantly Protestant Anglophone world. Indeed, there were cases of defendants in secular courts blaspheming specifically so they could access the more humane jurisdiction of the inquisition. I’m hoping not to see the Black Legend employed here again. Bigotry is an ugly thing, even when stumbled into unknowingly. First Things ought to be a place better informed of history and devoid of bigoted myths.
May 15th, 2011 | 1:05 pm
Jeff,
Using your definition a person confined to a room because they were being held prisoner or on as serving a punishment for a crime would not be torture since the purpose is not to ‘coerce’ the individual to say or do anything.
Yet the fact is torture sometimes has been used for straight punishment without regard to whether or not the individual had anything worth ‘revealing’
May 16th, 2011 | 8:22 am
The Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Being Subjected to Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, adopted by the General Assembly on 9 December 1975 (Resolution 3452 (XXX)), embodied in the Convention was not new law. It repeats and clarifies Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the General Assembly on 10 December 1948 (Resolution 217 A III) and Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights adopted by the General Assembly on 16 December 1976.(Resolution 2200).
What was new was the agreed definition, a definition that is expressed as inclusive, not exclusive, cited by Mr Carter, as was the declaration that “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.” (Article 2 (2))
Note that “severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental” are disjunctive: most publicists consider threats may amount to torture, even if unaccompanied by physical abuse.
May 16th, 2011 | 9:50 am
First Things readers have to endure Joe Carter periodically riding this hobbyhorse through the high fields of dudgeon. It’s just a fact of life here.
But guess what? None of us should stand by while he impugns our Christian commitment and slanders by calling us crypto-pagan.
Listen, Joe, we are not defending torture. We are disagreeing with your stubbornly emotional definition of torture, predetermined and implacable, with mountains of one-sided citation to make your question-begging appear not just defensible but self-evident to everyone who serves in the name of Christ.
If you insist on insulting our commitment to faith because of our politics, bring something less superficial to the table. Yours are dueling words.
The first thing you can do is presume our good faith rather than our patent moral deviancy, or at least conceal your contempt long enough for us to be compelled to give you a hearing. That’s how a forum that relies on mutual respect operates. There are people you presumably respect for independent reasons — such as Matthew Franck — who have come to a reasonable disagreement. That should be enough for you to think twice about your approach to this issue.
Every facet of Christianity requires an eternal defense until the day the Lord comes again, including and especially the ones you have internalized to such a glorious degree that you have forgotten how radical and presumptuous they are. We proceed under the truth of Christ resurrected, but it is irresponsible to presume that truth is brought to men’s hearts by simple assertion (or even by witness or by faith alone). It may take the full complement of the rhetorical toolbox to convert a soul. It makes a mockery of our duty to evangelize when we assume mere proclamation followed by mulishness will suffice to bring fellow sinners to salvation. We begin in humility, for we too were once lost but now are found.
If your political position on waterboarding is indeed inextricable from the spread of the Gospel, you will need to adopt a different rhetorical method because many (if not most) God-fearing people were not graced with your insight, and temperance is not just a virtue, it’s a requirement of persuasion among your rational brothers in Christ.
Yes, we are called to be jealous protectors of one another’s Christianity, and yes, we must remark upon the straying of sheep. But such a solemn duty must never be used as a cudgel to bloody up political opponents: our good graces with the Redeemer is the paramount concern of our lives. We rely on your judgment to stay true to this most undeserved gift of baptism. Please, for the love of God, be more careful when you call it into question. There is nothing in heaven or earth more serious.
Our consciences are formed. We are not always in shape, but we brothers in Christ are indeed trained to respond to that still, small voice. You can make your case better through an appeal to our conscience rather than an accusation of its comprehensive absence among those who hold a certain opinion. You can trust that we are deeply, mortally concerned with the effect of politics on the trajectory of our soul and do not arrive at disagreement lightly.
May 16th, 2011 | 10:00 am
King We are disagreeing with your stubbornly emotional definition of torture, predetermined and implacable, with mountains of one-sided citation to make your question-begging appear not just defensible but self-evident to everyone who serves in the name of Christ.
Waterboarding had been considered torture for at least 500 years. It is not like I am the one that is trying to change the definition. Now that we want to use it for our own purposes, we have Americans that are attempting to reclassify the technique as something else than what it has always been considered to be.
For centuries it has been considered self-evident that waterboarding was torture. Everyone I know who has been waterboarded is quick to tell you that, “Yes, indeed it is torture.” Those who advocate for its use should explain not why it is not torture but why, since it is not, we cannot use it for routine interrogations of civil crimes.
May 16th, 2011 | 11:36 am
Those who advocate for its use should explain not why it is not torture but why, since it is not, we cannot use it for routine interrogations of civil crimes.
Indeed Joe, don’t worry what you see here is just the advance team….the next level will be more than happy to push us all down that slope.
May 16th, 2011 | 11:56 am
For everyone who thinks that waterboarding isn’t torture, I dare them to have it tried on them. (Christopher Hitchens actually does this — you should read the article.)
May 16th, 2011 | 1:14 pm
There’s nothing inherently wrong with having a discussion about definitions and whether a given definition might be so fuzzy around the edges as to include cases we wouldn’t normally want to include, for example SERE training or the high school football coach who pushes his players really hard…..
But ‘the definition is too fuzzy’ is only a defense when that’s the problem, not an escape hatch for things that have always been clearly considered within the bounds of the definition.
Consider an analogy with the question of what defines cheating inside a marriage? Does it matter if a man looks at Playboy? Does it matter if he likes to wink at other girls? Does it matter if he looks at good looking chicks on the beach? All those factors may be a in a somewhat fuzzy zone where we may have to admit the definition of cheating needs to be more carefully thought out…..however this ‘fuzziness’ problem with the definition will not do a man much good if his wife comes home and finds him in bed nude with the babysitter! “How can you say I was cheating when we can’t even be sure if looking at a Victoria’s Secret catelog is cheating!” is a defense that is unlikely to go very far. Likewise those here who are clinging to perceived imperfections in the definition of torture are are lot more out on a ledge than they may realize.
May 16th, 2011 | 7:54 pm
There must be a reason why opponents of waterboarding cannot rest content with arguing against it but must persist in labelling it ‘torture’. I suspect it’s much the same reason why some can’t rest content with arguing against the mistreatment of others but must persist in labelling it ‘racism’, ‘sexism’, ‘homophobia’, etc. Remember how the scientific community couldn’t rest content with arguing against intelligent design but had to persist until a judge labelled it ‘creationism’?
May 17th, 2011 | 7:16 am
“Listen, Joe, we are not defending torture. We are disagreeing with your stubbornly emotional definition of torture, predetermined and implacable, with mountains of one-sided citation to make your question-begging appear not just defensible but self-evident to everyone who serves in the name of Christ.”
I wish I said that!
May 17th, 2011 | 7:32 am
Could it be because in many cases it really is those things they label it as?
May 18th, 2011 | 11:26 am
Joe Carter wrote:
You can quibble over definitions and redefinitions, you may “advocate for its use” or for its ban. But you cannot attach your faith to quibbles and declare the rest of the world faithless. That’s an error that solves nothing, defeats clarity, and creates unnecessary opposition.
Further, you won’t triumph in your cause by winning the right to define torture. The difficulty with your definition is that you have emotionally and semantically linked it to practices that indeed inspire universal condemnation among Christians, and you seem to think that by successfully classifying a certain practice as technically torture, you will have done the full work of persuasion. That is a victory on points but not in hearts.
But even were you to win on points, you are failing to address the reasonable disagreement many have with you, a disagreement whose illegitimacy cannot be declared “self-evident” by citing the history of what had been “considered self-evident.” A practice in the service of proper ends that causes severe discomfort and fear of death but no actual permanent harm is not identical to sadistically damaging someone for evil purposes. The devil is literally in the details.
That’s all people like me want to preserve: a place where we might reasonably discuss those details without being categorized as anti-Christian. Maybe if you had taken the same approach you’d have more people listening to your case. As it stands, I’m inclined to side with pro-waterboarders if only because they haven’t shown themselves to be lacking such confidence in their own argument. They don’t feel it necessary to resort to dogmatic, broad condemnation and dismissal of their opposition to emphasize their point, but rather allow their (very possibly erroneous) position speak for itself.
May 18th, 2011 | 3:28 pm
“Could it be because in many cases it really is those things they label it as?”
Yes, but it could also be because they’re (1) trying to attach a negatively-charged connotation to their opponents’ position in order to (2) win an argument by definition so that they can (3) trigger legal sanctions against those who oppose them.
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