March 10, 2008
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I THOUGHT THIS PRESIDENT WAS A CHRISTIAN?
President Bush just vetoed a bill that would ban waterboarding, a form of torture that the CIA has used against terrorists in the last few years. He vetoed it because “”The bill Congress sent me would take away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror,” and “This is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe,” and “We created alternative procedures to question the most dangerous al Qaeda operatives, particularly those who might have knowledge of attacks planned on our homeland,” Bush said. “If we were to shut down this program and restrict the CIA to methods in the field manual, we could lose vital information from senior al Qaeda terrorists, and that could cost American lives.”
Oh I see, Mr. President. That makes it ok to torture people I guess. Pragmatics win.
“Supporters of the legislation say it would preserve the United States’ ability to collect critical intelligence while also providing a much-needed boost to country’s moral standing abroad.”
Remind me: how does an immoral practice boost our moral standing?
Read this article on CNN about the practice and the veto, and then this commentary, “Time to Excommunicate the President”.
Comments (4)
Although, are we completely sure we’ve proved to everyone’s satisfaction that torture is always immoral? Especially something like waterboarding which shouldn’t be life-threatening if done “properly”, just very very uncomfortable.
Not sure whether I’m playing Devil’s advocate here or just being annoying…
Never understood how torture works. The torturer is trying to get his victims to cough up information, right? That means he’s assuming that they have that information – but what if they don’t? Obviously if he’s torturing them, he doesn’t believe that they’re innocent; but torture will get anybody to say anything, just to get it to stop, and so he doesn’t know if he’s on the right trail or not.
So not only immoral, but counterproductive.
to Mornar: thanks for the note! I would never wait for something to be proved to *everyone’s satisfaction.
Torture is always immoral. Slowly inserting bamboo slivers under someone’s fingernail is not life-threatening either, but it’s immoral. The Scripture is very very clear about how you gain information — witnesses, not causing such pain to the accused that he “confesses” (see my response to Lady Gray below). There is absolutely nothing in the Bible that legitimates pain as a tool of proof of wrong-doing (and certainly not gaining intelligence about an enemy) and tons of condemnation of cruelty and tons of advocacy of kindness. In defending oneself or one’s nation against an enemy, one may be violent but one (or one’s nation) may never, ever stoop to the enemies particular methods, which often include complete disregard for the imago-dei-ness of the human being called your enemy. If torture is a necessary method to keep the U.S., it’s better for the U.S. to collapse. We absolutely deserve it at that point.
Lady Gray: thanks for the note! Several of links from those two articles are to discussions of not only the immorality of torture but the very non-productivity of it as an interrogation method, as you have pointed out. There have been many resignations from Guantanamo Bay and other U.S. military and CIA centers precisely because (as one article points) the immoral methods used are not productive. And yet they keep being used because (as another article points out), the heads of these centers don’t want justice, they want convictions. I repeat; if this is what it takes to keep us safe — using cruelty to enemies, refusal to serve justice — then we deserve to fall.