I like polls. I follow polls. Last year, like millions of Americans, I was almost obsessed with polls, and developed a massive man-crush on Nate Silver of the top-notch polling site, FiveThirtyEight. I like it when polls tell me things I suspect are true, or want to be true, such as the recent poll from ABC demonstrating that a narrow plurality of Americans support marriage equality.
But I have never been as distressed by a poll as I was by the much-discussed, much-lamented one released last week by the Pew Forum. The Religious Dimensions of the Torture Debate made it very clear that church-going Christians in general, and white evangelicals in particular, are much more inclined to see torture as at least sometimes both necessary and justified than are their secular counterparts. It wasn’t that I didn’t think that the poll could be true; indeed, I understand all too well the political and theological heresies which are rife in the American church and which encourage this abhorrent and biblically indefensible notion to flourish. (Is Mel Gibson’s snuff film about our Savior to blame? Is it that most folks completely misunderstand — and many pastors misrepresent — atonement theory?) It’s that on an emotional level, I didn’t want it to be true.
As a self-described progressive evangelical, my views on many issues diverge from most who describe themselves as “deeply religious” or “born-again.” I support marriage equality for all; I am prayerfully, at times reluctantly, firmly pro-choice. I believe that wise stewardship over creation means understanding that all of creation — and not merely human beings — are endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights. My veganism and my feminism, far from existing uneasily alongside my Christian faith, are indeed rooted in my own understanding of Jesus and His call upon my heart. I expect to have arguments about sexual ethics with my more conservative fellow Christians. I expect to engage in the old “complemetarian versus egalitarian” debate about gender roles. But I never seriously expected to need to explain to a fellow Christian that torturing another human being was fundamentally incompatible with our faith.
(Before going further, let me recommend Mercer University professor and Christian ethicist David Gushee’s very fine post about the poll.)
For me, at the very heart of Christian ethics is the idea that Machiavelli (or those who misquote him) is fundamentally wrong: the ends do not justify the means. Indeed, from a Christian perspective, the ends are already assured: the final victory over darkness has already been won, and was won two thousand years ago. That victory came through many things, but not least through the radically non-violent witness of one man whom so many of us also call our God. Jesus suffered physical agony not to demonstrate the efficacy of torture but to demonstrate its utter bankruptcy. He did not suffer and die in order to appease an angry God (as one atonement heresy — satisfactionalism — will have it); his suffering was, if anything, to demonstrate that the evil principalities and powers can be beaten by love. (For those who want to know more, this is the Christus Victor understanding of atonement.)
To live as a Christian, for me, is to live in right relationship with God, with Creation, and with all that lives within that Creation. It is, in ethical terms, to struggle to live so that means and ends are always radically congruent. What would Jesus Do? is a good question to ask, and there’s no way imaginable that Jesus would torture. Whatever respect a Christian might owe to earthly principalities cannot be greater than his or her commitment to follow Jesus and to live in that sense as he did. Putting on the uniform of the state is not inherently an unChristian act; violating one’s commitment to live as Christ lived in order to fulfill an obligation to the state most certainly is. (Jeepers, most evangelicals completely misread Romans 13: 1-7; we owe respect, honor, and taxes to the state, but not the violation of our conscience.)
The morality of a cause is judged not only by its goals but by the means employed to fight it. From a spiritual perspective, the tools one uses and the rules by which one lives are much more important than the end result which one pursues. I think there are, perhaps, good arguments for why radical and absolute pacifism is not incumbent on every Christian — but the deliberate infliction of physical or mental torture on another sentient creature is, on every imaginable ground, utterly incompatible with a commitment to Jesus.
I do not like to question the faith of others. But I cannot but be bewildered, disheartened, and — yes — enraged at those who share with me this deep commitment to Jesus but who nonetheless are willing to countenance the deliberate infliction of pain on the sentient. I understand how they could get to that position historically and theologically (hermeneutical errors, poor expository preaching, the widespread Constantinian heresy) but I do not understand how they could get to that position on spiritual grounds.
This is shame. This is scandal.
Is Mel Gibson’s snuff film about our Savior to blame? Is it that most folks completely misunderstand — and many pastors misrepresent — atonement theory?
Personally, I’d blame the idea that the GOP platform and Christianity are inextricable. If the Bible is inerrant and the GOP is Biblically based, then the GOP must be inerrant as well, even when committing war crimes and screwing over poor people.
I’ve followed the arguments in a number of venues.
Some said that torture never works. Of course, using the criteria used in that argument, no intelligence, however gained, could be “proven” to work, since the response is that we don’t know for certain–no time machine handy to rerun the experiment–what would have happened otherwise. IOW, the argument that torture has never been proven to provide actionable intel actually insists that no intel has ever been proven to be useful. That’s not one of the objectives of the “it doesn’t work” argument, but it’s one of the unlooked-for results.
The recent disclosures from the CIA indicate that it did work, and the uses the Germans made of it in rolling up resistance networks in Occupied Europe indicated that it did work.
So we’re now in a position to have an honest argument:
In some cases, we get useful intel from torture or other levels of mistreatment. That means–most folks usually presume the next step but it’s probably necessary to actually state it–that we have saved lives that way.
The logical follow-up is that eschewing torture will cost lives.
So let’s have the discussion of what price we want to pay as a price for foregoing torture.
Pick your side. But don’t bother with the moral cheap-out that “it never works”.
Re: He did not suffer and die in order to appease an angry God (as one atonement heresy — satisfactionalism — will have it);
Hugo,
St. Anselm would say that you are wrong, and I agree with St. Anselm. It was absolutely necessary for Christ to suffer, be tortured, and die, in order to make payment for human sin. As Isaiah puts it: “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.”
The purpose of all legal punishment is to achieve the correction of the criminal through suffering. And to that end, it’s absolutely necessary that the suffering be real, whether physical or mental. Just as self-imposed mortification of the body through fasting and such is an absolutely necessary discipline, sometimes it is necessary to impose pain on other people for their own moral correction. St. Augustine’s “Seventh Homily on the Epistles of St. John” makes this point well.
That said, while I do support corporal (and capital) punishment as a judicial sentence on convicted criminals, I oppose it (beyond very minor instances) for purposes of interrogation. The arguments which justify the infliction of pain for punitive purposes cannot, I think, justify it for interrogative purposes. However, while I do agree that waterboarding and things like that are wrong, I certainly cannot associate myself with Hugo’s idea that ‘the infliction of pain on people and other sentient creatures is always wrong”. I consider that a deeply un-Christian idea and one that has Benthamite liberalism at its root, not the Christian faith.
Remember, Our Lord said, “And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations: And he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers: even as I received of my Father. And I will give him the morning star”, and He also said “And that servant, which knew his lord’s will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes.” Christ was not some kind of can’t-we-all-get-along pacifist.
This article has a good summary of Christian arguments about torture, and it concludes by saying that infliction of physical pain is not _intrinsically evil_ for punitive purposes but it is intrinsically wrong for interrogative purposes.
http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt119.html
And Hugo, you can call the substitutionary atonement a heresy all you want, but it is accepted by many churches today including by the Catholic church, and I believe it is the true doctrine about the meaning of the crucifixion. The Christus Victor has an old pedigree, as well, but I find it simply wrong, bland, and unconvincing.
I like this a lot:
Jesus suffered physical agony not to demonstrate the efficacy of torture but to demonstrate its utter bankruptcy. He did not suffer and die in order to appease an angry God (as one atonement heresy — satisfactionalism — will have it); his suffering was, if anything, to demonstrate that the evil principalities and powers can be beaten by love.
I am not so sure about this:
the deliberate infliction of physical or mental torture on another sentient creature is, on every imaginable ground, utterly incompatible with a commitment to Jesus.
Some vegans argue that by eating, say, cheese, we are supporting tortue inflicted upon cows. I don’t know if that is how you view the consumption of dairy products, but I have a hard time believing that eating cheese is more morally wrong than terminating an eight week old fetus. I apologize for being difficult, and I know that veganism and the abortion debate are different issues. In my heart of hearts, however, I am very reluctantly pro-choice. And I don’t think that eating cheese or milk chocolate is inherintly anti-Christian.
*inherently. Oops.
I may not be the best person to weigh in on this argument because I am an atheist (as is my husband - more on that in a bit). My argument is that even if torture is effective, it is effective in the short term. For the cheap price of saving a few lives now, we endanger all lives in the future do to the rot and moral corruption that follow practices like torture.
My husband was a Sargent in the Marine Corps in Vietnam (1965-1967). He trained the village defense in a small 8 man team. He was often paired with a South Korean intelligence officer when it was necessary to interrogate prisoners. He saw people tortured, and initially he participated in torture. He was looking for information to save his life, and the lives of his friends and colleagues. He quickly came to two conclusions - you can’t trust the information you get because people will tell you anything to make the pain stop. Particularly, they will tell you what you want to hear. And secondly, you can’t recognize the truth when spoken because you don’t have enough context information - so the torture often stops only because the prisoner died. In regards to the current torture debate, he and I are in total agreement - you have to be able to tell the good guys apart from the bad guys. Good guys, good people don’t commit torture, even if it works. I would rather die in a terrorist attack, or have my son or other loved ones die in an attack, than live in a country that condones and practices torture in order to avert such attacks.
Hugo, back when you were still in a fever pitch about veganism, I pointed out to you that you condoning of violence by groups like the ALF was at odds with your pacifist, Christian principles. And your response that Christ drove the moneychangers out of Temple with a whip. The reason you were able to persuade yourself that was a valid argument is the same reason these people are able to persuade themselves that Jesus condones torture.
Add to this that there are a lot of people whose Christianity is fear-based (if I don’t believe, I’ll go to Hell) and has nothing to do with their emotional or intellectual embrace of Christian principles. These are the people who lovingly quote Revelations, but get angry if you repeat Jesus’s words about the fate that await the unrepentant name-caller; the ones who argue for a literal interpretation of Leviticus, but claim that Jesus’s teaching to the rich man was mere allegory.
Mermade, the key word is “sentient.” No embryologist I know would argue for genuine sentience in eight-week old fetuses; most veterinarians and zoologists (as well as philosophers) would argue that sentience is present in cattle, even small calves.
Hector, one of the many reasons I’m not a Catholic anymore — years of training as a medievalist gave me a dim view of the way in which the teaching magisterium develops doctrine. I’m a low-church Protestant by instinct if not by acculturation!
Hector,
This isn’t about how Jesus suffered physical pain. The point is, no HUMAN has the moral prerogative to inflict pain on others. The fact that it happens anyways doesn’t make it right (the “might is right” principle is such a grave contradiction of Christian ethics that I too question why these church members who are endorsing torture even want to be part of a religion that emphasizes the necessity of turning the other cheek).
Your point is duly noted, but what I reject is the assertion that Christians who don’t eat meat are more authentic in their faith than those who do.
Jaxebad,
Re: The point is, no HUMAN has the moral prerogative to inflict pain on others.
You’re simply wrong. We have the moral prerogative to inflict pain, suffering, and yes, even death on the guilty when it is necessary for their own correction, for the expiation of crime, and for the protection of the innocent. Both capital punishment, and corporal punishment (e.g. whipping) are fully consonant with Christian principles, and the arguments against them are rooted more in Enlightenment liberalism (anti-Christian) than in any meaningful Christian doctrine.
You can quote out of context the saying about turning the other cheek, but that was meant to prohibit personal retaliation for petty slights, not legitimate and just violence on behalf of the state or quasi-state organizations. A healthy, Christian society is fully compatible wth both corporal and capital punishment.
I’m baffled that Hugo seems to think that development of doctrine is OK when it means defending things like abortion, animal rights and pornography but not when it favors things like capital punishment, corporal punishment and war.
Hector,
First of all, where in scripture do you get the support for your beliefs?
Second, is it liberalism that you are against, or modernity as a whole? In this day and age, even conservatives would disagree with your reactionary notions. I live in a very Republican region of the country, but even here people recognize that the Enlightenment was a good thing, not a bad thing.
Of course, I speak of conservatives in North America and Europe; I’m sure you can find some fellow travelers in Saudi Arabia to agree with you on the joys of whipping people.
IOW, the argument that torture has never been proven to provide actionable intel actually insists that no intel has ever been proven to be useful.
Richard Aubrey,
You’re jousting against a straw-man here. Torture is a distressingly common tactic, and it’s been widely shown to generate actionable intelligence at a lower rate than other interrogation methods. Which means, of course, that instances of actionable intelligence tell us nothing about torture’s effectiveness overall, relative to other methods. If you have Babe Ruth lay down a sacrifice bunt at every opportunity, you win games occasionally. But no one would interpret that as evidence that such a strategy works. Even in amoral consequentialist mode (and of course Hugo’s point is that Christianity is committed to a deontology that doesn’t allow to go straight there), actionable intelligence must be viewed in light of a)reams of bogus intelligence and false confessions (Abu Zubaydah, etc), 2) people who are now destroyed in such a way that future efforts to obtain actionable intelligence are ruined, 3) the reputational costs to the torturing regime, and 4) the moral and psychological damage done to the people who actually carry out the torture.
As always, I must recommend Darius Rejali’s magisterial study Torture and Democracy, which really ought to be required reading for pontification about torture’s “effectiveness”.
Jaxe.
You won the race to the bottom.
Jaxebad,
Please see the citations above (supporting corporal punishment) from Revelation and from Luke 12. And primarily, again, from St. Augustine’s 7th homily on the epistles of St. John. I might well ask you where you get support for the idea that the infliction of pain is always a bad thing.
I’m not a Republican, by the way, nor necessarily a conservative. I think there were some good aspects to the Enlightenment as well as many bad things. But if you’re asking me whether I support capitalism, individualism, liberal ‘democracy’ and other things that are at the root of the American political order, the answer is not really. I’ve never claimed to be a patriot, or a particular fan of the American social/political/economic system, and I think that ultimately Locke and Jefferson got many more things wrong than they got right.
And really, why Saudi Arabia of all places? A number of countries in the Caribbean and in South America practice corporal punishment. Indeed, when the ultra-left government of Bolivia (which I support very strongly) was elected in December ‘05, one of their promises was to bring back the Quechua/Aymara traditional courts, which included whipping.
I certainly cannot associate myself with Hugo’s idea that ‘the infliction of pain on people and other sentient creatures is always wrong”. I consider that a deeply un-Christian idea and one that has Benthamite liberalism at its root, not the Christian faith
You realize this gets Bentham exactly and precisely wrong? the only thing remotely Benthamite about such a position is treating pain as an important feature of outcomes, which is hardly that unique to Bentham in weak form. “X is always wrong” in not a potentailly Benthamite construction in the slightest, regardless of the properties of X.
Hector wrote:
“Both capital punishment, and corporal punishment (e.g. whipping) are fully consonant with Christian principles, and the arguments against them are rooted more in Enlightenment liberalism (anti-Christian) than in any meaningful Christian doctrine.”
Oh really? What about the commandment “Thou shall kill”? And, I’m not usually one to go around quoting the Bible, but what about this key passage from Romans 12, which tells us to love our enemies? Is that not “meaningful Christian doctrine”??
17Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. 18If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. 19Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,”[d]says the Lord. 20On the contrary:
“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”[e] 21Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Oops, I meant the commandment “Thou shall NOT kill.”
Gigi,
I’m wasting too much time on this thread, but whatever. Loving our enemies is not incompatible with inflicting pain or, in the extreme case, even death on them if it is _for their own good._ The body is inferior to the soul, and therefore it can be legitimate to harm or even destroy the body if such is necessary for the moral expiation of the person’s crimes. Our souls can be morally corrected and purified by suffering, or more specifically by the humble submission to suffering and death. Of course, we need to be very sure that the person is guilty of course, which is why I don’t support physical pain being inflicted on _suspects_ who have not been convicted of any crime. Honestly, do you not think that Augustine and a whole line of people smarter than me or (probably) you, have not dealt with these issues before?
As St. Augustine puts it, clearly a parent can be justified in spanking a child. And inasmuch as the relationship between the state and its subjects is like that between a parent and child, the state also has the right to use physical force against the guilty. More severe force than one would use against a child, of course, since adults are more morally responsible for their actions.
I don’t doubt that St. Augustine and others have dealt with these issues, but to say that inflicting pain or death on another human being is compatible with loving them (”if it’s for their own good”) is patently absurd. It just goes to show how you can mangle the Bible’s teachings to say anything you want them to.
Merm, I don’t think I asserted that Christians who don’t eat meat are more authentic in their faith than those who do. I think we can have a diversity of theological opinion on meat-eating — that doesn’t mean that vegetarianism isn’t morally superior (the least violent option almost always is) to carniverousness.
I see how Scripture, reason, experience, and tradition can lead to a diversity of conclusions about say, same-sex marriage, or veganism. Those who oppose same-sex marriage may be very strong in their faith, and I don’t question their salvation — I think they are wrong on many levels, but acknowledge that they have (sometimes) sound reasons for the position they take. Similarly, I think that there is a case to be made (I reject it utterly, but accept that it could be made) that animals were given to us for our pleasure and enjoyment, and that we were intended to have dominion over them and to consume them without regard for the question of their happiness. A good Christian can believe that.
I have always, always maintained that one can be wrong without being wicked.
And I will delete posts in this thread that talk about the efficacy of torture — this is about Christian support for torture, not about whether torture “works.”
Hector, more and more I see Savonarola in you. You are, I suspect, a delightful person in person — and your Weltanschauung, my friend, is nothing short of appalling. Goya’s remark about the sleep of reason comes to mind.
Hugo. If torture “works”, would there not be a different response compared to if it does not?
If torture “works” what does the Christian think is worth sacrificing to forego it?
Oh, well. The likelihood of an honest argument wasn’t high.
This is all incestuous, all taking place in the virtual world of the self-anointed highly moral with no regard for prices paid one way or another by real people in the real world.
Figures.
And, did you have to look up Menchaca and Tucker? Bet you did.
Hugo’s posting resonates with me because it’s discussed in such a passionate, outraged fashion. But, as I’ve reviewed the blogs and literature in the past week since hearing about the Pew study, contradictions seem to abound. I understood the (using djw’s word) “amoral” consequentialism argument to be mostly inconsistent with most Christian doctrine. Whether it’s from my Catholic upbringing or my fascination with fundamentalism in high school or my collegiate libertianism, I’ve understood typical Christianity to disavow calculated ends-justify-the-means utilitarianism.
But most of torture’s Christian apologists seem to bring up political, non-Christian utilitarian arguments. Saving lives matters more than the torture of a single person, whether that person has has guilt, guilt by association or innocence. These arguments even come from folks who also argue that abortion under all circumstances is immoral.
The “under certain circumstances” phrase has typically been applied to wet liberalism. But in this topic, the phrase is found all over the blogs that defend torture, on ethical grounds or not.
Oh, thank you Hugo for removing discussions about the efficacy of “enhanced interogation”. Much has been argued about effectiveness, but they all boil down to the same concept of utilitarianism that seems inconsistent with much of fundamentalism.
Re: You are, I suspect, a delightful person in person — and your Weltanschauung, my friend, is nothing short of appalling.
Fair enough- after all, I think your worldview is appalling too. I’m not sure how you can hold your views and also be a Christian- no doubt you feel the same about me.
Uncle Mel,
Torture for the purpose of punishment isn’t generally justified on consequentialist grounds. And I wouldn’t support the infliction of severe pain on someone who had not been convicted of a crime.
[the poll] made it very clear that church-going Christians in general, and white evangelicals in particular, are much more inclined to see torture as at least sometimes both necessary and justified than are their secular counterparts.
I think that might be overstating it; the largest difference present in the data is a 54-42 split between evangelicals and non-believers, and I wouldn’t describe even that 12% split as being “much more” inclined, especially given the fairly small sample size. (We can certainly be surprised that Christians aren’t much *less* likely to support torture, though.)
There are other problems with the conclusion — it’s also comparing people of vastly different income and education levels, and those may prove to be much more influential towards views on torture than the fact of how often a person goes to church is. I don’t think the study does much to enhance our understanding of what variables affect whether someone agrees with torture.
(I’m atheist, by the way, so I’m not saying this as some apologetic defence of evangelicals. I just thought it looked like a poor and over-hyped study.)
- Chris, a utilitarian amongst many who is willing to defend the view that torture can/should be considered unacceptable on utilitarian grounds. :)
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. My reaction to this was more out of some frustration. You once said that dating a meat eater would be akin to me dating a smoker. Notwithstanding the fact that I am now dating a social smoker, it felt like you viewed meat eaters in the way that I might view a smoker — indulgent and repulsive, or something like that. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but with all due respect, I don’t respond well to status updates like: “Let’s not eat other mother’s babies.” It follows that must be a pretty lousy Christian to commit such a sin. I don’t wish to offend you, but that’s how I have felt lately.
Well, back to the topic of the post…I totally feel you, Hugo. As an evangelical Christian who first registered as a Socialist, I often feel out of place among brothers and sisters who are hardline Republicans. I’m all for diversity of opinions, but…really? Torture? The text that consistently comes to my mind is when Jesus talks about Judgment Day, when people will call to him, “Lord!” and he will tell them “I never knew you, because when I was in prison you did not visit (show kindness to) Me”. And they will ask, “Lord, when were you in prison, and we did not visit (show kindness to) you?” To stretch the text (but not very much, I don’t think), He will point to Guantánamo and say, “As you did to the least among men, the lowest in society, so you have done to Me.”
Another thing that keeps recurring in my head, nagging at me every time I think about this issue, is the false dichotomy of good people vs. evil people. As Christians, we know that there is no such creature as a “good person” besides Jesus. We know that everyone has sinned, that everyone deserves the death penalty, that everyone has murdered in his/her own heart. We know that God despises hands that shed innocent blood, but we also know that God despises haughty eyes and stiff necks; pride is listed before murder among Proverbs’ seven deadly sins. This is the great equalizer: that we are just as evil as any other person, and only the grace of God can make any of us “good people”.
It’s fine to talk about this issue at an abstract, philosophical level, but it ultimately comes down to the personal interaction between two individuals: one prisoner, one guard. And the guard is responsible for his or her moral decision in that moment, and the judgment on that moral decision will be based, among other things, on the two preceding ideas: the guard is no better morally than the prisoner, and the prisoner is to be treated as the guard would treat Jesus. To my mind, neither of those premises allow torture to be the conclusion of the moral decision.
Hugo,
Ever hear of the Millgram experiments? A majority of the people can be induced to torture someone to death. Using the right techniques, I’d bump that up to “most.”
Richard Aubrey,
You’ve clearly never heard of Milton Ericson, or you’ve never seen that mentalist they had on the SciFi channel. Torture works. The problem is, people being tortured will tell you whatever they think will get you to stop the torture. How much of the data you get will be contaminated as a result?
What experiments have been done show that non-torture methods are far more effective at getting people to reveal information they’re trying to keep secret. The data acquired are far less likely to be poisoned.
Most of all, the techniques for hardening individuals against torture are well known. Hugo and I have run marathons–we know most of the techniques by instinct. Hardening someone against persuasive techniques is far more difficult, even when they have an ideology that uses the enemy’s opposition as proof for the rightness of their own cause.
It’s not a question of how many lives are we risking by holding to a moral principle. It’s a question of how many lives are we willing to risk to let people have fun and give into their revenge fantasies?
Sarah, do you think you’re feeling uneasy about Hugo’s status updates because you feel a moral challenge to change something that you currently take part in? I think Hugo’s status update about not eating mothers’ babies was written to challenge our ideas of what meat-consumption is. When you think of “chocolate milk” as milk that was taken away from a hungry calf, or of “ham” as the cooked flesh of a pig who could feel pain, fear, etc., consuming animal products doesn’t sound as appealing. The same goes for sweat shops and other industries. Once you learn about the conditions of women and children working in the Philippines and similar countries, you’re less inclined to buy a shirt at Wal-Mart…
Once you learn about the conditions of women and children working in the Philippines and similar countries, you’re less inclined to buy a shirt at Wal-Mart…
Some people might be less inclined to buy a shirt at Wal-Mart. Other people, aware of the actual choices that those textile workers have, will buy with a clear conscience. You’re assuming that everyone has the same world-view and knowledge base that you do; that assumption is incorrect.
Similarly, Hugo is assuming that everyone has the same opinion of what constitutes “torture”. They don’t. The typical American, at least according to the polls, has an understanding that rough treatment and bona-fide torture aren’t the same thing. Very few of the Christians supporting “torture” in this poll would support ripping out people’s toenails or setting them on fire; most of us can live with slapping somebody against a wall or putting a caterpillar in the room with them. Hugo wants caterpillar-presence and the rack to be the same thing so that he can feel morally superior to his benighted brethren - but they aren’t the same thing.
Christian pacifism, of course, frowns on “walling” on the same grounds that it frowns on murder, albeit with a varying level of outrage. But most Christians (myself included) have found Christian pacifism an impossible burden to carry, and so we don’t try.
What would Jesus do? Well, he’d use his omniscience to know where the man had hidden the bombs in the first place, and he’d use his overwhelming pastoral skills to counsel the guy to abandon terrorism and save his soul. Those aren’t options that are readily available to most of us.
We fall short of Christ’s example, so we shouldn’t even try? That’s almost as good as “I can do anything I want because I’m forgiven already”.
Not “we fall short of Christ’s example”, but “Christ had options open to him that we do not.”
mythago.
There are some things which even a progressive finds ludicrous. Such as counseling a jihadi to fess up in the next ten minutes before the bomb goes off. Or closing one’s eyes and thinking really, really hard about where the bomb might be.
I mean, I think progressives think this would be ludicrous.
Right?
But, if we could do that, there would be a number of things we wouldn’t currently be doing. Hell, we could think our way into the Taliban arms room and fuse the firing pins on the AK 47s. Jesus could do that. Why don’t we dump the Defense Department and go to that sort of thing?
Another issue is that a good deal of SERE–if Hugo lets the reference through–is what is called torture. Most folks–presumably those polled–don’t. They know better. Some have even gone through fraternity initiation. So you can’t accurately call them in favor of torture. On the other hand, if your self-perception goes up in proportion to the number of horrid people around you of whom you are not one, you would label them as in favor of torture.
We can’t turn the other cheek?
Richard, what I really find ludicrous are pretend, straight-out-of-TV scenarios. But you want to talk about movies? Okay. Remember Star Wars, and how effective torture and threats were about getting the actual location of the rebels out of Princess Leia were?
mythago.
WRT the cheek thing: It is a matter of responding or not to petty insults. If you had been stuck with a spear, being commended to turn the other cheek would be sort of egregious, you being dead and all.
So it’s being dissed, not killed or crippled.
In addition, that’s the two-party problem. One party is the assailant, the other the victim/cheekturningdecider. What if we split the latter up into two parties. The vic and another party who decides whether or not to attack the perp to save the vic. Whose cheek is the third party turning?
“We” can turn the other cheek, as long as you mean “you”. Do you get to make the rest of us turn the other cheek and die because of it?
What damage are you prepared to insist the US suffer as a cost of eschewing torture?
It’s not such a hard question for those who are really, really sure.
Tell us. 100,000 dead? Ten dead?
By the way, what movies? Hugo sometimes blocks one or two of my posts so there may be a lack of continuity, but I don’t recall any combination of posts which referred to movies.
What would Jesus do? Well, he’d use his omniscience…
Christ had options open to him that we do not.
This, of course, utterly vitiates the question WWJD?, since there isn’t a single topic where omniscience wouldn’t radically alter our actions. Which is to say: if you respond this way to any given WWJD question, then the entire question is, according to your own argument, utterly moot and ridiculous.
(As an atheist Jew I don’t have a huge amount invested in the validity of WWJD as an ethical standard/guide/point to aspire to. But it’s worth noting that these responses make a complete hash of it.)
Check out John 14:12. Check out 1 John 3:3. WWJD is binding.
WWJD is an appropriate test when one is confronted with a moral issue about one’s own behavior. Would Jesus be snooty in response to the PTA member who treats him badly? No - he would respond with love and compassion. It’s a useful reminder of how we are supposed to relate to our fellow human beings.
It is a less useful metric when the question involves emergency situations. WWJD about the boy drowning in the lake? Why, walk out and save him, of course. If he was too late? Well, a quick “raise dead” is no problem. It’s great to know that your faith is strong enough that you think these reasonable actions for an ordinary Christian, Hugo, but I gotta tell you that - although God has blessed me beyond measure - He’s never given the impression that I could start Supermanning around the place just because I’m on a first-name basis with his son.
Robert,
Ok, it’s good that you’re agreeing that the question that’s asked isn’t “what miracles would Jesus perform?”; it’s “what ethical actions would Jesus do?”. So now we are back to the problem of why so many professing Christians are so willing to intellectually agreeing with torture.
I mean, part of me at least tries to rationalize what they are agreeing to by saying “Oh, they’re just misinformed; if they knew that one can interrogate without the use of violence*, then they’d change their minds… so their problem is just ignorance rather than bad morals”. However, that ignores the other argument against torture - that the ends never justify the means. I guess what needs to be done is doing something in improving Biblical literacy among church members; even though I never thought that Peter’s comment that “we ought to obey God rather than man” was an obscure passage in the bible, I guess to many people, it is.
Oh. I forgot to mention the footnote indicated with the asterisk. A very strong illustration of good interrogation would be that of World War II veterans who were able to get German POWs to talk not by any physical force, but by games of chess.
Ben.
Yeah, there are various techniques. However, the CIA says theirs worked in a couple of situations when others did not..
BTW, it seems to me the ends had better justify the means, else it’s all wrong.
Anyway, if torture is wrong in all situations, other factors notwithstanding, then it does not matter if it can, from time to time, generate useful intel that would save lives.
So, you’re halfway as brave as Kate, who, as I said elsewhere, claims to be an atheist.
Give us your assessment of how many Americans it would be right to see die as a result of foregoing torture.
So now we are back to the problem of why so many professing Christians are so willing to intellectually agreeing with torture.
They aren’t.
They’re agreeing with what is being CALLED torture.
Putting someone in a room with a caterpillar (because they’re afraid of bugs) might not be the nicest thing you can do to someone, but it isn’t torture, either.
I understand the discomfort, really I do, with the idea that we’re all just blase about people being badly treated. Christians have been struggling with issues around war and violence for a long time. But an ethical structure which can handle killing people (in a just war) can, I think, “stretch” to handle the bug room.
There are many actions that these polled Christians would NOT approve of. Take a poll that asks how many Christians can live with us cutting off fingers until someone talks, and you’ll get a much different answer.
We’re in a war. Rough treatment of people who want to kill us is an intrinsic part of war. Christians, like other ordinary Americans, understand that.
Richard, the “ten minutes until the bomb goes off” scenario happens in TV and movies, not real life. In real life, the jihadi says “Stop! I’ll tell you everything, it’s in the Liberty Bell!” Eleven minutes later you find out the bomb was actually in Miami.
By the way, Richard, torture not only legitimizes torture against our own POWs, it provides our enemies with a way to inflame and justify their actions against us. How many American deaths are you willing to tolerate in order to show the world we’re macho guys who torture?
Robert, if Jesus saw a little boy drowning, he’d rescue the boy. The fact that he had means to do so that you do not doesn’t mean “oh, hey, I guess I can let the kid drown because I can’t walk on water”. But, as we both know, you’re deliberately misinterpreting “WWJD?” to mean “What precise action would Jesus take in this situation - and if I can’t replicate this precise action I don’t have to follow his teachings”? Probably the bracelets should say WWJWMTD? (What Would Jesus Want Me To Do) and y’all would have to find another loophole.
They’re agreeing with what is being CALLED torture.
And which we and everyone called torture when we prosecuted the Japanese for war crimes because they did it to us (water boarding); which we and everyone called torture when the Chinese Communists captured our soldiers in Korea (see here); which we and everyone called torture when it was done to John McCain in Vietnam. (Yes: everything that was done to McCain in Vietnam we’ve done too.)
Really. This is simply torture. Defend it if you wish, using whatever utilitarian trade-offs you can convince yourself exist. But don’t deny that it’s torture. It’s just not that complicated.
Stephen - Unless I’m very badly misled, we haven’t done anything like the list of things that was done to John McCain.
The difference between our EITs and the torture regimes of the countries (and times) you list is that waterboarding is at the extreme end of our spectrum. It’s on the extreme end of their spectrum, too - except that for them, it was the bottom end.
Mythago:
“In real life, the jihadi says ‘Stop! I’ll tell you everything, it’s in the Liberty Bell!’ Eleven minutes later you find out the bomb was actually in Miami.”
You do know the story about the Criminal Minds episode where they showed that other techniques do a better job of getting information out of prisoners, right? The terrorist does, in fact gloat about the bomb having gone off in that Criminal Minds episode. But there’s a “but…”.
That episode was done specifically because so many have the “Jack Bauer” illusion that torture is the best solution.
Wow. It appears that not watching television puts me at a serious disadvantage in deep discussions of this kind. I know none of the primary source material.
On the other hand, if I watched television, I’d think Sarah Palin said she can see Russia from her house. Being a non-watcher, I know it was Tina Fey.
I guess it all works out.
Anyway, if the utilitarian argument–greatest good of the greatest number–doesn’t apply to this issue, then we have, by definition either a great number of people getting less than the greatest good and a substantial additional number of people getting the greatest bad.
So, if you insist the utilitarian argument doesn’t apply, that means you are willing to accept unlimited damages to other people as a price for avoiding torture.
Just give us the number. Can’t hurt.
Richard Aubrey–
I’m going to have to assume that you watch neither television nor read the news. Or maybe it’s just that I am such a news junkie, but I remember this being all over the news the first time the “Criminal Minds” episode “Lessons Learned” ran–and then again after the episode won the award. Beats me how anyone could have missed it.
In trying to teach real people how to interrogate suspects, they found the students had been influenced by “24.” Torture was thought to be more effective than the actual interrogation methods they were being taught. Students wouldn’t use those methods in the field, resulting in lost data.
U.S. Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan went to see the producers of “24″ to get them to present the truth. The folks at “24″ didn’t, because “24″ was a TV show and torture was more entertaining.
As a result, active duty FBI agent Jim Clemente wound up writing the episode “Lessons Learned” for “Criminal Minds.” It must have been season 2, since Mandy Patenkin (sp?) was still in it. His character, Gideon, used actual techniques to get information out of a terrorist in the “ticking time bomb” scenario. Finnegan, by the way, says the “ticking time bomb” scenario has never occurred in real life.
“Criminal Minds” won an award from “Human Rights First” for that episode.
In real life, torture is not providing the greatest good to the greatest number. It’s not as effective as modern techniques. There are better ways to get information out of a terrorist or get you to buy things.
Think about it. Your typical Jihadist has been told how awful the Americans, Christians and Jews are. He expects to be tortured and even die. He *wants* to be tortured and die. His reward in the afterlife will be great as a result. By torturing, you are confirming his belief system–everything this man has been told about us and what he has faith in. This hardens his resolve, it doesn’t break it. You’re exacerbating his resistance.
The trick is to get the patient’s resistance to work with you and against his own belief system. Have you ever heard of the late Milton Erickson (psychologist) or Derrek Brown (TV mentalist using a lot of Ericson’s tricks and swiping others from advertisers)? If you want to learn how to get information out of people, those are two of the better places to start. Kevin Mitnick gives some excellent techniques in his book about social engineering.
In “Lessons Learned” they explained how some of these techniques work. They actually demonstrated a few more without calling attention to them. Several of the commercials during the first run of that episode also used the techniques, which is now why we turn off the sound during commercials and go away from the TV set or channel surf.
Rob.
I’m a news junkie, but I can’t tell you who got voted off last week.
I’m also an–if Hugo lets this through–Infantry vet, son of same.
The issue is not theoretical for me.
There are two points here. One is that the CIA and others have said recently that KSM fessed up to some stuff they needed only after the CIA started the rough stuff. There is a horrid story about WW II in which the Allies trained soem resistance leaders to prepare for the invasion of the continent but gave them the wrong place. Then dropped them back into Europe, allowing the Germans to find them. Their heroic but ultimately futile resistance to torture confirmed the validity of the (wrong) information. This would have been a complete waste if the allies had not expected the Germans to get the story. The book the prof referred to is “Count Five and Die”, iirc.
So the fact that it doesn’t work is false and sometimes only it will work.
So, how much cost are you willing others to undertake in order to eschew the use of torture?
Second, the first point is, or ought to be, monumentally irrelevant.
Honest pacifism doesn’t need to “work” to be right. If being pacific got you and everybody you love killed when simply shooting a bad guy would have saved them, it would still be wrong to shoot him, under the pacifist argument. Trying to sell it on the basis that it makes you safer
(interwar play “The Eleventh Mayor”, non-violent national defense) is both irrelevant and cheating.
Similarly, torture would be wrong even if it worked, so trying to convince against historical evidence that it doesn’t so we can avoid it for no cost is both irrelevant and cheating.
Kate had the guts go to on record.
You?
You know, I have a two-hour stretch each week where I’m in another’s house with nothing to do but take care. I run around the dial twice and see yet again why I don’t have cable and only get what comes in through the air, one stateion which I don’t watch.
If it works, or doesn’t work, to write to a program, I thought I’d write to “NCIS”, a sickening show, and tell them we need a couple of episodes where they conspire with prosecutors to withhold exculpatory evidence in Marines’ war crimes trials. Think they’d bite?
How many innocent victims are you willing to let die so you can torture terrorists?
I am not saying torture doesn’t work at all. Try reading my stuff again. I was very aware of this point and I made sure I was clear on it. You’re setting up a false dichotomy to bolster your argument.
Torture works sometimes, but it’s less likely to work than better techniques that are available. Can you grasp the concept that one thing might work more often than another? Would you insist on always doing the less-likely to work thing?
You say KSM admitted torture worked. According to the science, while it might have worked, it was less likely to work than other techniques not involving torture. From all reports, they never even tried the non-torture methods. They went straight to torture because it was more entertaining. How much information did they miss because they tortured? How much longer did it take? How often did they get bad information from the tortured person?
The science says torture doesn’t work as well. An administration that did everything it could to ignore science in favor of their political theories chose torture instead. Big surprise there.
As a Christian, I believe that torture should be banned under all circumstances. There is absolute morality, and to use “situational ethics” as an excuse to do clear and obvious evil is wrong.
But from a purely utilitarian position, it’s stupid to torture. It doesn’t work as well. How many innocent people are you willing to have die so that we can torture people?
Rob. Other techniques work better on other people in other circumstances.
In KSM’s circumstances, they tried the non-rough stuff first. Didn’t work.
Torture is used–to the extent the US actually tortures–only when the other techniques don’t work. Your implied premise is that the interrogators start right out with torture. Wrong. All your subsequent reasoning therefore fails.
BTW. Alan Dershowitz, who devised the so-far theoretical concept of a “torture warrant” talks of some cops, I think in Tampa, where they had a kidnapper who’d hidden the kid. They basically tortured him to get him to tell where he or she was. Apparently he wasn’t willing to tell them absent rough stuff and the rapport building would have taken too long for the safety of the kid. Whom they found alive.
Richard Aubrey,
Everything I’ve read indicates that torture has not been the last resort. They used “non-rough stuff” but it wasn’t anything resembling the modern information extraction techniques. The use was incompetent and perfunctory. Properly trained FBI and CIA agents have been kept from using the correct techniques in the field in favor of torture.
Care to document your case of the “ticking clock” with the kid? How did the court case with the kidnapper go? This sounds like the friend of a friend type of story. The only case I could find on Google was where a German police unit debated torturing a kidnapper–and even they wound up not torturing. You complained about me referring to a TV show…
Back in 1993 or 1994 (can’t be bothered pulling out my notes this late at night) in Pittsburgh, a BOLO went out for a child molester. The cops spotted the guy described in the BOLO. The suspect was cuffed hands behind and in the process of trying to get the suspect to admit what he’d done, the suspect accidentally tripped down several flights of concrete steps. My EMS unit was called to the scene. While we were trying to convince the cops to uncuff the suspect so the patient could be longboarded, CID’d and collared, another police unit reported that they had the confirmed molester in custody. The suspect we were working on just had the bad luck to choose the wrong clothing that morning. The cops did uncuff him at that point.
This wasn’t some cops who might or might not have been in Tampa or Darmstadt or Aachen. I was a witness. I would have been a witness in court except the City settled out of court for some odd reason. But it was for the greater good, right?
In New York, Abner Louima was sodomized by the police with a broken broomstick. As near as I can tell, the police didn’t get any information out of him through the interrogation. But that’s ok, because it’s for the greater good, right?
Torture has become acceptable in the military. Many of those individuals, when they return to civilian life, will take jobs in public safety.
If you were handcuffed and pushed down flights of concrete steps or raped with a broomstick, would you accept that it was for the greater good?
Rob.
You’d have to ask Dershowitz for documentation. Whether anybody was stupid enough to document it is another question.
You also are getting to the dishonest side here, conflating the info in the Tampa case with Fifth Amendment issues about the trial and self-incrimination. The cops were not looking for info to hand to the prosecutor, as you know. And hoped we’d miss.
Your EMT case is not the same thing, either. The cops were not trying to find out where the guy’s latest victim was hidden.
Louima was injured just because. No interest in information.
You probably hoped we didn’t know this, or could be made to forget by contagious outrage or something.
“Everything” you read. There isn’t much, as it happens, that isn’t complaints by the detainees or their lawyers. Where it is documentable, such as with KSM, it has worked. And they started with the easy techniques.
Of the authorized techniques, as I said earlier, only waterboarding is going to impress anybody, and then not many. I can’t recall if Hugo let a reference to SERE get through. And my daughter’s friend. She went through it. Good luck selling this stuff as if it were Phillip the Fair questioning the Templars.
Mostly, torture, such as waterboarding, is not authorized and the practitioners are either prosecuted, lose in another way–the ltc in Iraq I mentioned–or it is never demonstrated substantially.
I just pointed out to you that a General, an FBI and the entire FBI agency thinks that torture is the bad way to do it. That’s more than complaints by detainees and lawyers. It’s complaints by the people who actually know what’s going on.
They started with mild techniques, yes. I said that. They did not use anything even thought to be effective. The whole point of using ineffective “mild” techniques was to justify torture, not get information. They were forbidden from using the correct techniques.
Torture was authorized by the Bush administration and then implemented.
Can you point to any scientific studies showing torture works? All’s you’ve said is “Torture worked occasionally.” Big whoop. You keep repeating that it’s worked in a couple instances and misrepresenting what I’m saying.
I could do a better job of defending torture than that, and I think it’s both wrong and a demonstration of the triumph of ignorance in our society and moral degradation.
Rob. Apparently my rhetorical question about getting a grant to study the situation didn’t make it.
However, there is a reflection on the subject on a blog called “Just One Minute”. I don’t like to dump links into somebody else’s blog, so I’ll simply mention it.
If you can’t find it, go to Instapundit and scroll down the blogroll to “minuteman”.