In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist
attacks the United States and several European countries have had to wrestle
with the acceptability of using torture as a means to gather information. The recently released movie "Zero Dark Thirty" has once again brought this question to the forefront as the movie depicts information being gained by means of torture, intimidation, and outright brutality. Initial reviews of the movie are careful to state that the film does not glorify torture or suggest that it is the ultimate means of winning the war on terror, but the film does raise the moral question of whether or not torture is an allowable method in pursuing victory. It should be noted that torture
has been uniformly prohibited for any reason by the international community since
the ratification of the United Nations Convention Against Torture in 1984.[1]
However, with the advent of asymmetric warfare, in which the resources and
tactics of the belligerents are widely divergent, many governments have openly
debated, and often participated in, the use of “light” forms of torture in
order to gain information. It is necessary in this environment for Christians
to be able to answer if torture is ever a viable method in war and determine
the moral ramifications if such a course of action is taken.
Much of the debate concerning
torture revolves around the need for information to prevent attacks. Theologian
John Perry correctly states that “[w]hat makes this asymmetric war different is
the importance of accurate information needed…Because the battlefield seems to
be everywhere in general and nowhere in particular, knowing what the enemy is
about to do next is crucial to saving innocent lives in buildings, on
airplanes, in the sea lanes, on subways and in commuter trains.”[2]
This need has led some to advocate the use of “stress and duress” tactics to
gain information from possible terrorists in order to prevent an attack. Such
tactics include the use of “hooding, food deprivation, sleep deprivation,
bright lights and loud noise, and forced standing against a wall while leaning
on one finger of each hand.”[3]
These techniques are designed to
weaken the defenses of the suspect and to make them more apt to give
information in order to make the treatment stop The CIA described the effects
of long term mental and physical abuses such as these in the KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation
manual:
All
coercive techniques are designed to induce regression…the result of external
pressures of sufficient intensity is the loss of those defenses most recently
acquired by civilized man… “Relatively small degrees of homeostatic
derangement, fatigue, pain, sleep loss, or anxiety may impair these functions”.
As a result, “most people who are exposed to coercive procedures will talk and
usually reveal some information that they might not have revealed otherwise.”[4]
Generally, this type of coercive pressure is
justified by the assumptions that the information gleaned through it could be
necessary to stop the next major attack. Mirko Bagaric and Julie Clarke, both
of Deakin University Law School, insist that when there are a number of lives
at risk, there is an immediacy to the possible harm, and there are limited
other means to gather the information “all forms of harm may be inflicted on
the agent – even if this results in death.”[5]
Advocates of torture insist that
“light” forms of torture should not be considered a morally reprehensible
action for several reasons, most of which are based in a utilitarian
philosophy. Alan Dershowitz advocates torture through the use of a federal
warrant system and allows that it is not a violating the prisoner’s rights
because “his right to be free from ‘cruel and unusual punishment’” has not been
violated since “that provision of the Eighth Amendment has been interpreted to
apply solely to punishment after conviction.”[6]
And, in Dershowitz’s opinion, such governmentally sanctioned torture may be
necessary to prevent the “ticking time bomb” scenario in which information must
be extracted from a terrorist to prevent an impending attack.[7]
Similarly, philosopher and human rights advocate Slavoj Zizek notes that
supporters of torture justified the use of such techniques at Guantanamo Bay
because the victims “were the target of legitimate US bombings in Afghanistan
and accidentally survived, no one can complain about what happens to them afterwards as prisoners: whatever their
situation, it is better than being dead.”[8]
Critics of justified torture note
that such considerations are entirely pragmatic and fail for several reasons. However,
many of the counterarguments offered are entirely pragmatic themselves. These
arguments range from stating that torture only strengthens the resolve of the
tortured, is a waste of resources, causes rebellion amongst native populations,
and places military forces at greater risk of retaliation. Critics most often note
that torture “rarely yields better information than traditional human
intelligence, partly because no one has figured out a precise reliable way to
break human beings or any reliable method to evaluate whether what prisoners
say when they do talk is true.”[9]
Additionally, for the torture to stop “the torturers [must be] persuaded the
victim has kept her part of the bargain by telling them all there is to tell
and also upon the torturers choosing to keep their side of the bargain.”[10]
This places the torturer in the position of arbitrarily determining when these
conditions have been met. It is telling that manuals, such as the KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation,
contain no objective method to determine when all the possible information has
been gathered or for when the torturer should be satisfied enough to end the
interrogation.
Justifying such actions also
leads to a logical problem because to endorse the use of torture in a “ticking
time bomb” scenario implicitly endorses torture whenever it may be politically
or militarily useful. Perry cautions that “if a community permits a prevailing
norm to be broken in one case, this will lead to an ever more extensive moral
impasse. For this reason, the rule must be absolute and allow for no
exceptions.”[11]
However, while all these arguments
may be true they fail to address the violation of the tortured individuals
human rights and dignity as a person created in the image of God. From Genesis
1 onward the Christian is confronted with the truth that man is created in the image
of God and that fundamental part of his creation is being made for
relationships. The first direct indication of this is in Genesis 2 where God
states that “it is not good that man should be alone”[12],
but we can also gather the relational nature of man from the interrelationship
of the Trinity. The first indirect indication of this comes in Genesis 1 where
God, as a singular entity, is referred to with the Hebrew plural form of “god”,
elohim. This convention is repeated
approximately 2,500 times throughout the rest of the Old Testament and implies
that “God is one, yet more than one – what some commentators have referred to
as the ‘uniplurality’ of the Godhead.”[13]
This is further stressed when God declares, “Let us make man in our image”[14]
again implying the Trinity working together to create man. The New Testament further elaborates on this
interrelationship among the Trinity by showing that the Son is begotten and
beloved[15]
as well as glorified by the Father[16];
the Son reveals and glorifies the Father[17];
and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and testifies of His truth.[18]
Throughout these passages it is revealed that “God the Father, God the Son, and
God the Holy Spirit are different Persons, yet remain one in nature, essence,
substance, and will. [Therefore], [t]he unity of God is a relational unity.”[19]
Man shares in this relational nature
in several distinct ways. First, man and woman are both shown to be created in
the image of God[20]
and by nature are in need of companionship to be complete.[21]
Second, the prohibition against murder and the divine institution of capital
punishment are both given in the context of a violation of the image of God in
man.[22]
Torture, then, is an especially heinous act because it violates the shared
relationships that we have with other human beings which are a direct
reflection of the very nature of God. This destruction of relationship extends
across several different levels of human nature:
Torture
is also personally destructive to the torturers because they intend to diminish
or even destroy the personhood of their victims. It is this subjective,
interpersonally destructive aspect of torture that makes it different and
morally worse than many other destructive aspects of war… We humans are
vice-regents of God on earth and have dominion over all other life forms. The
cruelty of torture is special because no animal or other creature than a man or
woman would inflict it in the same way upon someone else…Thus, a torturer
inflicting torments and suffering on a victim not only defaces another brother
or sister, but implicitly attacks the face of God in the other, and destroys
human community.[23]
The psychological and physical
destruction done to both victim and torturer cannot be overstated. Victims of
torture often develop mental trauma similar to that of post-traumatic stress
disorder and can undergo radical shifts in personality and mood. Such shifts
occur because torture tends to destroy an individual's “Third-Order premises”
which deal with “the attribution of meaning to one’s environment.”[24]
The victim is left in a state of general terror and insecurity in which their
world has lost meaning and there is no longer any basis on which to build
trusting relationships with others. This destruction of trust tends to manifest
in the victims life in several different ways including: insomnia, nightmares,
night sweats, sexual dysfunction, a hostile attitude towards the world, social
withdrawal, feeling of hopelessness, the feeling of being constantly
threatened, estrangement, and even suicide.[25]
These effects can extend not only to the victim, but also to those who are
forced to watch the torture of others unwillingly. Wilhelmina Vautrin, head of
the Education Department and dean of studies at Ginling Women’s Arts and
Science College in Nanking, China, was witness to such torture during the
Japanese invasion of Nanking in 1938. Vautrin, in attempting to protect the
Chinese from the Japanese army, saw rape, beheadings, mutilations, and extreme
forms of torture acted out on a daily basis. The effects shattered Vautrin who
is described afterwards as “a vulnerable exhausted woman who never recovered,
either emotionally or physically, from daily exposure to Japanese violence.”[26]
So devastated was Vautrin that she repeatedly attempted to take her own life in
1940 as she traveled back to the United States and eventually succeeded in May
of 1941.
While the effects of torture on the
victim are horrendous, we must not lose sight on the effects upon the torture
as well. The torturer, in victimizing his target, “undergoes a moral violation
if he conceives of his victim as being without human dignity. This moral choice
and his practicing of torture strip him of his own God-given nobility.”[27]
Studies done on those who inflict torture have found that they “illustrate they
heavy psychological toll that participation in torture can have on
perpetrators.”[28]
Tortures are just as likely to have occurrences of post-traumatic stress
disorder and report incidences of depression and intrusive memories which have
been linked to the torture “abdicat[ing] their own personal beliefs
and…assum[ing] the values of an institution or group that promotes torture and
other atrocities.”[29]
In taking on these beliefs, the torturer is forced to shed all empathy for the
victim and find ways to dehumanize them so as to make the physical act of
torture more readily acceptable. Perhaps no more graphic depiction of the
dehumanization that occurs in the mind of the torturer came from the release of
photos from Abu Ghraib prison. These photos showed:
…prisoners
subjected to cruel and humiliating treatment…a handcuffed, terrified prisoner
is shown cornered by a snarling military dog straining against its leash…naked
prisoners [being] forced to lie on top of one another in a pile or…simulate
sexual acts…Some photos were especially disturbing because they show soldiers
(both men and women) posing next to the abused prisoners, grinning or giving “thumbs up” signs, appearing to take sadistic
pleasure in the abuse.[30]
In light of the debilitating effects
of torture on both tortured and torturer, it is surprising to find that there
are still those who advocate its use while acknowledging its consequences. For
many this acceptance comes because of a utilitarian calculus that understands
the value of human dignity, but sees “life [as trumping] dignity and respect
for self esteem…Torture, in this view, is the lesser evil, offset by saving
many innocent lives from catastrophic harm.”[31]
Political ethicist Michael L. Gross serves as an advocate for torture in this
particular case, while acknowledging that such an argument can be disastrous if
taken outside of certain contexts. Gross sees torture as being a “marginal
phenomenon” that “neither benefits nor cost democracies greatly”[32]
and for which there is no “overwhelming evidence that the costs…are
intolerable.”[33]
Gross contends that torture
should only be done under the auspices of a democratic nation which can
effectively control its use. Torture only becomes problematic when it is used
by a repressive regime that “infiltrates civil society, terrorizes civilians in
war and peace, and undermines peaceful coexistence among nations.”[34]
Accordingly, whether a country such as the United States participates in
torture or not will have no effect on oppressive regimes. Thus, torture as a
means of gathering information should only be abandoned when it is necessary to
justify humanitarian intervention in such a regime.[35]
For the Christian, and the
intellectually honest, this argument must be rejected. As with previous
arguments for torture, it denies the very nature of man as created in the image
of God and ignores the long term effects of torture upon the victim, the
torturer, and the culture that allows it. To couch the argument in terms of the
safeguards that a democracy can supposedly provide is to still ignore the deeper violation that
occurs. For the Christian, this is the recognition that torture destroys the
special nature of man that has been placed in him by the divine, creative act
of God. From a completely pragmatic stance as well, a “modern liberal democracy
that permits or encourages this practice as a strategy for survival, betrays
its ultimate reality and meaning which has been connected with the absolute
prohibition of torture.”[36]
The belief in “inalienable rights” loses all meaning and a license is given to
act against what has been condemned as a universal wrong.
The Christian, then, is faced with
an absolute and permanent prohibition against allowing or participating in
torture. In the current political climate this is a difficult position to take
when fear of more terrorist attacks and the desire to end two wars runs
rampant. Christians also face additional pressure to condone torture when
confronted with the past acts of the church, as in the Inquisition. However,
the previous, wrong acts of a church body cannot serve to justify a present
wrong act. This is especially when Scripture is clear that to engage in such
practices is a violation of the created order. Indeed, the acts of church
bodies such as the Inquisition should reveal the destructive nature of torture
and the debilitating effect it has upon the witness of the Church.
The Christian’s place in the ongoing
debate about torture is to continue to denounce it as a destructive act that
mars God’s image in man and to not be swayed by the apparent good that can come
from it. In fact, Christians must be duly cautious of the apparent good that
can come from such an act. Since at least the time of Aquinas, theologians have
held that it is this desire for the apparent good that can cause men to sin. In
our fallenness we can recognize the good, but we “consistently choose a lesser
good that is only apparently good but lacks some crucial factor found in the
ideal good”[37] which
is found only in the revealed will of God. We must be, therefore, consistently
dependent upon God’s grace and revelation to discern what the true and
acceptable good is and not fall prey to pragmatic or utilitarian arguments that
seem to provide an easier way in a time of war.
[1] Office of the United nations
High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Convention Against Torture and Other
Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment”, http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/cat.htm,
(Accessed January 14, 2013).
[2] John Perry, Torture: Religious Ethics and National Security (Maryknoll, NY:
Orbis Books, 2005), 31.
[3]
Ibid., 19.
[4] Central Intelligence Agency, KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation,
pg. 83, 1963, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB122/CIA%20Kubark%2061-112.pdf , (accessed Sept. 25, 2012).
[5] Mirko Bagaric and Julie Clark,
“Not Enough Official Torture in the World? The Circumstances in Which Torture
is Morally Justifiable”, University of
San Francisco Law Review, Vol. 39, No. 3, Spring, pp. 581-616, http://dro.deakin.edu.au/eserv/DU:30003363/clarke-notenoughofficial-2005.pdf , (accessed Sept. 25, 2012).
[6] Alan Dershowitz, Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the
Threat, Responding to the Challenge, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
2003), 135.
[7] Alan Dershowitz, interviewed by
Wolf Blitzer, CNN News, CNN, March 4,
2003, http://edition.cnn.com/2003/LAW/03/03/cnna.Dershowitz/, (accessed Oct. 4, 2012).
[8] Slavoj Zizek, “Between Two
Deaths” in London Review of Books.
Vol. 26, No. 11, p. 19, June 3, 2004, http://www.egs.edu/faculty/slavoj-zizek/articles/between-two-deaths/
(accessed Oct. 4, 2012).
[9] Darius Rejali, “Tortures Dark
Allure”Salon.com, June 18, 2004, http://www.salon.com/2004/06/18/torture_1/, (accessed Oct. 4, 2012).
[10] Perry, Torture: Religious Ethics and National Security, 50.
[11] Ibid, 79.
[12] Genesis 2:18, ESV.
[13] Russell Grigg, “Who Really is
the God of Genesis?”, Creation Magazine,
Vol. 27, Issue 3, pg. 37-39, June 2005, http://creation.com/who-really-is-the-god-of-genesis#r8, (accessed Oct. 9, 2012).
[14] Genesis 1:26, ESV.
[15] John 3:16, ESV.
[16] John 17:5, ESV.
[17] Matthew 11:27, John 1:18, ESV.
[18] John 15:26, ESV.
[19] Ethan R. Longhenry, “Made for
Relationships”, The Voice, May 15,
2011, http://www.venicechurchofchrist.org/voice/maderelationships/, (accessed Oct. 4, 2012).
[20] Genesis 1:27, ESV.
[21] Genesis 2:18, ESV.
[22] Genesis 9:16, ESV.
[23] Perry, Torture: Religious Ethics and National Security, 43.
[24] Ibid, 104.
[25] Ibid, 104.
[26] Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, (New
York, NY: Penguin Books, 1997), 187.
[27] Perry, Torture: Religious Ethics and National Security, 83.
[28] Mark A. Constanza, “The Effects
and Effectiveness of Using Torture as an Interrogation Device: Using Research
to Inform the Policy Debate”, Social
Issues and Policy Review, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2009, 179-210, http://www.cgu.edu/pdffiles/sbos/costanzo_effects_of_interrogation.pdf, (accessed Oct. 9, 2012), 194.
[29] Ibid., 195.
[30] Ibid., italics mine, 180.
[31] Michael L. Gross, Moral Dilemmas of Modern War: Torture,
Assassination, and Blackmail in an Age of Asymmetric Conflict, (New York,
NY: Cambridge University Press, 2010), Kindle E-book, 1690.
[32] Ibid., 1849.
[33] Ibid., 1842.
[34] Ibid., 1849.
[35] Ibid., 1857.
[36] Perry, Torture: Religious Ethics and National Security, 164.
[37] Ibid., 152.
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