Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Progressive Christian
Torture

Torture

Last updated on: July 3, 2012 at 6:45 pm by Fred Clark

Torture 2012-07-03T18:45:53-04:00 Fred Clark

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

"They say this is a different kind of war," Tony Lagouranis says. "Different rules for terrorists. Total crap."

Lagouranis was a military intelligence specialist in Iraq until he was honorably discharged due to "adjustment disorder." That seems to be a military psychologist's euphemism for still having his conscience and humanity mostly intact.

I've written before about the toll our nation's embrace of torture takes on the men and women ordered to carry it out. Laura Blumenfeld of The Washington Post puts a human face on this toll in "The Tortured Lives of Interrogators."

Blumenfeld tells Lagouranis' story alongside the stories of two other former interrogators. The other two, "James" and "Sheriff," worked for the Royal Ulster Constabulary in Northern Ireland and for Shin Bet, the Israeli security service. Unlike Lagouranis, James and Sheriff convey a cocky bravado, insisting that they have no qualms about the "verschärfte vernehmung"* they employed. James and Sheriff doth protest too much. They come across as deeply troubled, haunted, FUBAR.

"I've got a clean conscience because I rarely use it," Sheriff says. It comes across like a man in a wheelchair boasting that that his legs are not suffering from overuse.

Lagouranis may have gotten out in time to keep his own conscience from atrophying the way Sheriff's has. He realizes that he, like the people he was ordered to interrogate, has come away damaged:

Not the things I saw, but the things I did. You keep saying 'torturing the innocent,' but the two brothers I tortured were guilty. It doesn't mean you should torture them.

That word "should" denotes a moral imperative: You should not torture. Or in the familiar language of the King James Bible, Thou shalt not torture.

Such moral language strikes some as irrelevant. The question for them is not whether or not one should employ torture, but whether or not one needs to. This appeal to necessity is precisely what Sheriff relies on as an opiate to numb his fading conscience. "You leave us no choice," he would say to his victims.

The problem with this, of course, is that torture does not work. It produces misinformation. Practitioners of torture end up knowing less than they knew before. Worse, they can end up thinking they know all sorts of things that are not true. This "works" only if their only goal is to produce false confessions** or to serve as a deterrent, intimidating (i.e. terrorizing) others.

Members of the Intelligence Science Board underscored this point in their recent testimony to Congress. (Their (long) full report is available as a .pdf: "Educing Information: Interrogation: Science and Art.") From the article linked above:

President Bush has insisted that those secret “enhanced” techniques are crucial, and he is far from alone. The notion that turning up pressure and pain on a prisoner will produce valuable intelligence is a staple of popular culture from the television series “24” to the recent Republican presidential debate, where some candidates tried to outdo one another in vowing to get tough on captured terrorists. …

But some of the experts involved in the interrogation review, called “Educing Information,” say that during World War II, German and Japanese prisoners were effectively questioned without coercion.

“It far outclassed what we’ve done,” said Steven M. Kleinman, a former Air Force interrogator and trainer, who has studied the World War II program of interrogating Germans. … Mr. Kleinman, who worked as an interrogator in Iraq in 2003, called the post-Sept. 11 efforts “amateurish” by comparison.

I'm inclined to side with Kleinman on the value of looking to America's World War II program as a model. After all, America won that war. Instead, we've been taking as our models the interrogation programs of the Soviet Union and the methods people like Sheriff have employed in the West Bank. Just think about that for a moment: the "Evil Empire" and the poster-child for neverending hostility have become our models for freedom and security. Somewhere in the White House or the Pentagon, someone actually said, "Let's copy what they're doing in the West Bank, because that sure seems to be working."

So torture is morally corrosive and ineffective and, as the example of the West Bank illustrates, it leads to your own military defeat.

Charles C. Krulak and Joseph P. Hoar make all of these points in their op-ed, "It's Our Cage, Too: Torture Betrays Us and Breeds New Enemies." Krulak is a former commandant of the Marine Corps. Hoar is a former commander in chief of U.S. Central Command. They write of the "disastrous consequences" of the Bush administration's embrace of torture, saying it has:

… nurtured the recuperative power of the enemy. This war will be won or lost not on the battlefield but in the minds of potential supporters who have not yet thrown in their lot with the enemy. If we forfeit our values by signaling that they are negotiable in situations of grave or imminent danger, we drive those undecideds into the arms of the enemy. This way lies defeat, and we are well down the road to it.

So torture is ineffective and corrosive, and a certain path to military defeat. On the other hand …

There is no other hand. Torture is ineffective and corrosive, and a certain path to military defeat. Everyone knows this.

So given that, why on earth does anyone pretend that this is something we should accept or approve? What's the attraction? Why are Republican presidential candidates so desperate "to outdo one another" in embracing despicable and counterproductive measures? What is it about "ineffective and corrosive" that people like Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani fail to understand? What is it they find so attractive about certain defeat?

Here are the fools on parade in a recent Republican presidential debate:

What is wrong with these people?

– – – – – – – – – – – –

* Or "enhanced interrogations." This is the Bush administration's preferred phrase. The name comes from the Gestapo. The tactics come from the Soviet Union.

** If the goal is a false confession, of course, torture is still an inefficient and unnecessary step. Simple forgery will produce a result that is just as credible as a signed confession produced under coercion and duress. This leads me to suspect, again, that the real reason for this use of torture — for any use of torture — is that those who order it enjoy it. Are George W. Bush, Alberto Gonzales and John Yoo really such fools that they do not know that torture is ineffective and self-defeating? Or are they simply monsters?

Previous Post

June 2, 2007

We've lost a good man

Next Post

June 5, 2007 More housekeeping

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category class warfare evangelicals Iraq Left Behind Mammon music Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who was the last judge of Israel?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Samson Gideon Eli Samuel