A Franciscan Abroad

In the wake of the Osama Bin Laden’s death the debate over torture is rearing its ugly head once again Many former members of the Bush administration have claimed in various interviews that the so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” authorized by the Bush administration led Khalid Sheik Mohammad to give up the critical nom de guerre of the courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, who eventually led the CIA to Bin Laden’s location. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s comments to Sean Hannity of Fox News are typical:

Well, that’s my understanding [that torture led to important intel on Bin Laden's location]. And I think that anyone who suggests that the enhanced techniques, let’s be blunt, waterboarding, did not produce an enormous amount of valuable intelligence, just isn’t facing the truth.

Members of the Obama administration have denied such claims, pointing out that finding Bin Laden was an effort that took years and involved multiple sources of information from many different places. According to other sources it wasn’t even Khalid Sheikh Mohammad who revealed courier’s cover name. Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, under normal interrogation, admitted to knowing the man, but denied he had anything to do with al-Qaida. In fact, this attempt to shift attention away from al-Kuwaiti is part of what led the CIA to focus on him.

Furthermore, according to Matthew Alexander, a former senior military interrogator in Iraq, the torture of another CIA prisoner, Skaykh ah-Libi, led him to give up a false name for the courier. This false name delayed the search while the CIA determined it was false. Alexander also points out that if torture was truly effective it would have led Khalid Sheikh Mohammad to give up information on how to find al-Kuwaiti, information he must have known as a senor member of al-Qaida.

Leaving aside the factual problems with those who claim this incident as validation for torture, the fact still remains that torture is both morally wrong, practically ineffective, and unnecessary. On the practical side Alexander points out that during his time in Iraq he found that non-coercive techniques that made skillful uses of a detainee’s culture are much more effective than torture in producing reliable information. The use of torture also has a number of negative consequences including acting as a powerful recruiting tool for al-Qaida and other terrorist groups. Again from Matthew Alexander:

When I was in Iraq, I oversaw the interrogations of foreign fighters. And those foreign fighters, the majority of them, said, time and time again, the reason they had come to Iraq to fight was because of the torture and abuse of detainees at both Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. And this is not my opinion. The Department of Defense tracked these statistics. And they were briefed, every interrogator who arrived there, that torture and abuse was al-Qaeda’s number one recruiting tool.

Even more powerful than the effectiveness argument against torture is the moral argument. According to the Christian tradition all human beings are made in the image and likeness of God and because of this we possess an inherent human dignity. This dignity was confirmed and enhanced in the Incarnation where the divine and immortal Son of God fully adopted human nature. This dignity is a gift from God and is not something that is dependent on or effected by human actions. In other words, we cannot do a single thing to gain or lose this dignity; it is simply a given aspect of the human condition.

The fact that human dignity is rooted in our creation in God’s image also means that by honoring it we honor God and by violating it we violate God’s will. Torture represents a direct attack on this dignity and is always and everywhere wrong. According to the Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World:

…whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself…all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are supreme dishonor to the Creator. (27).

In commenting on this passage in Veratatis Splendor (par. 80) Blessed Pope John Paul II noted that these actions constitute examples of what the Church calls “intrinsically evil acts.” Such acts are those that are always and everywhere wrong regardless of circumstances or intentions because they radically contradict the good of the human person made in God’s image. In other words, there is never a situation where torture does not constitute a grave mortal sin that fundamentally damages a a person’s relationship with God, the Church, and the community.

What this means is that from a Catholic perspective this is not an open debate. The teaching of the Church is clear and unequivocal. Torture is violation of our God-given human dignity and is always wrong. This is something that we need to keep in mind as the question of torture once again makes headlines and generates public debate. Nor should Catholics, or other Christians who share our basic understanding of human nature, be fooled by arguments that appeal to necessity.

Some may argue that while torture is not generally effective it is necessary in time-sensitive situations where interrogators do not have time for regular methods (the so-called “ticking bomb” scenario so often used in the television program 24). At its heart this is a utilitarian argument and we are most emphatically not utilitarians. In fact, even if torture were always and everywhere effective, it would still be an evil and sinful thing because it is contrary to the very nature of who we say we are.

How we treat those who threaten our well-being and safety is a question that if fundamentally about who we are and not about who they are. People who commit or condone torture are people with an insufficient or non-existent respect for the human person. With their actions they proclaim that people have no fundamental dignity, no inalienable rights and that any manner of cruelty or abomination is justifiable if the outcome is sufficiently important. This kind of person in no disciple of Christ, in fact, they are an opponent whose actions must be resisted and condemned even as we continue to offer Christ’s love to such a person.

I find it ironic and disturbing that those who so loudly proclaim the U.S.’s identity as a Christian nation are often the first ones to claim torture as a necessity. If the U.S. were truly a Christian nation torture would not even be a question, but something condemned and rejected out of hand. For myself, and for anyone interested in truly effective and moral methods of interrogation, it already is a settled question. Torture is evil and we must resist its use and defense always and everywhere.