One small point:
It has been claimed that to be opposed to torture and not be a pacifist is inconsistent.
Opposition to torture must be (merely) a form of pacifism.
I have shown this is false. A man may oppose torture (or the mutilation of corpses) on the grounds that torture is a form of blasphemy. Killing is acceptable (in some circumstances), but not torture. This reasoning is not based on squeamishness or pacifism, but reverence.
One may be unpersuaded by the argument, but it means that all opposition to torture (namely traditional Christian opposition) is grounded in pacifism.
I will point out, however, that war itself is not an ideal state for a Christian. All Christians wish for peace, though not at any price. No Christian (who is being consistent) wishes for any man to be tortured by any other man.
January 8th, 2010 | 2:01 pm | #1
I hope I have not accused you of being a pacificist — I think you’re more sensible than that.
However, in the hope of advancing this discussion a little, here are two questions:
[1] How should we define “torture” for the sake of this discussion?
[2] Using that definition, how can we say that, for example, imprisonment itself is not a form of torture and should therefore be forbidden by civilized states?
If you want to know where I’m heading here, I think the term “torture” is too-broad for the kind of discussion that I think you’re trying to develop here, JMR. It’s too vague, and ignores vital distinctions between the indivbidual citizen and the ordained function of government.
January 8th, 2010 | 2:12 pm | #2
For the purpose of this discussion, I am describing torture as the desire to “break the will” of a man and to inflict permanent psychological and physical harm.
Some imprisonment (much US imprisonment) is torture . . . and is wicked. Many prisoners in the USA are treated to barbaric conditions (for a modern and wealthy culture) and are subject to abuse. This is wrong.
One cannot restrain evil doers perfectly, but we could do much better than we do.
January 8th, 2010 | 2:17 pm | #3
JMR,
Do you watch LOST? I know this seems like a non-sequitur, but it isn’t. LOST explores some of these ideas in many of its episodes. I think it’s a great show, possibly the best ever made.
January 8th, 2010 | 2:18 pm | #4
Lost is on my list of things to Netflix. My son loves it . . . but I am working my way through the awesome Dr. Who right now!
January 8th, 2010 | 2:21 pm | #5
Wow. This is going to be a long discussion.
January 8th, 2010 | 2:25 pm | #6
JMR,
I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
January 8th, 2010 | 2:27 pm | #7
well, at least we agree on Dr. Who.
January 8th, 2010 | 2:47 pm | #8
Thanks for putting a separation between “pacifism” and “squeamishness.” Much appreciated.
January 8th, 2010 | 2:50 pm | #9
Obviously many pacifists are very brave and (for example) as medics in major wars show no signs of squeamishness.
January 8th, 2010 | 3:32 pm | #10
Dr. Reynolds – If I’m understanding you correctly, torturing is always wrong because it profanes the image of God in the victim. Likewise, killing in a just war is justifiable because it shows respect for the imago dei in those put in danger by the enemy (Jews during WW2, for instance). As you said, both hinge on reverence.
My question is can’t that same argument from reverence be used to justify torture or condemn all wars? Couldn’t one argue that torturing someone to obtain intelligence shows reverence for the people whose lives are at risk due to the information held by the torture victim? So by torturing him, we show reverence for the people at risk.
Or, from the opposite side of the spectrum, couldn’t one argue that killing in an act of war shows a lack of reverence for the imago dei in the enemy?
January 8th, 2010 | 3:41 pm | #11
Jake,
As you are demonstrating, it is easier to justify killing nobody, than torturing some from the general Christian ethic.
We serve the Prince of Peace and our goal is a world with no war. Michael fights, but only because of evil.
The warrior is not a vocation for Paradise.
I think when a man decides to become our foe and we cannot restrain him in any other way, we may honor his choice by killing him. We honor his free will which in his depraved state is all he may have left of the Image of God other than the mere form of a man.
Yet even that mere form we honor by refusing to mutilate his corpse.
The state has been given (by God) the power to kill (which will happen to every man), but not the power to torture (which men may do to no men and will not happen to every man).
However, if we capture a foe, then he can no longer harm us himself. He may have knowledge we wish to have, but we must honor his personal integrity. To find out what we want to know, we would have to destroy him (in part ) as a man.
We can trick him, of course, but we cannot torture him.
The fundamental attitude toward our foe is love. We do the least harm to him we can.
In the “ticking bomb” scenario, we cannot do just anything to save innocent lives. That is the disadvantage of civilized and virtuous men. In that sense, the sons of this age will always (short term!) seem wiser than those of the age to come.
Surely we all agree that the government would not be able to DO ANYTHING to get information. Would we torture a man’s wife in order to get him to break and tell us about the bomb?
January 8th, 2010 | 3:50 pm | #12
“For the purpose of this discussion, I am describing torture as the desire to “break the will” of a man and to inflict permanent psychological and physical harm.”
So, would actions like slowly placing bamboo under the fingernails, pulling out teeth, papercuts in between the toes be torture, so long as the one doing this didn’t mean to break the will of a man or intend/expect to inflict permanent psychological harm to the person subjected to that treatment?
January 8th, 2010 | 4:31 pm | #13
Intention is not the issue, Roberto. Those actions would produce permanent and grave psychological harm to the person receiving them and to the person giving them.
January 8th, 2010 | 5:22 pm | #14
Ok, if intention is not the issue, perhaps it is “desire” as you mentioned (which I took to be synonomous). How does that avoid the problematic consequences of describing torture the way you do?
It doesn’t seem to be helpful in arguing the case against torture since many scenarios and acts can be imagined that would not result in psychological harm and conversely many acts not at all deemed torture very easily fit your criteria for torture.
Consider the average duty of a U.S. soldier on the field of combat. He is engaged in battle. He has the enemy in his sights. He sees the enemy engaged in battle right back at his buddies. Our soldier shoots to kill. He succeeds.
Multiply this experience over and over again during his tour of duty. And magnify the killing experience by a hundred times(a thousand perhaps?) when that soldier has had the awful experience of hand to hand combat and he does what is necessary to kill with his hands.
The experience and knowledge of having killed, even in combat duty to his country, will result in an altered psychological condition he would in no way describe as improvement to his soul. Especially in hand to hand combat.
Most honorable soldiers don’t discuss in detail and specificity the disturbing impact on them that engaging in combat has had on them.
I agree, intention or desire is not the issue.
But if it’s the certain production of psychological harm, damage, suffering, diminishment, something along those lines….then many, many acts are to be viewed as torture as well as things like “enhanced interrogation techniques”.
This is one consideration that pacifists have in mind when some of them argue against even medical participation in the armed forces.
I am niether a pacifist nor an advocate of torture.
Would I would like to see is those who equate “enhanced interrogation techniques” with torture to come up with a consistent and coherent definition or description of what exactly constitutes torture.
January 8th, 2010 | 6:18 pm | #15
Roberto,
I have given you a consistent and coherent definition. You just don’t like it.
You don’t like it, because (in this last post) combat duty has bad consequences on the soul of the soldier. Let us assume that this is true. This is an argument for pacifism or at the very least war as a very last resort.
Since Christians have long (and consistently) held that war is (at best) only licit as a very last resort partly for the reasons you have given, then so far so good. I think, however, that you believe that this means torture can be used as a last resort in the “bomb LA” scenario, but this is quite wrong.
1. it assumes that the harm done in torturing is the same as the harm done in killing. I am very dubious about this given centuries of experience Christians have with old soldiers versus old torturers.
2. it assume harm done to self for the good of others (the soldier) has the the same impact as harm done to another for the good of others. This seems unlikely to me.
3. it assumes that harm done to self in harming a man in “cold blood” is the same as the harm done to self in the heat of battle. There is a reason we punish premeditated murder more harshly than a crime done in the heat of the moment. We think the man who kills with intention worse than the man who was in a rage.
Cold blooded killers are not what civilized armed forces are after. Yes?
3. it assumes the same harm to culture. Does a just war have the same corrosive impact as a nation that allows torture?
4. it assumes the same knowledge (or certainty) in the case of war as in torture. I can be very, very certain if I am a Pole that the Nazis are coming to kill me and my people. I can be sure (in a just war) that I am stopping them or trying to do so. On the other hand, even in the best case, torturers have no such certainty. They think the prisoner may have some knowledge and they can get it out of him with “enhanced technique” a, b, c. They might be right, but they don’t know the prisoner actually knows anything they don’t.
What is the man acted alone? What if he only knows/confirms things they already knew?
5. finally it assumes that just any action is acceptable if it brings victory. Anything is better than defeat (or the destruction of LA), but Christians have never believed this. A war is not licit (in traditional Christian culture) if there is little chance of winning or if the cost is greater than any conceivable gain. Torture may:
a. be inherently illicit (that is so base that no good can justify it)
and/or
b. so costly in terms of culture that it cannot be “worth it.”
I suggest that torture is “cold blooded” and so intrusive into a man’s will (playing with his mind) that it should not be done. Stopping him dead is straightforward, but playing with him (torture) is worse.
In any case, it is far easier for Christians to justify pacifism than torture.
January 8th, 2010 | 7:01 pm | #16
Since I happen to be in the works of a book on Christianity and pacifism, this is a very interesting post and set of comments.
I suppose at some point I’ll have to do some meditating on how to approach the idea of Christian involvement in war as field medics. I have mixed feelings, of course.
If I may add to the topic at hand: what difference do you see in the psychological impact of face-to-face contact with an enemy soldier (whether hand-to-hand combat or torture) and the impact of ranged combat?
January 8th, 2010 | 8:09 pm | #17
Respectfully, you keep moving the goal posts. In various responses to me and others you introduce a new criteria to support your position that torture is immoral.
I’m sure you’ve been working with one definition or description of torture in your mind from the beginning. But you have not made it explicit or differentiated it enough to exclude the scenarios I have described throughout the different threads.
Earlier, it’s definition was simply what has been previously been decided upon by international consensus. Then it was deprivation of basic human rights and dignity. Then you added desire to break the will (which inexplicably is different than the intention to break the will). Along with that, the certain outcome of inflicting permanent psychological and physical harm.
Lastly, you confused my mention of the significantly detrimental psychological effects of killing in combat upon a soldier with me arguing for the position that “torture can be used as a last resort in the “bomb LA” scenario”.
I have made no such argument whatsoever.
I mentioned the example of the soldier’s experience of killing in war as a problem for your tentative and ever expanding definition and description of torture.
The example of a soldier’s experience killing in wartime does not escape your broad criteria for torture.
While a few others suggested this same point to you(that your criteria and definition for torture is too broad and too loose), I have merely brought forward a few considerations why they have reason to think so.
But you have provided much in your 6 points that isn’t relevant to the discussion since you mistakenly make me to be arguing for torture in a last resort scenario. I’ll bite, but only a little.
1. “It assumes…” You say you are dubious about the equality (“same”-ness) between particular harms/effects achieved in torturing and killing in war. You may be dubious about it, but that tells me more about you than it does to advance your position. Besides, I made no such claim.
I simply said that the soldier will have permanent, detrimental psychological effects. He/she will never be the same again and it won’t be for the better having killed. Even an enemy. Of course, soldiers are not torturers. But according to your previously stated criteria, they qualify as candidates for victims of torture. Their government being their torturer since they are in charge.
2. It assumes…”seems unlikely to me.” Again, this tells me more about you than it does adduce a premise or some kind of consideration that would tie up all the loose criteria you’ve mentioned throughout.
3. It assumes…” cold blooded..” It doesn’t. But I’ll bite. Soldiers frequently carry on a battle within themselves to suppress their normal moral apparatus in order to engage the enemy because their normal moral apparatus would never allow them to do what they have to (and do it well), even in the heat of battle. Depends how hot it is. Is such behavior to be characterized as “cold-blooded”? If not, why does it escape condemnation?
What I’m getting at is this: instead of clarifying your argument, you are adding to it ambiguities.
I won’t address the rest of your points.
It has taken too long to unravel the knots of arguing against torture in the way that you have. And I’m sure there is more to come.
Oh, the torture!
January 8th, 2010 | 8:24 pm | #18
Roberto:
I think I have kept the same definition of torture throughout. I have always been arguing that torture (in this context) is the intentional infliction of permanent psychological or physical harm which attacks his integrity as a person in a prisoner of war who does not agree to this treatment.
A POW must be treated with human dignity. His war is done as far as being a fighter. He has a right to what is in his head.
This does not mean we cannot choose to do things (ourselves) that will be unpleasant to us or cause harm to ourselves to help others. A drafted soldier would have the right to consider himself “tortured” by the government if he otherwise would have refused to go. This is one reason I oppose a draft. A volunteer would not.
January 8th, 2010 | 8:52 pm | #19
“what difference do you see in the psychological impact of face-to-face contact with an enemy soldier (whether hand-to-hand combat or torture) and the impact of ranged combat?”
Many. But to start, all five senses will be involved in a face to face combat situation (I do NOT equate this with “torture” as has been defined by JMR at all) towards your adversary.
As such, the psychological impact will be wedded to the soldier’s physiology more intimately. I don’t want to be crude or graphic. But the things done in hand to hand combat are more deliberate (some would say more “savage”), involve more of the soldier’s whole being than what he can do at a distance shooting, piloting a drone (from the other side of the world) or an airplane from high above, or a sailor shooting from a ship.
We can think of nicer examples (not exact analogies) of where being up close and personal versus being far and removed from something definitely has a different impact. A teenage girl in the mid sixties listening to a Beatles song on the radio versus being in the front row at the Ed Sullivan Show seeing the Beatles perform live. Imagine the difference of experience and impact.
January 9th, 2010 | 7:08 am | #20
I’m flattered to see a whole post in response to my comments. (Don’t burst my bubble if it’s not true; it’s been a long day.)
I have to say that you have a remarkably low view of the significance of death. If I had to find some parameter X which is really bad, for which torture is X, but killing is not X, I would not choose “blasphemy” or “destroying the image of God.” What more thorough desecration of the image of God is there than death? Overcoming death and corruption is what the gospel is all about–it’s not just some Enlightenment freedom-of-conscience movement.
I feel that this such an obvious point I wouldn’t know where to start quoting Scripture. Are you seriously contending that “On the day you eat it you shall surely die” is mercifully toned down from, “On the day you eat it you shall surely receive an open-handed belly slap”?
The whole thing sounds quite gnostic to me, as if we are permitted to do anything to the body (er, until it’s dead), as long as we don’t touch the soul. “Kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out.”
I haven’t kept track… are you by chance an evangelical?
January 9th, 2010 | 11:47 am | #21
Adam,
If physical death is worse than anything, then why don’t we start torturing people rather than simply imprisoning or executing them? What’s the bright line for acceptable torture? May we poke out eyes, pour acid on people, chop off hands? If torture is truly more minimally invasive than killing, then why not use it instead of capital punishment? I bet it would be a stronger deterrent.
As for the fall of man, you argue that the physical death of Adam and Eve would have been worse than torture. I disagree. Death, though a consequence for sin, is also a mercy. If God did not keep Adam and Eve form the Tree of Life after the Fall, then Adam and Eve could have eaten from the tree and LIVED FOREVER in sin. Thus, death is a mercy. Prolonged agony is not a gift. In fact, it can be like Hell on Earth. Hell itself is agony.
I think gnosticism argument actually goes the other way. It is the torturers who are disrespecting the body. In the case of psychological torment, torturers are trying to separate the body from the mind, and they may even believe the same is true for themselves. They mistakenly believe they can use their bodies against another and have no psychological consequences. To reference LOST again, the character Sayid has suffered greatly because he was a torturer for Iraq.
January 9th, 2010 | 10:12 pm | #22
orthodoxdj,
The U.S. constitution notwithstanding, I would wager that a good portion of death row inmates would accept a period of torture over execution. That’s speculation, of course. How many water-boardings would you undergo to save your life?
Physical death can be seen as a mercy in light of spiritual death, but not in isolation of it, and not as a good thing in itself. We don’t accept mercy killing because the object of mercy lived in a sin-infested world.
It may be a matter of perspective, but I think that torturers understand the link between the body and the soul (or at least the mind), much more than some evangelicals. (I am an evangelical, by the way.) They understand that an effective way to transform the mind is through the body. We are often much more naive in our practice of the spiritual/bodily disciplines.
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