Or, torture, as some would have it – Mike Potemra makes some trenchant remarks about it:
The question has been raised, Was it appropriate for a Catholic TV network to provide a platform for a torture advocate? In my view, the answer is yes. Marc Thiessen, who appeared on Raymond Arroyo’s TV show The World Over, defends the practices of the past decade because he believes that these practices are necessary to defend innocent lives…
…Irealize I run the risk of being accused of special pleading in this defense of Marc (and of EWTN), so I should probably point out that I disagree with him on the underlying issue. I think torture is a great evil, and that the resort to it in the past decade is a black spot on America’s record. But I am not in a stone-throwing mood against people like Marc, because I realize that the accusation that someone is not living to up to his or her religious creed is one of the lowest and least helpful arguments imaginable. For heaven’s sake, I — in religious matters — am now a rather liberal high-church Episcopalian, and I find even that pronouncedly lenient ethic hard to live up to…
…So the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak: I accuse myself. I have been dismayed by how rapidly the resort to torture has been undertaken in recent years, in response to much lesser threats than the one in my hypothetical. (Two or three incompetent pantybombers in a decade doth not a Hitler make.) But I recognize that my difference from Marc and the others on his side of this discussion is one of degree, not of kind. And there are other reasons to ask people for generosity of spirit – notably because we may have need of it ourselves…
To me, its just doesn’t rise to the level of immorality when we compel terrorists to divulge information. Terrorists, in my view, simply do not have a right to remain silent – they must tell us what they know. Physical coercion should be used sparingly, but if that is what it takes to get them to talk, then that is what a proper understanding of morality requires in such situations.
What we have in terrorists are non-State actors who yet pose a threat to not just an individual or group of individuals, but to a whole people. This is different in kind from a bank robber who is a risk to all banks or even a murderer who is a threat to a particular person at a given time. The terrorists, if allowed the time and resources, would not just rob a bank – or even 10,000 banks. They would not just commit a murder – or even 10,000 murders. They will kill every last one of us, if they can. There is no limit to the amount of damage they may do – and unlike chasing down a murderer, once we’ve caught one of them we have only barely – and temporarily – diminished the threat.
In order to effectively combat the terrorist threat we must, as far as possible, learn what they know and what their plans are. There are many means of doing this, but the most effective way is to draw the information out of those best informed: the terrorists, themselves. When we capture a terrorist, it is a golden opportunity to gain a distinct advantage over the threat – and we must take full advantage of it, even if the captive proves reluctant to come clean. And do keep in mind that the more information we gather from one terrorist will not only save the lives of our own, but of the terrorist’s own, too. Thwarted terrorist plans means, also, a smaller number of dead terrorists, in the long run.
It is a dereliction of duty – an act of immorality – for someone who can obtain information about this threat to refuse to do so on the imagined grounds that everyone, all the time and everywhere, may not be coerced in to giving information. Some people might ask, “where do you draw the line?”. Meaning, of course, that if we allow one terrorist to be waterboarded, then we are presumptively defenseless against the claim that we must rip out the fingernails of someone who refuses to spill the beans about his neighbors tax return. To such arguments I answer: are you stupid?
I’m not. I can draw the line right where human decency requires it. I want information out of these terrorists – I don’t want so much as a hair on their heads harmed, if it can be in any way avoided. I don’t need to boil a terrorist in oil – in fact, doing so is counter-productive because a boiled terrorist cannot provide me the information I require. I want the terrorist to talk – and talk truthfully, as far as can be determined. Most of the time more regular interrogation methods will work – some times, however, it takes a bit more.
For us Christians, the greatest commandment is to love God with all our might, and love our neighbors as ourselves. Would I be loving my neighbor if I allowed my neighbor – in this case, a captive terrorist – to with hold information which may lead to the deaths of thousands? In my view, I’m not loving anyone – I’m guilty of cowardice, if I do such a thing.
I can’t help that some of my brothers and sisters make bad decisions – all I can do is react to the results of those decisions, and do my best to limit the overall damage. A man who is determined to fly a plane in to one of our buildings is someone who had gone severely wrong – the least worry we have is that it might require waterboarding to get him to talk. Our larger worry is how to change things so that it is less likely for a man to make such a choice – but part of that making change requires that any captives talk and tell us everything they know.
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