Torture

The form of torture is self-evident: the application of unbearable physical /psychic pain and/or the threat of such for malicious or instrumental purposes (such as gaining information).

The Catholic view of the dignity of the human person and the sanctity of the body absolutely forbids torture.

Waterboarding, which I take to be simulated drowning, is obviously torture: recall your feeling as a 8-year old when the 11 year-old bully held your head under the water. Sleep deprivation, slapping and aggressive verbal interrogation are not torture. Use of Waterboarding in the training of our own agents is entirely different since the context is one of training and implied trust/hope. Application of the same act in a hostile and intimidating manner against terrorists is an entirely different act. (Contrast: amputation of an arm by a surgeon with the same act by a sadist.)

The single, unambiguous moral failure of the Bush administration was the use of torture.

Thought experiment: Imagine we capture Osama; we know there is a ticking bomb due to go off in NYC within 24 hours; we know we cannot break him by applying physical pain; we also have custody of his beloved 10-year-old daughter, the joy of his life. We have the technology to simulate torture of the little girl, using and adapting videos and tapes of her voice, so that he will be convinced he is observing, by television, actual, real-time violation. The girl herself remains unharmed and protected. May we perform this simulation to possibly save 10 million innocent people in the NYC area? Clearly not! The love of a father for his daughter is sacred and is not to be violated. Were we to do so, even with good intentions (Do we know that Osama’s intentions are evil?), we would transform ourselves into terrorists.

We live in a structured, intelligible universe with clear rules and boundaries so that there are some things we can NEVER, EVER do. Torture is one of them.

I was disappointed to view EWTN the other night and observe Raymond Arroyo agreeing with Father Sirico as he opened the door to a pragmatic and liberal approach to torture.

Our nation needs to clearly renounce the use of torture, under any circumstances.

The liberal lynch mob in its rush to condemn Cheney and Company is, however, nauseatingly hypocritical. How can the Evil Empire of Abortion and Embryo Destruction sit in judgment against the limited, specific use of torture? This is like Hitler standing up at the Last Judgment to condemn Truman for bombing Hiroshima: He is technically correct, of course; that was the intrinsically evil act of targeting innocent civilians. But what gives him the authority to accuse? His crimes are immensely greater. We must credit President Obama for a measure of moral integrity in his renunciation of trials since he apparently intuits that his own relativistic, pragmatic morals requires an openness to the use of torture in some cases.