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Clarity on Torture
Those who see abortion as an evil are often frustrated by those who attempt to justify abortion by vague arguments about “choice” or even more practical arguments about exceptions for rape or incest, or the health of the mother. But many of these same people lose their moral clarity when the subject is torture. Suddenly they are the ones bringing up exceptions and parsing definitions.
There is so much confusion over this issue that in a recent TV interview, a prominent Catholic journalist let a former Bush Administration speechwriter, also a Catholic, grossly misrepresent Catholic teaching in a shameful apologia for torture.
Let us re-establish clarity. Torture, whether physical or psychological, is a barbaric, savage act, not justifiable under any circumstances, and unworthy of a civilized society.
But don’t take our word for it. For those readers who are religious, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America began calling for America to cease torturing prisoners more than a year ago. American Episcopal bishops agree, as do other Protestant denominations. For our Catholic readers, Pope Benedict XVI wrote, “I reiterate that the prohibition against torture cannot be contravened under any circumstances.” The Catholic Church draws no distinction between physical and psychological torture.
For those readers who aren’t religious, we turn to U.S. law and international law, where torture is, without exception, condemned. Not one state or municipal law enforcement agency permits it. The Army Field Manual, which regulates interrogations by the U.S. military, prohibits torture. So does the Geneva Convention—a treaty to which both the Holy See and the United States are signatories. None of these institutions or documents draws any distinction between physical and psychological torture either. For all, torture is torture.
When Catholics and Protestants agree, and when religious and secular institutions agree, that torture is an offense against human dignity and that those guilty of it should be thrown in jail, may we not agree that perhaps it is immoral? Do we really need to get into the nuts and bolts of what constitutes torture?
Yes, we do. Most will agree that taking a power drill to a man’s shoulder or pulling out his fingernails with pliers for punishment or to extract information is torture. But when the subject is waterboarding, clarity vanishes again. Some consider waterboarding to be mere psychological torture—which, as we’ve already established, is morally indistinguishable from physical torture.
But waterboarding is not a harmless dunk in the tub, as former Vice President Dick Cheney once likened it, and it is not psychological torture. In waterboarding, a subject is strapped to a gurney. His feet are elevated slightly above his head. A cloth is draped over his face. And water is poured on his face so that it enters his nose and mouth and flows into his lungs. CIA interrogators are instructed to pour the water immediately after a detainee exhales, to ensure he inhales water, not air. They use their hands to “dam the flow” of excess water from a detainee’s mouth. And detainees who are scheduled for waterboarding are put on a liquid diet, to minimize the risk of death should they inhale their own vomit.
This procedure became official American policy in our so-called War on Terror, but it was not always so. Waterboarding has been condemned by the United States government since at least 1898, when American soldiers were court marshaled for waterboarding prisoners during our occupation of the Philippines following the Spanish-American War. In World War II, we hanged Japanese war criminals for waterboarding American and Allied troops. In the 1980s in Texas, a sheriff and three of his deputies were convicted by the Justice Department for waterboarding prisoners to extract confessions.
And yet, there are those exceptions: American security is at stake. If waterboarding saves even one life, isn’t it worth it?
If torturing a terrorist suspect saved a city from destruction, or if it saved even one life, it would still be a barbaric, savage act, unworthy of a civilized society. If expediency were enough to justify an immoral act, then abortion would be justifiable.
G.K. Chesterton wrote in 1916 that people who purport to defend civilization against barbarians undermine their cause when they resort to barbaric tactics. “The more we insist that the terms must be our terms, the more do we weaken ourselves if the methods are their methods.”
During World War I, when some in England demanded that German soldiers captured on English soil be denied humane treatment, Chesterton countered, “Such small revenges are unworthy of the dignity of indignation. They are also futile and inconsequent.”
Our whole hope of getting a monster killed and not scotched depends upon our keeping fresh the original human horror at its monstrosity. It may be illogical, but it will certainly be natural, if that horror is somewhat dulled if, by the end of the war, everybody seems to be fighting with pretty much the same weapons.
When you torture, you turn the victim into a hero, for there is more honor in defying a torturer than in being a torturer.
“A kind of courage can exist in a merciless and unmagnaminous soldier, as it can exist in a merciless and unmagnaminous wild pig,” Chesterton wrote. “But it does not happen to be the kind of courage that our brethren have died to keep alive.”
—Sean P. Dailey for the editorial board of Gilbert Magazine
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Murder by Metaphor
The Terri Schiavo case still glows, but with diminished heat. Although much has been said and written, we are not aware that the reason for her death has been analyzed with any precision in the popular media. Those following the case will probably tell you that a Florida judge named Greer ordered Terri’s caregivers to refrain from giving her nourishment, and thus she died of starvation and thirst.
Exactly why this judge so ruled was never made clear in news reports. The Schiavo case, tailor-made for the twenty-four-hour cable news channels, had the drama of life and death, the suspense of an unknown outcome, constant new developments, the braying punditry of the “I am right, you are nuts” variety, and heartrending visuals of poor Terri. While all of this made for good ratings, it failed dismally in the domain of sober analysis.
The law that mandated the death of Terri Schiavo was not the brainchild of any legislative, judicial, or executive branch of government. It did not arise from grassroots populism. The law came from experts. It originated from within the healing professions and specifically from the group of physicians who serve healthcare institutions as experts in medical ethics. These bioethicists, as they are called, have been impaneled to sort though the dilemmas that confront the medical profession in an era of rapidly advancing technology and scientific discovery. Their purpose is to steer medical practitioners through the shark-infested waters of malpractice suits, complex insurance regulations, and government oversight.
What the ordinary citizen might see as prolonged unconsciousness, bioethicists call “brain death.” What we outsiders might understand as a wakeful coma brought about by an injury to the brain, bioethicists label a “persistent vegetative state.” Legislators listen to bioethicists because it takes them off the hook. But we ordinary people know that no human being was ever a vegetable and that no human being was ever brain dead—unless they were dead. People do not retreat in stages from the human state through the animal to the vegetable and finally to utter dissolution.
This bioethical labeling is not aimed at the welfare of the patients—it is not designed to improve their care. It is designed to protect the caregivers. Hence when bioethics proclaims it is acceptable medical prac- tice to kill those who are mere vegetables, and espe- cially living vegetables whose brains have died, care- givers are granted a license to kill. It is an added nice- ty that the unfortunate patients under this system are starved to death. This makes it appear that we are per- mitting death to take its natural course. A lethal injec- tion or, for that matter, a bullet to the brain would seem too, well, overt.
Hundreds of people like Terri Schiavo die every year, not because they are in the process of natural death, but because their caregivers kill them. How did bioethicists persuade lawmakers to accept this grue- some practice?
Like this.
The human heart is a muscular organ that pumps blood through the circulatory system, yet we often speak as though the heart were the actual seat of feel- ings. The heart does beat harder or faster when we experience strong emotions. We speak of our heart’s desire, a broken heart, a heart of gold, a heart of stone. Tony Bennett left his heart in San Francisco, and Celine Dion says her heart will go on.
But it is not literally the human heart that experiences love—it is the human being. We use the heart as a metaphor or symbol, a material object representing something immaterial. In a similar way, an open win- dow can stand for receptivity. But when Pope John XXIII said his goal was “to open the windows of the Church to the modern world,” no one thought he wanted to send a work crew to St. Peter’s to remove all the stained glass. Everyone understood that he was using a metaphor—open windows as a symbol for intel- lectual openness. Terri’s parents were heartbroken, but nobody took this so literally that a cardiologist was called in to deal with their injured hearts.
In a similar way we use the brain to symbolize intelligence. The brain, like the heart, is a physical organ, a part of human anatomy with specific biologi- cal functions. Because it is the processor of sensory information, of course we associate the brain with thinking. We say a dunce is brainless, a genius is brainy, and if he had half a brain he’d give up golf. But it is not literally, but rather metaphorically, that the brain is said to think. The human being thinks; the brain does not.
Some years ago, there was an enormous cloud of confusion about this matter because of the debate about “artificial intelligence.” It was argued that the human brain is essentially a computer, or a biological organ that acts on computational principles. This led to the belief that computers could actually achieve humanlike intelligence. Everyone now realizes—with the exception of ideologically-driven extremists—that no matter the speed and complexity of operation, computing can never be more than the mindless manipulation of bits of information.
The experts said Terri was no longer human because her brain was incapable
of human intelligence and will. The experts persuaded lawmakers and judges
that what is no more than a figure of speech should be taken literally.
And, as we now know, giving a metaphor the force of law can kill you.