[Mb-civic] Torturous Silence on Torture

[Mha Atma Khalsa]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/092705I.shtml
Torturous Silence on Torture
    By Ray McGovern
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective

    Tuesday 27 September 2005

    Where do American religious leaders stand on
torture? Their deafening silence evokes memories of
the unconscionable behavior of German church leaders
in the 1930s and early 1940s.

    Despite the hate whipped up by administration
propagandists against those it brands "terrorists,"
most Americans agree that torture should not be
permitted. Few seem aware, though, that although
President George W. Bush says he is against torture,
he has openly declared that our military and other
interrogators may engage in torture "consistent with
military necessity."

    For far too long we have been acting like
"obedient Germans." Shall we continue to avert our
eyes - even as our mainstream media begin to expose
the "routine" torture conducted by US forces in Iraq,
Afghanistan, and Guantánamo?

    Senate Armed Forces Committee Chairman John Warner
took a strong rhetorical stand against torture early
last year after seeing the photos from Abu Ghraib.
Then he succumbed to strong political pressure to
postpone Senate hearings on the subject until after
the November 2004 election. Those of us who live in
Virginia might probe our consciences on this. Shall we
citizens of the once-proud Old Dominion simply
acquiesce while Sen. Warner shirks his constitutional
duty?

    We have come a long way since Virginia patriot
Patrick Henry loudly insisted that the rack and the
screw were barbaric practices that must be left behind
in the Old World, "or we are lost and undone." Can
Americans from other states consult their own
consciences with respect to what Justice may require
of them in denouncing torture as passionately as the
patriots who founded our nation?

    On September 24, The New York Times ran a detailed
report regarding the kinds of "routine" torture that
US servicemen and women have been ordered to carry
out. This week's Time also has an article on the use
of torture by US forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, and
Guantánamo.

    Those two articles are based on a new report from
Human Rights Watch, a report that relies heavily on
the testimony of a West Point graduate, an Army
Captain who has had the courage to speak out. A
Pentagon spokesman has dismissed the report as
"another predictable report by an organization trying
to advance an agenda through the use of distortion and
errors of fact." Judge for yourselves; the report can
be found here. Grim but required reading.

    Inhuman

    History, even recent history, demonstrates once
again that total power corrupts totally. See if you
can guess the author of the following:

    In this land that has inherited through our
forebears the noblest understandings of the rule of
law, our government has deliberately chosen the way of
barbarism ...

    There is a price to be paid for the right to be
called a civilized nation. That price can be paid in
only one currency - the currency of human rights ...
When this currency is devalued a nation chooses the
company of the world's dictatorships and banana
republics. I indict this government for the crime of
taking us into that shady fellowship.

    The rule of law says that cruel and inhuman
punishment is beneath the dignity of a civilized
state. But to prisoners we say, "We will hold you
where no one can hear your screams." When I used the
word "barbarism," this is what I meant. The entire
policy stands condemned by the methods used to pursue
it.

    We send a message to the jailers, interrogators,
and those who make such practices possible and
permissible: "Power is a fleeting thing. One day your
souls will be required of you."

    --Bishop Peter Storey, Central Methodist Mission,
Johannesburg, June 1981

    I asked a Muslim friend recently what the Koran
says about torture. After consulting an imam, she
reported that the Koran does not address the subject
because the Koran deals only "with human behavior." Do
not we of the Judeo-Christian tradition also reject
torture as inhuman and never morally permissible?

    The various rationalizations for torture do not
bear close scrutiny. Intelligence specialists concede
that the information acquired by torture cannot be
considered reliable. Our own troops are brutalized
when they follow orders to brutalize. And they are
exposed to much greater risk when captured. Our
country becomes a pariah among nations. Above all,
torture is simply wrong. It falls into the same
category of evil as slavery and rape. Torture is
inhuman and immoral, whether or not our bishops and
rabbis can summon the courage to name it so.

    It Is up to Us

    By keeping their tongue-tied heads way down, our
religious leaders have forfeited the moral authority
with which they otherwise could speak. They end up
playing the role of Hitler's Reichsbishops, who
supported - or at least acquiesced in - the policies
and methods of the Third Reich.

    Many American men and women - Jews, Christians,
Muslims of Abrahamic tradition - have learned not to
depend on clergy leaders who bless the Empire. The
inescapable conclusion is, as popular theologian Annie
Dillard reminds us, "There is only us; there never has
been any other."

    The question is this: Are we are up to the
challenge of confronting the evil of torture, or shall
we prove Patrick Henry right? Is our country about to
be "lost and undone?"

    --------

    Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, the
publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour
in Washington, DC. He is co- founder of Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and lives in
Virginia.

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