Scott Horton: "We Do Not Torture"

This last week, the nation’s leading newspaper established that the Bush Administration continues to use torture techniques as a matter of formal policy, crafted at its highest levels. This comes more than three years following the exposure of the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, and more than two years after the Administration’s lies about the use of torture, unconvincing to start with, were finally exploded by the issuance of a series of internal reports. We face now a leadership stained with deceit and criminality. More importantly, it is a leadership which can never recognize nor admit its failings and moral errors. Hence, consistent with a tyrannical disposition, it acts to force all to accept its crimes as lawful, and thus to pervert the law and the institutions charged to enforce it.

The use of torture is a criminal act, and its systematic sanctioning by this administration is a matter of the utmost gravity for the country. The nation’s reaction to date fails to accord the issue the seriousness that it deserves; it constitutes a trivialization. The nation’s opinion-makers, and in particular its religious leaders must be held to blame. They fail to see the importance of the issue. And they demonstrate unacceptable cowardice in the face of political power. The only correct response is to speak truth to power, in the tradition in which the Dissenters of seventeenth century England came to use that term. But it reflects not only the tradition of the Dissenters, but also of the Established Church and of the Roman Church.

John Donne spoke for those two latter traditions when he condemned the practice of torture and called for its perpetual abolition:

Transgressors that put God’s organ out of tune, that discompose and tear the body of man with violence, are those inhuman persecutors who with racks and tortures and prisons and fires and exquisite inquisitions throw down the bodies of the true God’s servants to the idolatrous worship of their imaginary gods, that torture men into Hell and carry them through the inquisition into damnation. . . We presume, says [St Augustine], that an innocent man should accuse himself, by confession, in torture. And if an innocent man be able to do so, why should we not think that a guilty man, who shall save his life by holding his tongue in torture, should be able to do so? And then, where is the use of torture? It is a slippery trial and uncertain. . . to convince by torture. For many says. . . he that is yet but questioned, whether he be guilty or no, before that be known, is, without all question, miserably tortured. And whereas, many time, the passion of the Judge, and the covetousness of the Judge, and the ambition of the Judge, are calamities heavy enough upon a man that is accused. If the Judge knew that he were innocent, he should suffer nothing. If he knew he were guilty, he should not suffer torture. But because the Judge is ignorant and knows nothing, therefore the prisoner must be racked and tortured and mangled.

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