A powerful statement against waterboarding; a powerful indictment of Christian silence in the face of torture... all from a very evangelical evangelical:
During the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on his nomination as attorney general, Michael Mukasey was asked "Is waterboarding constitutional? Mukasey answered: "I don't know what is involved in the technique. If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional."Since Michael Mukasey is unsure, let me clear it up for him: Yes, waterboarding is torture. And torture should never be legal.
Even more disturbing than the idea that a future attorney general doesn't know what's involved in waterboarding is that we live in an age when a familiarity with torture techniques is to be expected of our leaders. How did we get to the point where such a question needs to be asked of an attorney general? Who allowed our country to succumb to such fear and moral cowardice that we parse the the meaning and definition of "torture?"
I blame myself, and implicate my fellow Christians. We have remained silent and treated an issue once considered unthinkable--the acceptability of torture--like a concept worthy of honest debate. But there is no room for debate: torture is immoral and should be clearly and forcefully denounced. We continue to shame ourselves and our Creator by refusing to speak out against such outrages to human dignity.
He is precisely and absolutely right. The prophetic voice of Christians in government and in the public arena is impotent if it cannot conclude that torture is wrong.
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I posted before about the reasons against making specific laws against waterboarding. Summary form, 1) president wouldn't sign it, 2) if he signed it he would include a signing statement that says he didn't have to follow it, 3) waterboarding is already covered in a number of US laws and treaties and passing another law won't help if the justice department that enforces that laws won't prosecute (and is in fact in charge of people that are breaking the laws), 4) specifically mentioning one type of torture may stop that specific type of torture, but all that people will do is move to another type of torture that is not specifically mentioned and claim that congress has not banned that specific type of torture.
Torture, like most other laws must be governed by general definitions, not specific descriptions. That is how we make laws in this and most other countries.
I wouldn't want to go down that road, Doug, because then it would (by implication) be okay to do umpteen other things not specifically made illegal. I'm supposing disgust and moral outrage will carry the day with waterboarding. The Bushies just don't want to say they were wrong, that they got carried away, that they didn't think they'd get caught etc. But they got busted big time. Okay, let's stop doing the wrong things, sin no more, move on. We were all enablers on some level. We led the leadership to thing anything goes, perhaps. Plenty of blame to go around, but for goodness sake let's not turn into total barbarians in the name of security.
It's a tough one for them. If it is acknowledged to be torture, then what happens to the tortuers and those that ordered the torture?
Has the whole Iraq thing been just a slide into hell, or what?
Now our guy in Pakistan is revealed as more or less a garden variety militaty dictator. Great. Spreading democracy and freedom around the world!
Tongue in cheek, Skipchurch. I was comparing the idea that nothing in the Bible expressly forbids waterboarding with the idea that the laws that say no torture aren't specific enough. I agree with you. The law agrees with you. Pretty near everyone without a Fischer-Price Baby's First Interrogation Kit agrees with you.
Doug - Fischer- Price Baby's First interrogation Kit - can I get one of those on Ebay?
Thinker, be careful, though. They're made in China.
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