Wash. Post Panel - Is Torture Ever Justified?

Is Torture Ever Justified? is a panel discussion by religious experts, hosted at On Faith at washingtonpost.com, in which thought leaders from our various faith and ethical traditions speak out on what is one of the most vexing questions of the moment, and one that is at the heart of this blog: were the "enhanced interrogation techniques" employed by the CIA in 2002 and 2003 morally justified?

The panel members were asked: "The UN Convention Against Torture states that torture should be abolished because it violates 'human dignity.' From your perspective, what is wrong with torture? Should perpetrators be prosecuted? What does your faith tradition have to say about torture?"

(This is the first time this blogger has become aware that the United Nations Convention Against Torture is being cited in preference to the much-heard-about Geneva Conventions, one of which outlaws the torture of captured prisoners of war. The U.N. CAT is presumably more general in condemning torture per se, not just that of prisoners of war, but does it carry the same force of law under the U.S. Constitution, I wonder? But never mind ... the question in this post is moral, not primarily legal.)

Waterboarding and other such techniques, most of the panel's experts say, in fact constitute torture. But were they justified? The president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, writes in Torture is Wrong, Until It Saves a Life, "The very notion of torture sickens me. I am almost 100% certain that it must always be opposed. But I live with the awareness that if it was my kid and I genuinely believed that torture would save their lives, I might think differently."

As far as this blogger knows, we have heard as yet no hard evidence that the al-Qaeda personnel held prisoner and interrogated in secret locations abroad by the CIA coughed up useful information that saved American lives. Former Vice President Chaney has charged that the Obama administration is withholding documents that would prove that they did, but the jury is still out on whether our subjecting prisoners to extreme duress produced lifesaving results that could not have been obtained any other way. Yet a fair-minded person might well assume that torturing prisoners does sometimes save innocent lives. But is it moral to torture?

Torture is Always Wrong, writes Auschwitz survivor and human rights activist Elie Wiesel, a panel member. To Mr. Wiesel, the answer is stark and simple: "Torture is always wrong, because the tortured person dies more than once." End of statement. Mr. Wiesel presumably means that there is a very real "death" associated with undergoing (say) the simulated drowning of waterboarding, even though the person being tortured actually lives. Thus, torture imposes a sort of double jeopardy upon its victim.

Frankly, I find Mr. Wiesel's response too terse to be of much use. Looking briefly at the other experts' responses, I note that almost all condemn torture out of hand, as does Mr. Wiesel. Charles Colson, however, is a lone cautionary voice. The author, radio commentator, and former counsel to President Nixon, while he clearly denounces torture per se in his contribution, The Wrong Question, adds: "The real question in war time is what kind of behavior constitutes torture? That seems to me to be a factual question before it is a theological question."

To which I counter: who or what is to determine what kind of behavior constitutes torture? If some judge or adjudicative process, the question becomes primarily a legal one ... which may or may not be congruent with the moral one. As a non-lawyer, I don't presume to know whether a law-based inquiry into the interrogation techniques would actually settle the matter. Perhaps the techniques were (barely) legal ... but were they moral?

Let me put it the other way around: if waterboarding and the other "enhanced" techniques were not moral, then we need to find a way to banish them under the law, once and for all. On the other hand, if they were morally justified, we need to find ways to uphold them legally, so that future administrations can use them when a situation dictates. The moral question precedes the legal one.