Amid the backdrop of news stories on Guatanamo Bay detention camp’s future, and the runaway popularity of the show “24,” I bring up the said question.
A couple years back, Christianity Today published an important column on the piece entitled, “5 Reasons Torture Is Always Wrong: And why there should be no exceptions.”
We could debate all day what defines torture, but it seems to me it’s one of those things that is hard to put into words, but you know it when you see it. We could further debate if waterboarding qualifies as “torture.”
Setting aside specifics, I see no biblical or moral grounds in which the ends justify these means of torture in itself. But what do you think?
On a lighter note, Jay Leno quipped that with Obama doing away with any and all forms of torture, perhaps ABC’s The View might soon be cancelled. One can only hope.
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February 2, 2009 at 9:49 am
Jason Lee
I’ve been doing some more thinking on this issue since we last met, and I think I can make a clarifying statement. I think I was a bit imprecise in the wording of my stance due to a knee-jerk reaction to the word “torture.” As I’ve pondered the issue, I realized that when I hear the word, I immediately think of the (in my mind) efforts by the mainstream media to undermine the efforts of our (former) President in a time of war, where every technique used in interrogations was deemed torture, from the infamous waterboarding to sleep deprivation. I think there is a difference, albeit a very fine line, between “intense interrogation techniques” and torture, and, as best as I can tell, we have not crossed that line.
Properly defined, I can agree that torture is always wrong. We shouldn’t be in the business of amputations, hot pokers, etc., regardless of the goal. However, torture as defined by the media in its obsession with undermining the President, is not beyond the pale, in my mind. When we start strapping people to the rack or making them listen to Joy and the others, I’ll pick up a torch with them, but as long as we’re just preventing people from sleeping, I think we’re OK.