God bless you, Steve!

I do not know how to respond to this…..people that are attacking us are not going to give us the information needed to keep our country safe if we read them their miranda rights and hold their hands….then give them a civilian trial costing millions and millions, and a platform to spue their hatred.  Guess you should have stuck w/your firts review….

This is an area that is deeply troubling and definitely uneasy.  Torture is wrong because it denies the human dignity that we are all born with as God’s creatures.  Having said that, though, there is evil in the world and there are people who have fallen into evil and are dead-set with their mindset to seriously injure American people and lives. I’ve had relatives, friends, and yes, even my children’s classmates go off to serve in Iraq/Afghanistan. I’ve heard so many stories of struggles and ugliness there, but I have also heard the good that our military is doing. I’ve had one mother complain to me that her son went off to Iraq a Southern Baptist and she was angry because her son came back a Catholic! I’ve heard of miraculous stories occurring with near-miss. I’ve heard stories of Afghan people who are so grateful for the intervention of a kind soldier to escort, I’ve heard stories of Iraqi citizens afraid to tell their relatives that they are working for the US for fear of repercussions by their own family. So what does this have to do with the movie or media? THERE IS MORE TO THE STORY. Matt Damon puts a pretty face on an ugly story. The news reports only what the reporters think their readers want to read. But the truth is somewhere in the murky middle. All we can really do is pray for God’s hand, His mercy, His Guidance and Intervention.

It’s no wonder you don’t do political reviews - you are so incredibly misinformed!  I defy you find find one credible instance where a prisoner was murdered by one of our troops!  You just buy into the slander the left puts out there.  Right now our SEALs are being tried for alleegedly punching a terrorist in the gut.  Is that torture?  The only evidence it even happened is this terrorist’s word.  What evidence is there of any abuse at Gitmo?  Only accusations by terrorists.  The International Red Cross found nothing.  Why do you swallow that crap?  You clearly never served in the military and have no idea how disciplined and honorable our troops are.  The only abuse at Gitmo is by the detainees to our troops, but your liberal media don’t report that.  Neither will Mark Shea, who’s pretty sure he’s the most righteous person on God’s earth right now.  He’s never served either, no doubt.  You are blind fools.

While I would rather not have torture, I must say that those who assert that just about all strenuous interrogation is torture and that torture is intrinsically and always evil never produce a well-reasoned, convincing moral argument.  They never even seem to try.  They just assert their opinion as fact.  The opposing view holders have reasoned philosophical, moral arguments.  Countering these arguments with simple assertions discredits Catholic moral philosophy.  We should be better than that.  So many are unconvinced about this issue and must wonder about the moral authority of Catholic thinking generally, when they hear this high profile issue so often asserted without any reasoned argument to support.  How can the Church say it is justified to kill a man in a just war situation, but not to waterboard him?  Shea and Greydanus cannot explain this.

My thanks to those who have replied so far. I’m at our diocesan men’s conference today but will be back and reply to everyone as time permits. God bless.

Anyone who has read John Paul II on the dignity of the human person would recognize that torture and Catholic doctrine are mutually exclusive. Jesus taught us to not only love our neighbor, but our enemy as well. If one subordinates their Catholic faith to a political ideology (left or right), they have made a fatal error.

Judy and Yvette: You’ve both got my situation backwards. It was my original review where politics was an issue; that’s where I’m shaky. My follow-up blog post is about moral theology and Church teaching; there I’m much more in my element.
  
BTW, Judy, thanks for illustrating my point. Although my post is about torture and torture apologists, not Miranda rights or civilian trials, I did point out that torture defenders misrepresent torture opponents as “terrorist-hugging wackos who want to Mirandize the 9/11 hijackers.” And lo, the very first comment (other than Mark Shea’s) does just that. It’s like we planned it.
  
Theresa: I appreciate your efforts to grapple with the moral realities and complexity of the situation. What you say about the depravity of many of our enemies is completely true. At the same time, when we sink to fighting evil with evil, we not only harm ourselves by embracing evil, we also strengthen our enemies, who capitalize on our evil by gaining more recruits and radicalizing the recruits they already have. I agree that the story of American involvement in Iraq is more complicated than movies like Green Zone portray. Our troops have done a lot of good. But all of this is a much bigger subject than the point of moral theology at issue.
  
Yvette: You misread me. I never said anyone was murdered. I said that prisoners have been tortured, and that torture is wrong. To that I would add that prisoners in American custody have died from injuries related to “aggressive interrogation” (which is not the same as murder). In some cases soldiers have been disciplined for their involvement in these deaths; in other cases, causes of death have not been made public, evidence of interrogations (e.g., videotapes) have been destroyed—or prisoners have simply disappeared with no further information available. A little digging on Google easily turns up this sort of thing. Have you looked?
  
BTW, ad hominems (whether directed at Mark or me) are an unhelpful style of argument. I could counter your charge that I haven’t served in the military by mentioning close relatives, godparents of my children and other close family friends who have served in Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea and so on, but what would that prove? Are you going to diss Pope Benedict’s teaching also because he hasn’t served in the military? (BTW, not that it matters, but have you? Just curious.)
  
William: What accounts for your confidence that I can’t answer a question you’ve only just put to me? In passing, whether I can answer or not doesn’t change the facts: The Church teaches what it teaches, whether any particular Catholic is prepared to explain it or not. Catholics are called to docility of intellect regardless whether explanations they consider satisfactory are forthcoming. Do you accept this calling?
  
That said, I am happy to answer your question as I understand it, though I know from experience it takes some thinking over to wrap your head around the answer. Killing in warfare (where both jus ad bello and jus in bello obtain) is a form of self-defense, i.e., neutralizing an enemy who is an active and direct agent of aggression. Waterboarding prisoners cannot be construed as an equivalent form of self-defense because a prisoner is by definition already neutralized as an active and direct agent of aggression.
  
The significance of this point is not always immediately obvious because in some cases a prisoner may hold information (or we may suspect that he may) that, if revealed, could be used to save lives. We might speak rhetorically of the prisoner’s silence killing people, but that’s just a metaphor; it is not silence but (for instance) other enemies at large, or a bomb, that is the actual threat.
  
What torturers really want to do is to (try to) force a prisoner to reveal information he (perhaps) possesses that may (possibly) be used to save lives. Whatever else may be said about such an act, it is not analogous to the moral principles around self-defense. In self-defense, the goal is to try to prevent an attacker from committing an act of direct aggression, not to try to force him to act in a way that will enable others to prevent further acts of aggression. (Hat tip to Zippy Catholic for clarifying my thinking on this point.)
  
Killing in warfare, and capital punishment, are acts that are in principle potentially compatible with human dignity. It is possible in principle to kill a man without it being incompatible with his human dignity. There are other acts against a man, short of killing, that cannot be said to be compatible with human dignity, for example, sexual humiliation or degradation, or forcing prisoners to consume their own feces.
  
Has anyone cross-examining my post here read the link above describing what waterboarding prisoners actually entails and asked themselves whether this is really compatible with human dignity?

Whatever the merits of your arguments re: torture, its use, and the Church’s teaching on the subject, to use the Green Zone to buttress your views is highly offensive. This movie is the result of the fevered leftist imaginings of the Hollywood elite. It plays fast and loose with the facts, slanders our troops and intelligence officers who have never served more honorably in combat, dismisses real evil, and manufactures radical fantasises. This movie is grossly irresponsible and is garbage masquerading as serious cinema.

Richard: You’re confusing a buttress with a springboard. My argument isn’t “Torture is bad, as Green Zone clearly illustrates.” It’s “Speaking of torture, it’s bad, as Pope Benedict (here’s the buttress) clearly states.” So your offense is unnecessary (which I’m sure comes as a relief).
  
Incidentally, have you seen Green Zone? Your assessment is at least questionable in certain respects. While it certainly plays fast and loose with the facts, it also lays virtually all the blame for the WMD fiasco at the feet of a single corrupt intelligence official. I hope you don’t suggest that depicting a single liar working at the Pentagon is “slandering our intelligence officials.”
  
While I wholeheartedly agree that countless American troops in Iraq have served with honor, there is a less savory side to the story: naked, blindfolded prisoners forced to commit self-abuse, form human pyramids, and submit to other degrading treatment; prisoners being violated, beaten, and more.
  
There are many documented cases of detainees who have died as a result of interrogation techniques. In some cases autopsies have used the word “homicide.” Investigations have suggested that in some cases medical personnel may have deliberated misrepresented causes of death. For example, the death of an Iraqi general from trauma and asphyxiation was pronounced “natural,” then later reclassified as homicide.

Stick to what you know something about.  You’ve obviously drank deeply of the coolaid of the left.

Stephen does have a point in showing that intel work isn’t always contain most noble means.  The CIA, for example, the Taliban or others, inlcuding our own military, do use tough means - waterboarding evidenced as one.  War is not easy, and at times things can happen we Americans won’t necessarily be happy about.
I say this as one who loves America and our armed forces—my father, two uncle, both grandfathers and two great uncles are all veterans of either WWII or Vietnam.  They are the first to acknowledge, at the end of the day, that war isn’t pretty or GI Joe fantasy (even when for completely just motive, as in WWII for the Allies).

About the Pope not serving in the military (cf. one of Stephen’s responses), he did in fact serve in the German military in the anti-aircraft division - not voluntarily, to wit; but he served (like many others, including some general officers) without offering his consent for Hitler.  Also, he did leave by his own will at the end. Joseph Ratzinger was no mere bookworm.

D. Leatherby: I don’t find knee-jerk “left” and “right” categories helpful; taken too far, they can become a potent Kool-aid blend themselves. Read my coverage of the March for Life and let’s talk some more.
 
BTW, “drinking the Kool-aid” is an awfully dismissive metaphor that suggests the other person is so far gone that they’ve shut out all opposing points of view, are no longer thinking rationally, have given themselves mind and soul to the delusion, and can no longer be talked to or reasoned with. That’s a heck of a moral judgment to make about a brother in Christ—not to say it’s never warranted, but it’s something I’d want a lot of evidence for before I’d be willing to tag a particular person with that label. Perhaps you didn’t mean it that strongly, but words mean things. It is my hope that any fair-minded observer reading this combox can judge for himself whether such labels apply to anyone here, or to whom.
 
Michael: Thanks for the correction on Ratzinger’s military service, forgot about that in the heat of composition (and I’ve read B16’s autobiography!). So perhaps I should have written “If you diss my opinion because I’m not a vet, how about B16, who is?”
 
Mac, thanks for your comments. You’re certainly right to say that war is never easy, and even the most conscientious soldiers must do things few of us would be quite comfortable looking at. But we must beware of a “war is hell” mentality that concludes that trying to bring morality into warfare is an exercise in futility, if not foolishness. Jus in bello as well as jus ad bello is a necessary criterion, and the concept of “war crimes” is not, or should not be, merely a delegitimizing tactic the winner imposes on the loser.

Although my post is about torture and torture apologists, not Miranda rights or civilian trials, I did point out that torture defenders misrepresent torture opponents as “terrorist-hugging wackos who want to Mirandize the 9/11 hijackers.”

Actually, this is where people in favor of “enhanced interrogation” set themselves on fire. What is a captured terrorist? Is he a prisoner of war? If so, the Church teaching and incidentally, the law of every major body is clear: they must be treated humanely. Don’t like POW? That leaves criminal or war criminal. Again, Church teaching is clear on humane treatment. There is no third category of really, really, really, really, REALLY evil people who may or may not have useful intel, which we can’t really know until we use torture, so therefore torture is acceptable as long as we utter the magic words, “protecting American lives”.

God bless you, Steven! And may your tribe increase. I can’t understand fellow Catholics who reject all the consequentialist arguments in favor of abortion (as, of course, they should) but then merrily follow the path of consequentialism in advocating for torture. Check the catechism, folks!!!

Look, I’ve not seen the film, so my comments should be tempered by that fact. However, from appearances, this is just another example of an irresponsible film with a purpose of engendering outrage about interrogation techniques that cross the line. The danger is that the viewing public assumes that this is the norm instead of the exception. Have abuses occurred as depicted in the film? No doubt - but on a limited basis. War is not pretty. We also have many of our men and women who die because of friendly fire, sometimes because of efforts undertaken to avoid injuring civilians, an increasingly difficult prospect with the enemy using human shields to prolong their safety. Where is the outrage about this? Where is the film that decries such tactics? It is easy for us to view such films from our armchairs and point accusatory fingers at our military and our intelligence. It is far more difficult to detach ourselves from a natural knee-jerk emotonal response. So, I’ve not seen The Green Zone. Do I intend to see it? Heck no. The film has a politicized message, and I don’t intend to support the politics of the Left by seeing it. That’s ultimately how we send a message to Hollywood.

It is easy for us to view such films from our armchairs and point accusatory fingers at our military and our intelligence.

It is not about it being easier. It is about holding them to a higher, more honorable standard than our enemies. Now before someone reads more into that than I wrote, I think our military on the whole conducts itself more honorably than any out there. So when we point fingers, it is not because we think them bad, but that we think them good and wish to remind them not to take shortcuts around the “permanent validity of the moral law during armed conflict.”

Scott W., point taken. But I doubt that the makers of the film had such noble intentions. I could be wrong ... but knowing a little about Damon’s and Greengrass’ politics, I doubt it.

I come at the torture issue as someone trained in the law and without a particular ax to grind.  Having looked over the CCC and Benedict’s speech you cited above, my question would be “what is the prohibition on torture?”  Is it a flat prohibition on all torture at all times, or is it a statement that the torture prohibited by the CCC is always banned (and why is either interpretation correct)? 

To my mind, that the CCC enumerates situations where torture is unacceptable makes it seem as though there are situations where torture is acceptable?  From looking at the provisions, it seems as though “medical necessity” and “purely for necessary information” are possible times when torture is not flatly prohibited.

The reason this is important to me is twofold.  More abstractly, it’s a bad habit to generalize rules when they are meant for certain situations (or else we’d need to work on burning Wiccans).  Here, though, it comes down to the purpose of what’s done, regardless of whether it’s torture.  Essentially, it’s the ticking-time-bomb scenario, albeit in a wider scope (the “ticking-time-bomb” being something more like the security protocols used by the terrorist leader who is plotting a new attack).  The interrogators don’t care if the subject is sorry, whether he hurts a lot or a little, or so on.  They’d be just as happy if they asked him flat-out and he told them with a smile on his face. 

To me, it seems to be the same argument as used regarding deadly force.  If you’re trying to kill my family, my goal is to stop you, not necessarily to kill you.  If I can do that by verbal command or less-than-lethal force then fine, but if it comes to deadly force, then it’s justified.  Similarly, regarding truth: if someone who doesn’t have the right to the truth (the “Jews-in-the-Attic” question), there may not be an obligation to provide it.

Does the same apply with torture under the limited circumstances that I’ve mentioned above?  Do we have a right to information that is being used to try and cause us such harm?  If so, do we have the right to use whatever means are necessary to get that information?

I’m asking this in good faith, and without an agenda, so hopefully some of the snarkier commenters can hold their tongues.

HokiePundit,
 
I appreciate your tone and your plea for a reduction in snark (though I think you’ll find that so far the majority of snark in this combox seems to be flowing the other way).
 
Pope Bendict’s statement that “the prohibition against torture ‘cannot be contravened under any circumstances’” has reference not to the CCC but to the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, which states:
 
“In carrying out investigations, the regulation against the use of torture, even in the case of serious crimes, must be strictly observed: ‘Christ’s disciple refuses every recourse to such methods, which nothing could justify and in which the dignity of man is as much debased in his torturer as in the torturer’s victim’. International juridical instruments concerning human rights correctly indicate a prohibition against torture as a principle which cannot be contravened under any circumstances.”
 
That passage of the Compendium of Social Doctrine in turn cites Pope John Paul II’s Address to the International Committee of the Red Cross, in which the Holy Father writes:
 
“And as for torture, the Christian is confronted from infancy onward with the account of Christ’s Passion. The memory of Jesus – stripped, flogged, and derided right up until the sufferings of his final agony – should always make him resolve never to see analogous torments inflicted on any one of his brothers in humanity. Spontaneously, the disciple of Christ rejects every recourse to such methods, which nothing could justify, and by which the dignity of man is as much debased in the torturer as in his victim”.
 
These references, which inform and contextualize Pope Benedict’s “reaffirmation,” lack the sort of descriptive circumstances found in the CCC which one might use to try to define circumstances in which torture is or is not permitted.
 
To address the circumstances you mention: Acts performed for “medical necessity” are not torture. Torture to extract life-saving information is not specifically mentioned in the CCC and might be argued to be an exception, though real-life circumstances (TTB fantasies aside) in which torturers are solely going after specific, directly actionable life-saving information and not also extracting confessions (which the CCC specifically excludes) or just plain fishing for whatever the person might know would seem vanishingly rare.
 
Even if this semi-mythical sort of torture could be defended from the CCC, it is not what the torture apologists are defending or what intelligence officers and soldiers have been practicing in the field. Anyway, the teaching of Pope Benedict, the Compendium of Social Doctrine and John Paul II seem to leave no room even for this.
 
I’ve already explained above why self-defense logic doesn’t work. I can see justifying lying to Nazis about Jews in the attic on the grounds that lying is a form of intellectual violence, and if I would be justified in using physical violence to save Jews in the attic (if it were possible to do so), then I am justified in using intellectual violence also. In either case I am trying to prevent a potential aggressor from engaging in actual aggression against an innocent victim.
 
The bomber in captivity is no longer an aggressor; as long as he remains effectively in captivity, he has been neutralized as surely as if he were shot. His bomb, not he, is the threat. While it’s true that he has a moral obligation to reveal the information he possesses, we cannot beat people into discharging their moral duties. We can punish the guilty with legitimate punishments that respect human dignity, up to and in principle including death, but we cannot under any circumstances treat even the worst offenders with degrading punishments contrary to human dignity.

Mickey, again, my post is about torture and especially torture advocacy, not Green Zone, which if you read my review I don’t recommend.
 
Of course using civilians as human shields is horrific—but who in the Church, the pro-life movement or American politics is lining up to defend using civilians as human shields, the way many line up to defend torture? It is torture, not hiding behind civilians, that breaks many otherwise faithful Catholics from Church teaching. It is torture that threatens the credibility of the pro-life movement. It is torture that we celebrate on 24. It is torture that threatens America’s moral credibility on fundamental human rights. It is the morality of what we do, not what our enemies do, that we most need to think and talk about.
 
I know a man who served in Vietnam who is haunted to this day about slapping a farmer whom he felt (and feels) probably knew something about the dangers that he and his fellow soldiers faced. If that slap still haunts him, what are we doing to the consciences of those we look to to protect us if we tell them it’s okay to cooperate with controlled drowning of prisoners as long as (they think, or someone else thinks) that it (might) help keep us safe(r)? How does one live with memories of prisoners—not men in the field, rightly or wrongly perceived as an imminent danger, but helpless men strapped down to a table—choking on or inhaling their own vomit at our hands?

Steven D. Greydanus,

Thanks for the response.  I’m finding that I still have some questions, though.

With the TTB scenario, I’m not sure I agree about the confession aspect.  By that, I mean that while it might be nice for the subject to declare that he is part of the plot, the goal of the interrogator is not to seek the subject’s repentance.  The interrogator probably already knows of the subject’s involvement, and in such a case it may be strictly the information he is after, regardless of what else may result.  While he might reasonably expect repentance, or reasonably expect that one of his assistants might take joy in causing pain to a terrorist, it’s not clear to me that he has a duty to exclude all actions that might possibly result in such things.

I think the problem I have is the question of where this logic stops.  In a prison, what if guards come across an inmate who has a weapon but are able to isolate him from contact with others.  May they use violence, including the deliberate infliction of pain, to pry the weapon out of the inmate’s hand?  If the answer be yes, why is different from a terrorist who knows the location of his leader?

I want to find the boundaries here because simply avoiding what anyone anywhere considers torture isn’t feasible.  As before, though, thank you for the article, your response, and your tone.

Hokiepundit,
 
“I think the problem I have is the question of where this logic stops.  In a prison, what if guards come across an inmate who has a weapon but are able to isolate him from contact with others.  May they use violence, including the deliberate infliction of pain, to pry the weapon out of the inmate’s hand?  If the answer be yes, why is different from a terrorist who knows the location of his leader?”
 
I understand it’s a hard point to wrap your head around for the first time. I’ve explained it twice but I’m happy to give it another shot.
 
A weapon in a prisoner’s hands potentially makes that prisoner capable of direct acts of aggression against others, and thus a legitimate target of defensive violence. That is the key point: He is in a position to do harm. If he weren’t—if for some reason a prisoner with a weapon were unable to do any harm with it (don’t ask me to explain why or how), we could not use defensive violence against him (though like any other contraband it would still be subject to seizure by ordinary disciplinary means). 
 
By contrast, the captured terrorist who knows the location of his leader cannot harm anyone with that knowledge. If he could—if there were some way a terrorist could actually harm people with his knowledge alone (again, don’t ask me how or why), then we could legitimately use defensive violence to prevent him from doing so. In principle, it might even be legitimate to kill him to prevent him from using his knowledge to harm others.
 
But he can’t. He’s helpless. His knowledge, if shared with us, could (we may stipulate) be used by us to save lives, but he is not in a position to harm anyone, so we can’t treat him as an aggressor who must be neutralized. As long as he’s effectively imprisoned, we’ve already neutralized him as an aggressor.

I can see justifying lying to Nazis about Jews in the attic on the grounds that lying is a form of intellectual violence, and if I would be justified in using physical violence to save Jews in the attic (if it were possible to do so), then I am justified in using intellectual violence also. In either case I am trying to prevent a potential aggressor from engaging in actual aggression against an innocent victim.

Actually, physical force is not objectively wrong, but lying is objectively wrong. One can evade, dodge the question, let others labor under a misapprehension, or even plead, but one cannot licitly deliberately utter falsehoods. (However I agree that in the Nazi scenario that one would likely have minimal culpability). Once lying becomes other than objective wrong, then we’ve basically we’ve got the Catholic version of takkiya.

Scott W, I understand the traditional Thomistic line. I think the reality may be more complex; on this see Jeffrey A. Mirus’s article “Is Lying Ever Right?” in This Rock a couple years back. The lying to Nazis scenario, unlike the mythical TTB scenario, is all too real, and I have a hard time with the idea that God wants us to hazard the lives of Jews in the attic on the hope that the Nazis at the door won’t notice an equivocation or mental reservation. I know there’s more than one way to skin this particular cat. For me, the idea of lying as doing harm to another’s understanding of the world—harm that, like bodily harm, is usually unjust but can be justified in defense situations—has an intuitive appeal. But let’s not go down that trail in this combox. One fire at a time!

Hokie Pundit;

The glaring difference between the prisoner with a weapon and the prisoner with information is that there is no doubt that the physical weapon is present and posessed by the prisoner.  The information posessed by a prisoner is unknown until it is revealed and verified. 

How does an interrogator differentiate between a prisoner that does not divulge information because he is harder to break from a prisoner that does not divulge the information because he does not know it?  In desperation, a torture victim will tell lies to get out of the torture.  If these lies are unverifiable, torture will seem to provide useful intelligence while doing nothing of the sort.  This is how the Devil receives the soul of the torturer while giving nothing in return.

Richard Bell,
 
“The glaring difference between the prisoner with a weapon and the prisoner with information is that there is no doubt that the physical weapon is present and posessed by the prisoner.  The information posessed by a prisoner is unknown until it is revealed and verified.”
 
Actually, that may be the case, but not necessarily. Sometimes it may be unclear whether or not a potential assailant actually possesses a weapon, and it may be necessary to act on the basis of a judgment—often a snap judgment—about the likelihood that he does and the danger represented by that likelihood.
 
Uncertainty about the weapon is certainly relevant, and a host of factors go into the morality of such a decision, but life-and-death decisions can sometimes come down to instincts and probabilities, and in principle one may be justified in acting even in the absence of certain knowledge. Soldiers in combat must constantly make this sort of judgment, often in split seconds, and the danger of guessing wrong does not mean that the judgment must not be made.
 
Therefore, as relevant as it is that we usually don’t know what a torture victim knows or how useful or lifesaving that information may be, it is less crucial than the fact that we know the torture victim cannot harm anyone and represents no direct threat, whereas the potential assailant may be in a position to harm others.

Steven, I think that one has to consider the danger posed by the imprisoned combatants. No, I don’t advocate torture as an interrogation method. But I can see how urgency could cloud this matter, and when one considers that taking a higher moral ground could result in loss of life, sometimes of an unimaginable magnitude, torture for the purpose of acquiring life-saving information is sometimes necessary. I can also see how this can be a slippery slope that can lead to abuse. But again, war isn’t pretty. Sometimes it is hard to see the face of Christ on someone who wants to blow you and your friends to smithereens - just because. And let’s also keep in mind, when Satan was cast from heaven, I don’t recall God taking the high road and offering him reconciliation. Though they be created in the image and likeness of God, sometimes when people go down that demonic path there is no hope for them.

Mickey, when you speak of “the danger posed by the imprisoned combatants,” what exactly do you have in mind? Are imprisoned combatants acquiring suicide bombs or IEDs? Are our military guards unable to maintain discipline and keep prisoners in line without torturing them?
 
I understand how “urgency” tends to “cloud matters.” That’s why we need clear guidelines, like “no torture.” Guidelines like the Geneva Conventions, which provide that even persons not entitled to the claims and privileges of military prisoners are still to be “treated with humanity.” Guidelines upheld by our military prior to the War on Terror.
 
Your comments about Satan are exactly the road we must not go down. First, it is a false analogy because the fall of the angels is theologically disparate to the fall of man and to human sins (angels have a different kind of knowledge and freedom). Second, we are never entitled to consider any man in the wayfaring state to be beyond hope of divine mercy. Thirdly, even if we knew a man were damned, as long as he lives possesses the dignity of human personhood that we cannot disregard without demeaning our own dignity. Remember what Pope John Paul II teaches, that in torture “the dignity of man is as much debased in his torturer as in the torturer’s victim.”

Steven, it is the very dignity of man that is imperiled by the knowledge that some of these prisoners and detainees possess - that is the danger that they pose. As a country we’ve dodged a few bullets recently - the failed Christmas plane bombing and the staving off of a bombing of the NYC subways by a jihadist just days if not hours before he planned to carry it out. Tell me how the dignity of the innocents that would have been killed in those attacks would have been preserved. On the contrary, these plots exemplify a complete disregard for innocent life. It is admirable - and desirable actually - to consider the dignity of the detainees. But try to face the hundreds if not thousands of families who lose loved ones because of a terror attack with the explanation that we chose the dignity of a terrorist over the safety of their family members and our country. They will not find solace in having taken the high road, instead they will become enraged. We admittedly walk a tightrope, and like I have said, unconventional methods of interrogation are not the norm but the exception - at least I hope this is the case. At some point you have to have faith in the expertise and capabilities of our interrogators, who I hope are likewise weighing crossing a line against the likelihood of an undesirable event.

Mickey, you keep implying that the prisoners themselves pose an actual danger to someone—that their very knowledge is dangerous in itself. First you spoke of “the danger posed by the imprisoned combatants,” now you speak of men being “imperiled by the knowledge that some of these prisoners and detainees possess.” I have repeatedly pointed out that this language is inaccurate. Unless we are permitting prisoners to use their knowledge by coverting organizing and ordering additional atrocities even in captivity, neither the prisoners nor their knowledge imperils anyone at all. They cannot hurt a fly with their knowledge. Until we are clear on this point, we will just keep going in circles.
 
You say “It is admirable - and desirable actually - to consider the dignity of the detainees.” “Admirable and desirable” sounds perilously close to “praiseworthy but not obligatory.” In fact, it is absolutely necessary. We are gravely obliged not only to consider their dignity but to respect it. To do less is not only to dehumanize the prisoner, but ourselves as well.
 
Is Pope Benedict right or wrong when he declares, “I reiterate that the prohibition against torture ‘cannot be contravened under any circumstances’”? If he is right, then it doesn’t matter what dangers we face that might or might not be prevented by torture. Moral absolutes cannot be contravened for any reason.
 
Otherwise, if the end justifies the means and the only moral imperative is acquiring actionable life-saving intelligence no matter what it takes, we could justify not just torture, but literally anything that might achieve that end. We could violate and mutilate innocent family members and children of prisoners in front of them. We could agree to terrorist demands that we blaspheme Jesus Christ and His Blessed Mother in exchange for actionable life-saving intelligence.
 
If you balk at this, then you acknowledge that the quest for actionable life-saving intelligence does have limits, that there are things you cannot do for any reason whatsoever. The question then becomes, “Is torture one of those things, as Pope Benedict teaches? Or is the Holy Father wrong and Dick Cheney right?” What is your answer? Pope Benedict or Cheney?
 
I would love to be able to trust the judgment and humanity of our interrogators, just as I would love to trust mothers not to murder their babies and doctors not to murder the aged and infirm. Tragically, we live in a world in which experience has confirmed that even seemingly decent, civil people are capable of heinous things.
 
Have you read what CIA-sanctioned waterboarding of terrorists actually entails? Have you read it, Mickey? When a culture officially sanctions controlled drowning on the scale described in this memo, to the point that prisoners must be kept on a liquid diet to enable them to inhale their own vomit with minimal risk of death, we can no longer talk about trusting the judgment and humanity of those in that culture. We must have clear rules, much like the internationally sanctioned rules to which we subscribed prior to the War on Terror.

Mr. Greydanus,

I have little to say regarding the subject of torture here. I’m not an expert on it. Neither are you, and neither (obviously) is Mark Shea.
I would rather talk about how Catholics conduct themselves on the subject of torture. Or, if you prefer, on the subject on the interrogation and detention of fanatical terrorists. I personally think this is a more accurate description of the subject, but it doesn’t really matter to me.

First of all, I think this issue is not simple in terms of morality. I think it’s an issue on which (unlike, say, abortion) reasonable people can disagree. I think this because reasonable people have disagreed on it - reasonable Catholics.

In a complicated subject like this, I would hope that the level of discussion would last for two or three minutes without devolving into vicious insults on both sides, but, sadly, that is what always happens. And I think this is primarily the fault of bloggers like Mark Shea.

I think this because (a) Mark Shea will call you a hypocrite, a war criminal, a !@#$%, and an evil person if you cross him and (b) Mark Shea, by his own admission, hasn’t really given much thought on what the moral thing is to do when you have a terrorist in your possession who may have information on upcoming terrorist thoughts. In my opinion, the polemical, slanderous and cruel style that Mark Shea uses is both immoral and stupid, and I wouldn’t trust a word he says on the subject. He makes no effort to understand the thoughts or the views of those he disagrees with - he simply insults them. He gets away with this because he’s a good writer with a knack for witty phrases like “Conservative Catholic (TM)” and “the rubber hose right” (chortle!) but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s insulting and demeaning people. This is a sin, by the way. 

In your post above, you objected to the “torture opponents” being caricatured as “terrorist-hugging wackos.” I disagree with your word “torture opponents” because it implies that those of use who disagree with you are torture proponents - but in any case, I think this is a bit whiny after listening to the venom spewed by Mark Shea against the late Robert Novak, George Weigel, Dennis Prager and innumerable other human beings whom I respect.

One final word - it’s not very convincing when all your posts above are from Salon.com or from the inherently unreliable Mark Shea. In a reply above you linked to the “CIA-sanctioned waterboarding of terrorists.” I clicked on it, expecting to see a PDF or something from a government file. No. It’s another Salon.com article that doesn’t quote anything directly. Everything is through the filter of biased sources. Not really convincing.

Thanks for all your great reviews over the years, and I sincerely hope you stick with films in the future (no sarcasm intended - I don’t enjoy talking about politics either).

Mr. Doman,
 
I appreciate your kind comments about my reviews.
 
While I agree with you that how Catholics conduct themselves in any discussion is an important subject, it is not the subject with which I am here concerned. We cannot discuss everything at once. Mark can choose to defend himself (or not) against the sort of complaints you make on his own blog. My brief here is that on torture I am with Pope Benedict and John Paul II, which means that I am also with Mark and Zippy, among others. Mark and Zippy are not otherwise the subject of this combox. The only behavior with which I am here concerned is my own.
 
You don’t make it clear whether you are with or against Pope Benedict XVI and John Paul II, except insofar as you consider it a subject “on which (unlike, say, abortion) reasonable people can disagree.” That seems to me to put you against Pope Benedict and John Paul II. Please feel free to clarify.
 
Your confusion about the Salon.com link is understandable, since Salon has added other materials at the same link over time, but if you scroll down you can still find the original “Waterboarding for Dummies” article that, contrary to what you say, does include specific quotations from now-declassified documents.
 
For example, the article quotes a DOJ document that contrasts trainee waterboarding with interrogation waterboarding: In a training scenario, as quoted, “[t]he interrogator applies a small amount of water to the cloth (on a soldier’s face) in a controlled manner. By contrast, the agency interrogator ... continuously applied large volumes of water to a cloth that covered the detainee’s mouth and nose.” (The ellipsis is for a name blacked out in the document.)
 
Here is a link to the location in the actual document. Hope that helps. 
 
Please feel free to clarify how you feel the behavior described in the DOJ article, along with the treatment of prisoners at Abu Graib documented here, relates to your preferred description of “the interrogation and detention of fanatical terrorists.”
 
Your discomfort with the term “torture opponents” is understandable, but that doesn’t make the term inaccurate. Some people are uncomfortable with the terms “pro-life” and even “anti-abortion,” since they don’t want to be seen as “anti-life” or even “pro-abortion,” but that doesn’t make the term inaccurate either. I notice you don’t suggest an alternative, anyway. Cheers.