First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis

Creating Terror

What we need at this point is a sitcom, set in a madrasa run by a group of bumbling would-be terrorists who keep blowing up their own lab, and counterfeiting what turns out to be confederate currency. They would be trying to instruct a collection of engaging little waifs who like to read contraband copies of Sports Illustrated and eat smuggled chocolate, and are always trying to avoid memorizing Koran verses and desert survival training. Think Hogan’s Heros meets Hogwarts.

Part of our problem is that America has lost its sense of humor. A family dynamics theorist would say that our system has gone intense – that is, members are so invested in defending their positions and the pain of their grievances that no one has any room to try on another’s viewpoint, or express compassion, or see anything funny about the situation. When systems go intense, violence escalates, and torture is of course fundamentally a form of violence. It is also, I want to suggest, an expression of frustration, and of spiritual dysfunction. It is apparent to me that within each of us there lies deeply both the potential to be a torturer, and the capacity to refuse that temptation when it arises.

It also seems clear to me, as it is clear to the various authors of our readings, that the use of torture as an information gathering technique is immoral precisely because in addition to being repulsive, it is ineffective, and indeed counterproductive. Abusive interrogation produces not reluctant truth, but a haphazard collection of desperate lies, confusing claims, and dubious confessions that must be sorted, interpreted, pieced together and analyzed for probability just like every other source of tactical intelligence. The true professionals in these matters have long been agreed that the value of such data is marginal at best, and in no way compensates for the several losses that the use of torture necessarily entails.

These fall into three significant categories, the first being, obviously, the loss of any potential good will, respect, or genuine cooperation on the part of the captive who is subjected to torture. In fact it is well known, both to the good guys and the bad guys, whoever you conceive them to be, that human psychology is such that the impulse to identify with, and seek the approval of, those who have power over us is extremely difficult to resist. Remember Patti Hearst, and those kidnapping victims who gave the Stockholm Syndrome its name. Given time and a modicum of sympathy, we build relationships, because that is the kind of creatures we are. Indeed, as the proverb says, the best way to eliminate an enemy is to turn him into a friend. If it is true that enmity toward America, or contemporary culture, is cultivated through circumscribed education and deliberate distortions, then exposure to the truth, and positive representations of those values, ought to be one of our top priorities. To confirm instead the worst possible perception of what Americans do when they have the opportunity – especially to those who turn out to be innocent of anything but bad luck – is stupid beyond excuse. Nothing could be more calculated to lose the ideological struggle in which our government claims to be engaged.

The second inevitable loss entailed in the use of torture is the ceding of the moral high ground. In our own eyes, in the eyes of the world, in the eyes of both present and future enemies, we become no better than the thugs and bullies whose oppressive regimes we supposedly seek to change. We also model the treatment to which American combatants must expect to be subjected when they become captives of opposition forces in the future. Why should any other power abide by the provisions of the Geneva convention in dealing with our personnel, when we have demonstrated that we do not respect those conventions in our own handling of captured enemies? Why should our nation not stand condemned in the court of world opinion, and indeed why should those who perpetrate torture not be tried for war crimes, according to the same standards that the victorious Allied forces once applied in Nuremberg? Information of questionable value is a very poor exchange for our nation’s international reputation, and the brutalizing of our own men and women in the hands of military captors for decades to come.

But perhaps more significant than either of these rather pragmatic considerations is the third loss which the use of torture inevitably represents, and that is the emotional and spiritual destruction it causes to those who practice it. There are, we know, a small minority of people in the world whose life experiences have already warped their humanity to the point that they find a kind of sick fascination and satisfaction in causing agony to other human beings. This kind of person should not be allowed to engage in torture, precisely because they are not interested in gaining information, but in pain and humiliation for its own sake. Whether they get answers or not, whether the responses are true or false, they will continue to torture because it feeds their cruelty, and this will only increase the ambiguity of any supposed data that results. It will, of course, also contribute to the loss of good will among their victims, and the loss of our national honor. The only alternative, then, is the implementation of abusive interrogation techniques by those who naturally recoil from them, and who must overcome their humane impulses in order to inflict deliberate suffering. People can be made to do this, of course, either in what they believe is the service of some great cause, or through the culture of obedience, but only at a devastating emotional cost. Either they dissociate, and become callous to what they have witnessed and caused, as if it were done by some other person, and thus lose their capacity for wholeness and part of their humanity, or else they live out cursed and haunted lives, never at peace with their conscience or their fellow human beings. Often they turn to alcohol or drugs to deaden that inner pain, or end it with suicide. I am persuaded that no one commits acts of torture and walks away unscathed, regardless of what the fantasies of TV shows like ‘24’ would have us believe.

And this brings me to what I believe is our present collective spiritual dilemma with regard to this issue. For it is human nature, and I do not think that we would wish it otherwise, for each of us to want to affirm that we are capable of sacrifice and suffering in the service of those values that we hold in most deeply. We want to think that there is something we would die for; that we would give up our comforts and well-being if it were necessary to protect our children, or that if by some act of ours we could save the lives of innocent people, we would do it. When the citizens of the French village of Le Chambon chose to shelter Jews from the Nazis, knowing that it could mean death if they were caught, the decision did not seem to many of them heroic, but rather a simple moral necessity. I suspect that each of us, if we reflect about such matters, hopes that we too would find within ourselves that same moral compass, and undertake that same risk in such a situation. There is a strength in the willingness to stand up for what we believe in, that most of us admire in others, and profoundly hope that we would display ourselves, if it were ever called upon. And in that hope for nobility in our own character lie the roots of the problem, for the temptation to torture for most of us is not from a lack of compassion, but rather a yearning to be strong; and what we are willing to suffer ourselves in the service of our values – or think we are – becomes the measure of what we are willing to inflict on others. It is fatally easy to make the weakness of being unable to withstand pain ourselves equivalent to a refusal to cause suffering in others, and thus to equate that refusal with cowardice. I submit that until you have done the spiritual homework of establishing clearly in your own mind the difference between whatever sacrifices you are willing to make voluntarily for your ideals, as opposed to the demands that you are prepared to impose on others for the sake of your values, you are vulnerable to the twisted logic of torture, whether committed by your hands, or by proxy in your name. As long as we can be made to feel that there is heroism in the ability to swallow the gorge that rises in any sane person at the violation of another’s humanity; that the strength required to suppress pity and harden the heart against a fellow creature’s agony is somehow a good thing; as long as we fear it is weakness that makes us unwilling to countenance brutality, the waterboards and electrodes and all their crude cousins will be there, in the shadows of our collective will, and the temptation of their use will be forever irresistible.

But do not think that there are no alternatives. Rather let me tell you two stories, and whether they are stories of hope, you must judge for yourselves. Four and a half years ago, when the war in Iraq was much younger than it is now, and perhaps hopes were higher, Army specialist Alyssa Peterson traded assignments with a colleague who did not want to be sent there, and was posted to the military intelligence prison at Tal-Afar in northwestern Iraq. Alyssa was a 27 year old devout Mormon, with a remarkable talent for languages. She had learned Dutch in preparation for her missionary year, and then sailed through Arabic language courses at the Defense Language Institute shortly after her enlistment in 2001, so it is not surprising that she was made an interrogator at Tal-Afar. After two nights working in the unit known as The Cage, Alyssa refused to participate further, objecting strenuously to the techniques being used on the prisoners. She was transferred, and sent to training for suicide prevention among the inmates. On September 15, 2003, she shot and killed herself with her own service rifle. That is one manifestation of the devastating emotional cost of torture, even for someone who has the clarity of values and the presence of mind to refuse it.

Here is another. 75 year old Father Louis Vitale, and 58 year old Father Steve Kelly, one a Franciscan, the other a Jesuit, are spending five months imprisoned at a corporate federal facility in Arizona, after convictions for trespassing at the Fort Huachuca military base. They were arrested while kneeling in prayer together halfway up the driveway to Fort Huachuca in November of 2006, attempting to deliver a letter to Major General Barbara Fast, commander of the base. If that name sounds familiar, it is because General Fast is the former head of military intelligence in Iraq, who was removed after the scandal at Abu Ghraib. Fort Huachuca is the current headquarters of army intelligence in the U.S., and the place where both military and civilian interrogators are taught techniques for extracting information from prisoners. The letter the priests were trying to deliver protested instruction in torture, which they allege takes place at the fort.

Charged with trespass on a military base, and resisting orders of an officer, the priests refused a plea-bargain, and at a pre-trial hearing were denied the right to introduce any evidence concerning the issue of torture in their defense. After the sentencing, Father Vitale explained, "Because the court will not allow the truth of torture to be a part of our trial, we plead no contest. History will judge whether silencing the facts of torture is just or not. Far too many people have died because of our national silence about torture. Far too many of our young people in the military have been permanently damaged after following orders to torture and violate the human rights of other humans." Father Kelly, who in December of 2005 was part of a group of Catholic Workers who walked to the gates of the Guantanamo prison camp, added, "We will keep trying to stop the teaching and practice of torture whether we are sent to jail, or out. We have done our part for now. Now it is up to every woman and man of conscience to do their part to stop the injustice of torture."

Dearly Beloved, 45 years ago, a young minister scribbled on the margins of a newspaper, which was all the writing surface his jail cell afforded, a letter to the church establishment that had condemned his activism for civil rights as ‘extremist’ and ‘untimely’. In that letter he said this:

So wrote the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, whose memory we celebrate this week. If Fathers Vitale and Kelly are as historically literate as I would hope for them to be, they have good company, there in their Arizona federal correctional facility. And I think they are correct about this; history has yet to judge favorably the torturers of any age, whatever their arguments of urgent necessity at the time. Like my imprisoned colleagues, I consider it highly unlikely that our nation in the present era will be the first to be granted the grudging concession, "They really had no choice." For of course we did; we do. It is in no way necessary or inevitable that we must abandon our moral compass, and succumb to the evil logic of torture committed on our behalf. We will assuredly never win a war on terror by becoming more appalling terrorists ourselves. What would it take, in the midst of all this anxious intensity, to renew our humanity, to restore our capacity for compassion and creativity, to find our sense of humor, and with it, our moral balance? I would like to think that we might still wake from the feverish dream of our own perfect national righteousness, which persuades our leaders they can do no wrong so long as their intentions are lofty. For it is not our sacrifices that make us worthy, but rather, as the ancient Hebrew prophet once said, our justice, our mercy, and our humility. Let these be the qualities by which our strength is measured, and it might yet be well with us.

Closing words:

In a collection of poetry by survivors of torture,

Jumah al Dossari writes:

Take my blood.

Take my death shroud and

The remnants of my body.

Take photographs of my corpse at the grave, lonely.

Send them to the world,

To the judges and

To the people of conscience,

Send them to the principled men and the fair-minded.

And let them bear the guilty burden, before the world,

Of this innocent soul.

Let them bear the burden, before their children and before history,

Of this wasted, sinless soul,

Of this soul which has suffered at the hands of the 'protectors of peace'.

Opening Words:

Good morning, and welcome into the warmth of community on this cold morning.

We gather in this hour of reflection to measure the shaping of our lives against the values that we proclaim,

And also to honor the memory of our elder brother, Martin Luther King, Jr.

Who once showed us the meaning of justice, and called America to its better dream.

We gather to confess our complicity in a world at war,

And to consider the voices of conscience that summon us now, as then,

To resistance in the name of righteousness.

We kindle this chalice in remembrance of Dr. King’s vision of a nation

That would judge by character, not color;

In its light, let us renew our courage and commitment to the shared human quest

For a world of freedom, equality, and peace.