Notes Toward an Essay on Torture: A Culture of Abuse

Jeanne at Body and Soul warns us:

[Conservative Catholic commentator Mark] Shea is right in identifying why the avoidance of torture is a moral absolute:

But the pains and penalties of sin (by which we mean “risking the everlasting fires of Hell and eternal damnation”) aren’t the only reasons no Catholic should support the use of torture. It is also worth noting that right here in this world, a culture’s adoption of torture – even the “non-lethal” variety, and even in times of emergency – is a formula for social catastrophe.

For it – like legal abortion – is a slippery slope leading to, among other things, the creation of a special class of people who truly enjoy this sort of work and are good at it. Reward such work and create a special department in the government for it, and people like that tend to find ways to continue plying their special skills, even when they’re no longer wanted by the state that once supported them. Just ask the victims of the quasi-mafia, quasi-KGB operatives who are doing very well in the post-Soviet era of gangsterism in Russia.

A culture of abuse doesn't stay in the box.

In fact, I'd take that argument much farther. The problem isn't just that certain people, already prone to that sin, will be given license to practice it and won't know when to stop. Evil isn't something that exists over there in the other guy, but not in me. Whatever penchant for cruelty exists in each of us will come to the surface. And at some point you end up with a country in which people can look at pictures of abuse, read about men beaten while hanging from the ceiling, or children raped and set upon by guard dogs, and move on, perhaps even find some sick enjoyment in the spirit of vengeance. They won't react to the evil done by their leaders. They won't care. Or worse, they will approve.

Maybe we're already there, in which case this is less a matter of politics than of saving souls. I can't think of any effective political response to this situation. There's no way to "frame" abuse so that people who don't care will care. The only way to talk about it is – with or without religious language – as the most important moral issue we face.

The culture of abuse has already existed in the USA for quite some time. The torture at Bagram, Guatanamo, and Abu Ghurayb did not emerge out of nothingness prompted only by the rage of 9/11. It was already there: in the institutional memories of the CIA and the US armed forces; and in the whole of American culture. Some of us kept others of us as slaves, knowing the lash and the brand. Later, some of us used mob violence and murder as a tool for social control. Many of us were beaten (or worse) by our parents as children, and some of us have in turn done the same to our own children.

The problem of abuse may or may not be "the most important moral issue we face," but we face it (or turn our faces away from it) every day, at home, in our city streets, in public places, at our jobs, in the books we read, on the video programs we watch. Jeanne is correct that the evil is in all of us, in herself and myself as well as Lynndie England and Charles Graner, and in Alberto Gonzalez and John Yoo; and in you.

The torturer is in me. He cannot be expunged – trying to do so will only drive him deeper into the shadows. The moral, emotional, psychological task facing me (and Jeanne, and England, Graner, Gonzalez, Yoo, and you) is to bring him out of the shadow and into the light. Only when we acknowledge the torturer can we stop the torture.