Reverend Harrison, like most apologists for torture, falls back on the
canard that lives can be saved through torture. He proposes that
a terrorist exists who knows where a bomb is located and when it will go off
and he is caught and interrogated and refuses to hand over the information
voluntarily and we will know when he hands over accurate information after
we beat or cut or electrocute or nearly drown him. All we have to do
is beat, or cut, or electrocute or almost drown him. God will forgive
us because we will have saved lives. End of movie.
There is the argument that this actual scenario is extremely unlikely.
How often do we find out a bomb has been planted and then catch one of the
people who planted it? How likely is that?
I suppose it's possible. It's one of those
nice little moral arguments that college students like to play with, just to
see how far the logic applies. What if you had to abort the baby
to save the life of the mother? It's possible. Just not at all
very likely, except in the TV program "24", a homage to the art of torture.
It strikes me that Harrison might not like the argument that without an
abortion, a vulnerable young woman might commit suicide, or physically abuse
her child. Not really very likely, right? Not a good basis upon
which to decide whether or not abortion should be legal. No, it's not,
is it.
“Perhaps,” he added, “they should clarify it. We
were in the middle of a war, and there was no teaching on that. But the
church only gives general moral guidance, and people of good faith have to
interpret that guidance.”
Reverend Brian W. Harrison, Catholic Apologist for
Torture, NY Times, February 26, 2010.
That's lie number 1. Reverend Harrison, defending a Catholic
defender of water-boarding, rather glibly qualifies his stance: we were in a
war. In a war, torture is allowed. In a war, water-boarding is
not torture. In a war, human dignity doesn't count. In a war,
all the things we live for, all the things of the greatest spiritual and
moral significance, don't matter.
No, it's just a torture. Torture is torture is torture.
Torture is the act of a savage, a barbarian, of a people so utterly bereft
of morality and spirituality and ethics, that they should be sponged off the
face of the earth. I say "sponged"-- not killed or beaten or abused
or-- heaven forbid-- tortured. Sponged-- sucked out of government and
institutions; squeezed out of positions of authority and influence.
Torture is what we, in that remarkable compact called "society" and
"culture" and "democracy", cannot abide, and the right to be treated with
dignity at all times-- no matter what the suspicion or crime or act-- cannot
be abridged.
It's too late to undo much of the damage now. When America's
enemies capture a soldier or a scientist or journalist-- why not torture?
Reverend Brian W. Harrison, defending the American government, has declared
that torture is morally acceptable, as long as it is necessary, and by God,
when America attacks us, whether we are Muslims or communists or negroes, it is necessary.
Perhaps the most amazing facet of Reverend Brian Harrison's remarkable
hubris is the astonishing arrogance of it: I have the authority to proclaim
that God himself approves of one of us violating the most sacred right of
another of us, to deprive him of dignity, to extract whatever information he
will give, to enact a sadism, an indignity, a violence, a cruelty beyond
imagination for most of us.
Ye humble sinners: cower before Brian Harrison and quake with tremulous
awed appreciation! Then go forth and torture, because it is something,
according to Harrison, that Jesus would do, if necessary, and if Jesus were
here today, he would find it necessary.
All Contents Copyright
© Bill Van Dyk
2010 All Rights Reserved
Font: Verdana
