Why We Torture
President Bush has said that the United States does not torture. But we do. In Guantanamo, in Abu Graib, in other prisons around the world, the evidence keeps coming forward. The facts are clear: the United States does practice torture. But why?
Looking beyond President Bush's executive power grab, beyond his refusal to be bound to the international law, what we see at the core is a deeply flawed understanding of humanity and human dignity. At the core of President Bush's torture policy is the belief that those who commit terrorist acts are not fully human and not deserving of human dignity.
The belief at the center of these and other religious right policies is that there are two categories of people: good people and bad people. The good people we protect, and the bad people we destroy. The good people are people like us, and the bad people are people are something else, something less than human.
This is a deeply flawed understanding of both humanity and of evil. The fundamental existential truth is that all people are capable of both good acts and evil acts. And though there is a role for punishment in society, there is no role for de-humanization.
President Bush has started the path to de-humanization, and now he claims to be surprised where it has taken us. But when we de-humanize our enemy, all tactics become justifiable, and this is exactly what has happened. All of the sudden, we have implicit permission to torture, kill, maim, destroy, anyone who opposes "us" and our righteous ends.
Once you de-humanize one group, then it is a short journey to expanding the stigma of less-than-human, to seperating humanity into ever more categories of worth and value. The only way to oppose this is to hold to one standard of rights for all people, regardless of what they have done.
We have to remember, there is only one group of humanity - all of us. And torture is always wrong.
Looking beyond President Bush's executive power grab, beyond his refusal to be bound to the international law, what we see at the core is a deeply flawed understanding of humanity and human dignity. At the core of President Bush's torture policy is the belief that those who commit terrorist acts are not fully human and not deserving of human dignity.
The belief at the center of these and other religious right policies is that there are two categories of people: good people and bad people. The good people we protect, and the bad people we destroy. The good people are people like us, and the bad people are people are something else, something less than human.
This is a deeply flawed understanding of both humanity and of evil. The fundamental existential truth is that all people are capable of both good acts and evil acts. And though there is a role for punishment in society, there is no role for de-humanization.
President Bush has started the path to de-humanization, and now he claims to be surprised where it has taken us. But when we de-humanize our enemy, all tactics become justifiable, and this is exactly what has happened. All of the sudden, we have implicit permission to torture, kill, maim, destroy, anyone who opposes "us" and our righteous ends.
Once you de-humanize one group, then it is a short journey to expanding the stigma of less-than-human, to seperating humanity into ever more categories of worth and value. The only way to oppose this is to hold to one standard of rights for all people, regardless of what they have done.
We have to remember, there is only one group of humanity - all of us. And torture is always wrong.
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