http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/torture/
“Torture is not always impermissible,” argues Charles Krauthammer in “The Truth About
Torture" , his provocative essay in The Weekly Standard
. “However rare the cases, there are circumstances in which, by any rational moral calculus, torture not only would be permissible but would be required (to acquire life-saving information). And once you've established the principle, to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, all that's left to haggle about is the price. In the case of torture, that means that the argument is not whether torture is ever permissible, but when--i.e., under what obviously stringent circumstances: how big, how imminent, how preventable the ticking time bomb.”
The “truth” about torture is an issue being widely addressed throughout the country, yet our sense is that the Christian intellectual community has been relatively silent on this important issue. We believe a symposium of this nature could significantly aid and inform the Church and the wider culture and help provide clarification on the principles involved in judging this practice. In order to open the dialogue we have asked several leading Christian ethicists and opinion journalists to respond to Dr. Krauthammer’s article and to address the questions: “What is the truth about torture from a Christian worldview? Is torture ever allowed? And if so, under what conditions and circumstances?”
The responses appear below in alphabetical order:
Darrell Cole :: John Jefferson Davis :: Daniel Heimbach :: Mark Liederbach :: Kenneth
Magnuson :: Albert Mohler :: Richard John Neuhaus :: Robert Vischer
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Darrell Cole
Christians in America are being asked to support the war on terror. For Christians this means saying “yes” both to the proposed war and the methods waged to fight the war.
Trying to decide the justice of your country’s proposed war and the methods used to wage it is not always an easy task. That task is made even harder when the enemy does not behave like any enemy we have faced in the past. Because we face a new kind of enemy, some notable political pundits have been arguing for a new way to deal with the enemy (new to us) that we have previously refused to use for moral reasons—namely, torture.
As Christians consider these arguments they must keep in mind that they can fall prey as easily as other citizens to impressive arguments that support tactics that promise our safety, even when the tactics argued for are morally questionable. All people—Christians

included—desire safety. When our safety is threatened, we tend to look for any means available to end the threat. The more cowardly we are (and when it comes to physical pain, most of us can be very cowardly) the more likely we are to stoop to any means whatsoever to maintain our safety.
The war on terror is not a war that seems to be a real threat to our civilization; we simply do not fear Usam bin Laden and al-Qaeda as we once feared Hitler and the Nazis. Most people do not truly believe that terrorists can destroy our civilization. But most people, especially in the wake of 9/11, and especially those who live in large metropolitan areas, do fear terrorist attacks.
In short, when most people think about the war on terror, they are not thinking of some great crusade against the forces of Islamic fundamentalism in order to save our civilization. Instead, they think about the threat to their own lives and property and that of their loved ones. They are thinking about the possibility of a terrible and traumatic event that may displace them from their homes, jobs, and friends. When the reality of threats becomes personal we are more likely to support dubious government measures that will ensure our safety. This is precisely when we hope the virtue of courage will steal us against acting in ways for which, under normal circumstances, we would be ashamed. For this is precisely when we are easy prey to seemingly sound arguments in support of doing evil for a greater good.
Terrorism is a new sort of threat to the average American citizen. Terrorists do not fight with standing armies; they use soldiers without portfolio who attack innocent civilians in order to terrorize a perceived enemy nation into capitulating to their demands. Because the element of surprise in terrorism makes terrorism possible, the need for information that would render all “surprises” unsurprising is the goal to winning any war against terrorism. Wars are not usually won without good intelligence about the enemy’s whereabouts, intentions, and strengths, but any war against terrorists can be won only with good intelligence.
The problem is simply stated. A terrorist force is dependent entirely upon the element of surprise, thus secrecy of its plans is its very life. There can be no “winning” a war against terrorists without good intelligence gathering, and there is no more easy and effective way to gain good intelligence than by torturing people who possess the information you need to find terrorists or to thwart their plans. Thus, the very nature of the ongoing war on terror, what Norman Podhoretz aptly termed as “World War IV,” has moved many people to start considering the good of torture.
The attempt to justify the previously considered unjustifiable has a distinguished history in the modern West. Nazi fascism during the Second World War posed so great a threat to our civilization that reputable scholars and statesmen justified previously unthinkable military tactics such as obliteration bombing, which directly targeted the innocent. In like manner did Soviet communism pose so great a threat that reputable scholars and statesmen justified nuclear deterrence, which directly targeted millions innocent civilians with nuclear missiles. The moral philosophy that many appealed to during the wars

against fascism and communism came to be known as “moral realism” and “dirty hands” moral philosophy. The goal of this kind of moral philosophy is to justify a comparatively small evil when faced with a comparatively large evil.
At first glance, the new threat that is the war on terror seems to offer the moral realists good reasons to begin the systematic use of torture on terrorists, though, again, the reasons are not as persuasive as they were during the Second World War or the cold war.
In the former two wars we were fighting for the survival of Western Civilization. In the current war we simply want to spare ourselves the loss of a lot of lives—a noble cause, but not as noble as saving a civilization. The problem with this tactic for Christians, whether it be for the cause of Western Civilization or our own lives, is that Christians have always followed the apostle Paul and resisted attempts to justify doing evil for a good cause. For Christians, there are no “emergencies” that would justify moral acts displeasing to God. The refusal to do evil that good may come is a moral staple of classical Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, and Roman Catholic morality.
To paraphrase C. S. Lewis: the refusal to do evil that good may come is “mere Christian morality.” True, under the influence of Reinhold Neibuhr’s “Christian Realism,” many
Protestant ethicists in the mid-twentieth century began to accept the “dirty hands” moral philosophy that made doing evil morally permissible in some cases. In fact, one has to look hard in the archives to find a Protestant voice of protest of the obliteration bombing of Germany during World War II. According to Niebuhr, the responsible citizen is the one willing to do evil that good might come. Protestant Christian ethicist Paul Ramsey did much to bring Protestants (and others) back into the traditional Christian view of refusing to do evil for good causes. Ramsey’s many essays on American nuclear policy show a determination not to justify evil under any circumstances.
Ramsey’s arguments were unpersuasive to cold-war realists such as statesman Henry
Kissinger and policy strategist Herman Kahn. Kahn in particular thought that our nuclear policy was too timid and that we ought to devise strategies that would achieve not merely deterrence by assuring destruction but actual victory by assuring that we could destroy more quickly than the Soviet Union. Kahn once wrote a book explaining his reasoning and he called it <i> Thinking About the Unthinkable </i> . Kahn employs what can only be called a horribly relentless logic to persuade the reader that killing millions of people is better than ending all life in the U.S. if not the planet Earth. It is no surprise that the character Dr. Strangelove in Stanley Kubrick’s black-comedy cold-war classic was based, in part, on Kahn. Thus it should come as no surprise that when Andrew McCarthy defended torture in the pages of Commentary (July-August 2004) he used the title:
“Torture: Thinking About the Unthinkable.”
We should not be surprised, therefore, that Charles Krauthammer’s recent essay in
<i> The Weekly Standard</i> (Vol. 11, Issue 12) has the title “The Truth About Torture:
It’s Time To Be Honest About Doing Terrible Things.” Like Kahn and McCarthy,
Krauthammer wants to persuade the reader that the time has come to adjust the moral compass to meet the new realities of a new enemy; the time has come to cross another moral threshold for the greater good. Krauthammer is a fine thinker and writer and his

opinions are worth considering. His argument may be summarized as follows: Ordinary soldiers (those who fight in legitimate wars and abide by the rules of war) may be distinguished from terrorists (those who do not fight legitimate wars and do not abide by the rules of war).
The distinction is important because terrorists supposedly forfeit the right not to be tortured precisely because they are irregular soldiers. So, the first part of the argument is that terrorists cannot be protected from torture in the way soldiers traditionally have been protected in the past. The second part of the argument comes in the form of the hypothetical “ticking bomb” scenario: if we could lay our hands on a terrorist who had planted a nuclear bomb in New York City, most people would agree that torturing the terrorist is morally permissible. Thus the second part of the argument takes this form: if most people agree that something is morally permissible, then it is morally permissible.
Krauthammer does not wish to persuade the reader that torture is not evil; he admits that
“torture is a monstrous form of evil,” which corrupts the individual and society that practices it. Nevertheless, when we are faced with an even greater evil—the deaths of many civilians—we must choose the lesser evil in order to save lives. Krauthammer thinks that doing evil should leave moral traces even when it is the right thing to do; that is to say, our elected leaders should be troubled in conscience when they allow torture for the greater good.
Nevertheless, like Niebuhr, Krauthammer expects our leaders to take responsibility (i.e., do evil) for our safety and, thus, they have an obligation to trouble their consciences for our sake. If our leaders fail to torture when lives can be saved, they are guilty of moral abdication and are akin to principled pacifists who refuse to soil their hands in the dirty waters of the real world.
Krauthammer is also quick to point out that the legalization of torture does not lead to torture of any kind for any reason. Rules are required. We may torture only in the
“ticking bomb” (imminent danger) or “slow fuse” (danger is real but not imminent) situations. In the ticking-bomb case we may carry out any interrogation method that is likely to be effective in gaining the necessary information. In the slow-fuse case our interrogation methods must be proportionate: in other words, the greater the threat, the rougher the interrogation. Only highly specialized agents should be allowed to torture.
Authority for torture must come from someone at the cabinet level or from some judicial body created to handle what amounts to torture warrants. If interrogators are faced with a ticking-bomb scenario and have no time to seek approval for torture from a higher authority, such practices will be reviewed by the appropriate authorities to determine its lawfulness.
Krauthammer makes a convincing case for torture but we have reasons to be wary. First, the distinction between a legitimate prisoner of war and a captured terrorist, and the moral consequences derived from this distinction, is not as clear as Krauthammer suggests. The POW is protected from torture because he is a regular soldier, but regular

soldiers can be just as evil as terrorists and possess information that would save thousands of lives.
In fact, when we start comparing the captured terrorist with, say, a captured SS officer, the term “legitimacy” begins to lose its moral force. The evil represented by the SS officer is not one wit smaller than the evil represented by the Islamic fundamentalist. In fact, unlike the Islamic fundamentalist, the evil represented by the SS officer had a real chance to conquer what Churchill could still refer to as “The Christian West.” Why do we privilege the Nazi simply because he has the good fortune to be an enlisted officer in a recognized nation state?
One reason why we may not torture the Nazi is because the rules of war are so ordered that atrocity escalation is avoided. If military bodies begin to employ torture on a systematic level, the tit-for-tat escalation could turn into something too horrible to contemplate. Even Hitler refrained from recommending torture for captured Western troops (the Soviets were not so lucky) because he did not wish his own soldiers on the
Western front to face torture and he felt that he could trust non-Soviet Allied forces not to torture in return.
The most important reason why we may not torture the Nazi is because torture is a recognized moral evil. Yes, we may kill the Nazi if we must, but we may not torture.
Let’s be clear about this. Classical Christianity—the Christianity of Ambrose, Augustine,
Chrysostom, Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin—in not a pacifist religion. Classical
Christianity agrees with Niebuhr and Krauthammer that the pacifist is not a responsible citizen because the pacifist refuses to do what God has ordained for human good: take up arms to protect the innocent.
But Classical Christianity disagrees with Niebuhr and Krauthammer that the responsible citizen is the citizen who does evil for a good cause. The Christian just war tradition holds that killing in a just war is permissible—even morally praiseworthy—when those killed are enemies who pose a direct threat. Thus acceptable targets are enemy leaders, soldiers, and those who supply them with the means to do us harm, such as arms producers.
The just-war tradition also holds that an enemy who surrenders or an enemy who is captured is no longer a proper target. This principle holds whether the enemy possesses useful knowledge or not. Thus, killing Nazis is permissible when they pose a direct threat to harm others. Put differently, killing Nazis is permissible, even morally praiseworthy, when they are killed in battle—that is, while they are engaging in acts harmful to us.
Once the Nazis are captured, they pose no further harm. In the same way, it is morally permissible, even morally praiseworthy, to kill any terrorist in the act of terrorism. But when the terrorist is captured, he poses no further harm. To torture the Nazi or the terrorist is to do violence to a person we have rendered harmless and defenseless. To do intentional harm to a defenseless human being is a moral evil.

Christians have good reasons to distance themselves from the moral realism evidenced in
Krauthammer’s essay. Nevertheless, the temptation to use a little evil on an evildoer can be overwhelming when a great deal is at stake. We may be tempted to count the cost on our conscience and try to figure out how much evil we can live with—how much evil we are willing to avert our eyes from—in order to save a society that we hold so dear. When we are tempted to count the moral costs, we often like to convince ourselves that we are only going to allow this particular evil to be done only once in this case of emergency.
When our own lives are at stake, we do not fear the slippery slope. We tell ourselves that we will not become people who regularly do evil simply because we allow it in special cases, nor will we become barbarians simply because we practice a little barbarism for a good cause.
Moral realists wish to placate the troubled conscience; thus Krauthammer claims that if we allow torture, we will be able to place limits on who we torture. But once the threshold is crossed, how do we keep from pushing forward? History tells us that it is very difficult to cross a moral threshold and simply stop, even when the reason used to justify the crossing of the threshold in the first place no longer exists. The Allied war leaders during World War II, for example, were conscience of crossing a moral threshold when they began bombing innocent civilians during the early years of the war, and by the end of the war, such bombing tactics became more and more savage despite the fact that
Allied victory was no longer in doubt. Once you began to accept an evil action as morally permissible because it is effective for some good purpose it becomes very difficult to quit relying upon it.
Moreover, if effectiveness is what allows us to cross the first threshold, why would it not allow us to push onward if we must in order to save lives? Any law that allows procedures out of necessity is a law made with necessity in mind. If necessity dictates what is legally permissible, then necessity will dictate the limits on who and how we torture.
Krauthammer would surely claim, for example, that we would not torture moral innocents such as children, but the "we" he would be talking about are people who have never lived in a society where torture is legally and morally acceptable. Who is to say what we will next allow once we get used to the idea of torturing people? If the evil of torture is allowed on principle in order to save lives, then why stop with torturing the terrorists themselves, if that is not working, and start torturing their children or other loved ones instead?
Torture can work; that is the monstrous thing about it, as Krauthammer agrees. We are tempted to torture precisely because we can get accurate information from the tortured.
How much more good information could we get if we tortured before the very eyes of the terrorists their sons, daughters, wives, mothers, fathers? I for one feel sure that most people could better face the actual physical torments of the blowtorch and pair of pliers on their own person than watch their loved ones even approached with these instruments.

Krauthammer admits that torture corrupts the society that practices it. However, such problems do not worry the moral realist, since the logic of moral realism can accept demeaning our society a little bit with evil acts when those evil acts are necessary to prevent us losing our society altogether. Put differently, it makes no sense, from the moral realist’s point of view, to say that an action demeans society when that demeaning action may be the only way to save society. So the choice the moral realist presents us is a stained society (one that is preserved with evil acts) or no society at all. When the good to be protected at all costs is our society or even our own persons, then its survival dictates what is morally permissible.
For Christians, the kind of reasoning demonstrated here evidences a love for something greater than our ultimate good, which is God. Moral realism and dirty hands moral philosophy are moral tools for those who have turned our society or our own personal safety into an idol. When we love anything more than God, and demonstrate this greater love for a lesser good with immoral acts, we think and act like idolaters. Those who are willing to do evil in order to save themselves have placed themselves above God. Let us repeat: this is a form of idolatry--neither pure nor simple, but idolatry all the same.
Civilized people may have some scruples about the use of torture, although a cursory glance through any number of history books—or even a cursory glance at any evening's viewing of the History Channel—will show that many civilized peoples have used torture frequently and effectively. People torture because they fear the consequences of not torturing—in short, they fear death. Augustine taught that there are far worse things to fear than death—such as doing moral evil. Luther taught that if you feared anything more than God, then God is not God to you. If you are willing to do evil in order to save your life, then you love yourself more than you love God. Moral realists want Americans to accept the necessary evil of torture in order to win the war on terror. Thousands of innocent lives are at stake. But even if thousands of lives are at stake, even if, to go even further, to lose the war on terror is to lose all that we in the West hold dear, Christians cannot do evil to preserve what they hold dear.
More to the point, if we are tempted to do evil in order to preserve what we hold dear, then we are holding the wrong things dear. No real good demands evil to preserve it.
Instead, those who want to see a good preserved demand that we do evil to preserve it.
But if the ultimate human good is a good that is incompatible with doing evil, then we may not do evil to preserve it. When moral realists tell Christians that they must do evil in order to save themselves, and Christians are tempted to heed this advice, they should realize that they have become their own false gods.
Moral realists like to formulate dilemmas that require we choose evil if we wish to preserve a cherished good. This hinders our ability to formulate other solutions. Those who know that they can use evil do not need to think about how to win without doing evil. If Christians are to support the war on terror, and they ought to support a just war, they need to be reasonably sure that their government does not as a matter of policy torture people in order to get information. Christians—and all those opposed to torture— should be urging their governments to think about other ways to win the war on terror.

Of course, many people are not troubled by the thought of torturing people who would like to see the West go up in flames and who possess information about plans that will light as many of those fires as possible. But we cannot harm people simply because they would like to harm us and possess knowledge about plans to harm us. Certainly we may detain them, question them, and keep them very uncomfortable and miserable, but not torture them.
To torture someone, or to countenance your government torturing someone, is to admit that you fear death more than you fear displeasing God and it is to admit that you love something more than you love God. To torture someone is to betray a disordered love for something that can never be a proper ultimate good. Not even our society or our own lives, as much as we love them, are that good.
Dr. Darrell Cole is an Assistant Professor of Religion at Drew University (Madison, NJ) .
He is the author of When God Says War Is Right: The Christian’s Perspective on When and How to Fight and the co-author of The Virtue of War: Reclaiming the Classic
Christian Traditions East & West .
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Albert Mohler
Looking back at World War I, Winston Churchill was moved to write: “When all was over, torture and cannibalism were the only two expedients that the civilized, scientific,
Christian states had been able to deny themselves: and these were of doubtful utility.”
The “Great War” was a laboratory for human killing, with the first widespread use of mechanized weapons of mass murder like the machine gun and the tank. Accompanying these weapons were inventions such as aerial bombardment and poison gas. Yet, the war saw neither side institutionalize the use of torture. In the end, that was about all Churchill could claim on behalf of military restraint.
The question of torture arises once again in the context of the War on Terror and has been brought to public controversy with the amendment to the current Defense
Authorization Bill sponsored by Senator John McCain. The measure, which would render illegal all “cruel, inhuman, or degrading” treatments of prisoners under U.S. control, passed by a vote of 90-9 in the full Senate. President George W. Bush had threatened to veto the legislation, if it were to be passed by the House of Representatives. On
December 15, the White House announced that it would back the McCain amendment.
Nevertheless, public debate over the amendment— and the issues of coercion and torture— will not end with the conclusion of this political drama, nor should it. This is a vital issue of great moral consequence, and this debate should not be allowed to slip from public view. All citizens bear responsibility to be informed and engaged concerning this question.

This debate was advanced through the contribution of columnist Charles
Krauthammer and his article, “The Truth About Torture,” published in the December 5,
2005 issue of The Weekly Standard . Krauthammer, a morally serious man, presents a morally serious argument against the McCain amendment— going so far as to suggest that McCain’s position is something less than intellectually honest.
Both men deserve careful attention. Sen. John McCain is a man whose courage was demonstrated through the awful experience of imprisonment and torture at the hands of the North Vietnamese regime. Torture and the treatment of prisoners of war is no hypothetical issue to this senator. At the same time, Charles Krauthammer also deserves a respectful hearing. His background in medicine and the law, coupled with his own public courage and service as a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics, summons our attention.
Krauthammer argues that “there is no denying the monstrous evil that is any form of torture,” nor “how corrupting it can be for the individuals and society that practice it.”
But, he also believes that there are exceptions to this rule, and that these exceptions demand the discipline of rules. “The problem with the McCain amendment,” he asserts,
“is that once you have gone public with a blanket ban on all forms of coercion, it is going to be very difficult to publicly carve out exceptions.” Krauthammer then faults the Bush administration for “having attempted such a codification with the kind of secrecy, lack of coherence, and lack of strict enforcement that led us to the McCain reaction.”
Without doubt, the scandals associated with prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib and the advice offered in the memo prepared by John Loo of the Office of Legal Counsel in the
Department of Justice have caused considerable embarrassment to the United States. Are we a people who would allow torture to be used as an instrument of state power? More to the point, has the War on Terror changed the rules?
Krauthammer argues that the rules have indeed changed. Captured terrorists, he argues, are not soldiers captured in a conflict of arms, but something more like dangerous criminals who break the laws of war by killing and abusing civilians “for a living.”
Therefore, they are entitled “to nothing” in terms of rights, having forfeited such claims by becoming terrorists. And yet, he does not actually believe that they are entitled to nothing , for he would not sanction any and all uses of coercion and torture, just those that fit his description of exceptional cases.
“Torture is not always permissible,” Krauthammer allows. “However rare these cases, there are circumstances in which, by rational moral calculus, torture not only would be permissible but would be required (to acquire life-saving information). And once you’ve established the principle, to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, all that’s left to haggle about is the price.”
McCain agrees, to a point. After all, he also accepts that exceptions will, even must be made under exceedingly rare circumstances. The difference between these two

proposals is a distinction worthy of our most serious moral scrutiny and review. In the end, I must side with McCain, but not without further moral clarifications.
McCain and Krauthammer are both talking about coercion and torture for the purpose of acquiring vital information that would conceivably save lives— and for no other purpose. But when they speak of coercion and torture, do they mean the same things? Coercion is a normal device for obtaining information in many contexts, including routine police interrogations. Of course, the coercive techniques of normative police policy in the U.S. do not include the use of physical torture. Yet, some international agencies and policy groups define virtually any high-pressure interrogation or psychological techniques as torture. I agree with Jean Bethke Elshtain when she suggests that those who advocate such expansive claims make “mincement” of vital terms and categories. She rightly suggests that sleep deprivation and a slap in the face belong in a category altogether separate from bodily amputations and sexual assault.
Definitions represent the first great challenge. Some human rights activists contend that yelling at a prisoner represents the kind of “cruel, inhuman, or degrading” treatment McCain would categorically outlaw. Furthermore, some of the techniques used in the interrogation of terrorists are also used on American military personnel in the course of intensive training. Does this represent torture? Surely not.
Under certain circumstances, most morally sensitive persons would surely allow interrogators to yell at prisoners and to use psychological intimidation, sleep deprivation, and the removal of creature comforts for purposes of obtaining vital information. In increasingly serious cases, most would likely allow some use of pharmaceuticals and more intensive and manipulative psychological techniques. In the most extreme of conceivable cases, most would also allow the use of far more serious mechanisms of coercion— even what we would all agree should be labeled as torture.
In his article, Krauthammer proposes the “ticking time bomb” scenario as an example of a context in which the most serious and extreme measures would be authorized. In such a scenario, agents of the state would hold in custody a terrorist who knows where a ticking time bomb has been hidden— a bomb that will surely detonate and kill thousands of innocent persons. Under such a circumstance, Krauthammer argues, the use of extreme coercive measures would be legitimate, even necessary. The greater good of saving lives trumps the principle of state restraint.
A similar scenario may hit even closer to home for most persons. Consider the hypothetical case in which a kidnapper, now in police custody, knows where a child has been hidden in a subterranean vault with limited oxygen. He refuses to disclose the child’s location, knowing that the possession of this information will serve as proof of his guilt. Time is running out and the child will soon die if the location is not found. So, what parent would not authorize the use of almost any mechanism of coercion in this case— even the most extreme? In such a case, the parent would agree with Krauthammer that the kidnapper has forfeited all claims upon psychological peace and physical comfort— even upon life itself— by refusing to save the child he has kidnapped.

Yet, even as morally serious persons might justify such actions, the use of these hypothetical scenarios is not fully satisfying. In reality, the real-life situations in which such decisions are made are rarely so clearly defined. Is this really the kidnapper? Do we really know that this captured terrorist knows where the bomb is located? Are we certain that a bomb exists?
Moral cowards duck these questions even as the morally unserious dismiss them.
This is not an option for Christians who would think seriously about this urgent question.
I would argue that we cannot condone torture by codifying a list of exceptional situations in which techniques of torture might be legitimately used. At the same time, I would also argue that we cannot deny that there could exist circumstances in which such uses of torture might be made necessary.
McCain wants a categorical ban, but accepts that exceptions may, under extreme situations, be made. Krauthammer wants to define the exceptions so that a policy may be more coherent and, in his view, honest. Others, such as Harvard law professor Alan
Dershowitz, suggest that specific processes be put into place that would allow for the authorization of such techniques of coercion, going so far as to suggest something like a
“warrant” for torture “to be required as a precondition to the infliction of any type of torture under any circumstances.”
This appears to be neither practical nor prudent, for the circumstances in which such a use of coercion might be conceived would often not allow time for such a warrant to be issued. The War on Terror is not fought on convenient terms. Furthermore, institutionalizing torture under such a procedure would almost surely lead to a continual renegotiation of the rules and constant flexing of the definitions.
We are simply not capable, I would argue, of constructing a set of principles and rules for torture that could adequately envision the real-life scenarios under which the pressure and temptation to use extreme coercion would be seriously contemplated.
Instead, I would suggest that Senator McCain is correct in arguing that a categorical ban should be adopted as state policy for the U.S., its military, and its agents.
At the same time, I would admit that such a policy, like others, has limitations that, under extreme circumstances, may be transcended by other moral claims. The key point is this— at all times and in all cases the use of torture is understood to be morally suspect in the extreme, and generally unjustified.
Of course, my understanding is based in an Augustinian conception of human nature and sinfulness. At our best, we are sinners whose sin contaminates our highest aspirations and most noble actions. As Augustine argued, the Christian soldier may kill enemy combatants as a matter of true necessity, but he can never assume that in doing so he has not sinned. Augustine’s “melancholy soldier” knows that the use of deadly force against another human being is, generally speaking, sin. Yet, he also knows that a failure or refusal to kill can at times be a sin worse in both intention and effect than a decision to

kill in order to save lives. In a very real sense, that soldier cannot privilege his desire to be free from the sin of killing another human being to supersede his responsibility to save the lives of innocents. As philosopher Michael Walzer argues, this is the perennial problem of “dirty hands.” The honest soldier knows this problem all too well— as does the interrogator.
Rules institutionalize a reality and shape a society. The safe transit of automobiles requires a set of well-established, public, and intelligible traffic laws, including speed limits. At the same time, a parent rushing a bleeding child to the hospital may be stopped by a police officer, but such a parent is not likely to be arrested and prosecuted for breaking this law. Why? Because the parent’s action, under a set of unexpected but conceivable conditions, was understood by legal authorities to have been justified under this precise set of circumstances. The government does not stipulate in advance that such a set of allowable conditions exists, nor does it attempt to exhaust in advance what circumstances might exist that would be similarly justified. Instead, the law is understood to remain in full effect with full integrity even as legitimate and authorized legal agents decide not to arrest or prosecute a citizen whose law-breaking was understood to be justified under these precise circumstances. The rule is unchanged, and the law is not mocked.
Similarly, the practice of medicine involves the physician’s responsibility to make split-second life and death decisions in the course of medical extremity. No precise set of laws, rules, or regulations can be set forth in advance, even as principles and best practices for medical practice are standardized. One simply cannot remove the physician as a responsible moral agent in the actual context of medical practice— even and especially in emergency cases. Yet, medical review boards exist to review the physician’s decisions and actions in retrospect.
These two contexts of moral decision-making can serve to develop a coherent and principled policy on the state’s use of torture and extreme coercion. First, the use of torture should be prohibited as a matter of state policy— period. No set of qualifications and exceptions can do anything but diminish the moral credibility of this policy. At the same time, rare exceptions under extreme circumstances can be considered under those circumstances by legitimate state agents, knowing that a full accounting of these decisions must be made to the public, through appropriate means and mechanisms.
Second, a thorough and legitimate review must be conducted subsequent to the use of any such techniques, with the agents who authorized or conducted such use of torture fully accountable, even to the point of maximum legal prosecution if their use of extreme coercion is seen to have been unjustified (not simply because the interrogation did not produce the desired information, but because the grounds of justification were invalid). The absence of legitimate accountability through a thorough and comprehensive process of review— with the threat of real and appropriate sanctions against those found to have acted without due justification— makes the state complicit in a web of cruelty and the official rationalization of evil.

We live in a fallen world threatened by agents of terror who are changing the reality of war and would end civilization as we know it, killing noncombatants without conscience as a matter of pride. In confronting this new form of evil, we are now forced to rethink many of the most settled questions of morality and the use of force.
Nevertheless, we have no choice but to fight this foe and to wage war on those who would use mass murder and terror to sever the fragile bonds of human society. Yet, in fighting this war it is inevitable that we will look down and find dirty hands, even in doing what we would all agree is a lamentable necessity. What we must not do is compound the problem of dirty hands by adopting dirty rules.
Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
is President and Joseph Emerson Brown Professor of Christian
Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary . In addition to his presidential duties, Dr. Mohler hosts a daily radio program for the Salem Radio Network. He also writes a popular daily commentary on moral, cultural and theological issues at his website, AlbertMohler.com
.
*****************
Daniel Heimbach
Charles Krauthammer has written a timely and provocative piece critical of Senator John
McCain’s effort to ban all forms of torture. In particular this debate regards whether
“cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment” should ever be used with detainees who operate outside the boundaries of civil responsibility, and whose effectiveness depends on breaking principles by which nation-states hold themselves accountable in war.
But, while Krauthammer offers much insight and nails the fundamental incoherence in
McCain’s position, he muddies his otherwise careful analysis by taking a position that is equally incoherent. What I mean is Krauthammer rightly criticizes McCain for arguing
“no torture under any circumstance” while holding up Israel, which uses physical coercion as a standard practice, as the model for how nations should deal with terrorists.
And then Krauthammer is equally incoherent when he says “there is no denying the monstrous evil that is any form of torture,” while claiming that torture can nevertheless be “a moral duty.”
The problem with this position is it amounts to saying that, while evil is wrong all the time, it may at times be right. It holds that “monstrous evil” can at times be moral, even while it remains monstrously evil. But that is totally incoherent. What is moral cannot at the same time be immoral, and what is immoral cannot at the same time be moral. If exceptions are allowed, it means the general rule does not always apply, and if something is “always the case,” it means there can never be an exception.
Coherence requires that we either say that torture is always a “monstrous evil” with no exceptions, or that torture, while evil in most circumstances, is not evil all the time—that there are situations when torture is not truly evil. This later position is what I think

Krauthammer actually means. But he goes too far by way of saying how much he abhors torture in most circumstances, and how much he wants to avoid torture in any circumstance. If that is what Krauthammer means, then he otherwise makes a reasoned case for saying “torture” is at times justified or even required.
But just stating his view this way—even saying that “torture” is at times justified or even required—raises a nest of definitional difficulties, so many that in fact I do not think
Krauthammer and McCain are even addressing the same thing. McCain would have us ban torture without any exception, and by “torture” he means any sort of “cruel, inhuman, or degrading” treatment, and by that he means any treatment that is inherently immoral.
How could any good person oppose that? And so McCain’s amendment sailed through the Senate by a vote of 90-9.
But, while McCain views “torture” as something immoral by definition, Krauthammer addresses something else. What I mean is that when Krauthammer addresses “torture” he addresses something larger than McCain has in mind. He is not only addressing inherently immoral interrogation but something more, and it would be better if we used another word for it. What Krauthammer addresses (and McCain does not) is using coercion to get someone to divulge information he would not otherwise divulge.
Of course, no one in his right mind is saying no coercion of any sort should ever be used to exact information from detainees in the war on terror. But does this not spotlight what separates Krauthammer from McCain? They do not actually disagree on ever using coercion to get someone to divulge information he would not otherwise divulge.
Rather, they disagree on exactly when to call such coercion “torture.”
At the risk of oversimplifying, McCain would not call coercive interrogation “torture” until it crosses into something immoral, while Krauthammer calls it “torture” at some earlier point. This is not to deny differences over when one crosses the threshold of immorality. But that is a different question than realizing we are dealing with a continuum that extends from merely applying psychological pressure to threatening a person’s life. And the fact is McCain and Krauthammer are addressing this continuum in different ways. Neither is saying interrogators should never use coercion, and both oppose abuse. But they are referring to “torture” in different ways—one that is immoral by definition and one that is not.
If one uses the McCain view of “torture” as inherently immoral treatment , then we must also address questions of moral responsibility coming from that part of the coercion continuum not covered by McCain’s view. If “torture” is always immoral because we only refer to using coercion immorally, then we still must address how far interrogators can go before what they do becomes “torture.”
But, in that case, Krauthammer’s appeal to the principles of proportionality (no more force than necessary), right intent (only to obtain necessary information and nothing more), last resort (only when no other means will work), competent authority (only with authorization from cabinet-level political authority), and no evil means (no sick

sadomasochism) are certainly apropos . In fact, we should go beyond Krauthammer to also consider other just-war principles such as just cause (only to correct injustice), comparative justice (only if stakes on our side are more worthy than stakes on theirs), probability of success (only if good reason to believe the one interrogated actually knows important information), proportionality of projected results (only if information needed is worth more than what it costs to obtain), right spirit (only with regret), and good faith
(never breaking promises).
And, if we use Krauthammer’s view of “torture” as applying coercion per se , then, after setting proper boundaries for moral use, we should without apology defend obligation to exercise justified coercion within proper restraints, and should not confuse moral categories by declaring good evil or declaring evil good.
<i> Dr. Daniel R. Heimbach is Professor of Christian Ethics at Southeastern Baptist
Theological Seminary (Wake Forest, NC). He is the author of True Sexual Morality:
Recovering Biblical Standards for a Culture in Crisis .</i>
*****************
Mark Liederbach
“But a certain one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, ‘you know nothing at all, nor do you take into account that it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish.’” John 11:49-50
Ethics 101: A terrorist has planted a nuclear bomb in New York City. It will go off in one hour. A million people will die. You capture the terrorist. He knows where it is. He’s not talking. Question: If you have the slightest belief that hanging this man by his thumbs will get you the information to save a million people, are you permitted to do it?” With this case study Charles
Krauthammer seeks to engage his reader in a debate about the ethics of torture. (Charles Krauthammer,
“The Truth about Torture,”
The Weekly
Standard , Vol. 011, Issue 12 (December 5, 2005)
An analysis of Krauthammer’s argument reveals that he believes the following:
1.
A terrorist is not “entitled” to any form of protection.

2.
By assumption of his argument, the potential targets of terrorism are “entitled” to be left alone—not harmed.
3.
In the event of terrorism, proportionality is the key principle that ought to be used to settle any apparent moral dilemma. According to Krauthammer, proportional action is necessary not only to stop unjust violence already happening but to prevent a predicted tragedy from taking place.
4.
“Any rational moral calculus” should not only tolerate torture in certain cases but demand it as a “moral duty.” Krauthammer’s depiction of a “rational moral calculus” tracks along the following flow of ideas: a.
Terrorism is evil. b.
Torture is evil. c.
Terrorism will hurt (or has the strong potential to hurt) many innocent people while torturing the terrorist will harm only one or a few who are not innocent. d.
Viewed proportionally, torture is the lesser of two evils. e.
Torture will prove an effective means to gather information to stop terrorist plots. f.
Therefore, it is better that one “miscreant” be “hung by his thumbs” or
“spend the rest of his life roasting on a spit over an open fire” than for the nation to suffer harm. Or to put it more simply, Krauthammer claims that on “any rational moral calculus” there are times when two wrongs will make a right.
What remains for the thoughtful and critical reader is to evaluate whether or not
Krauthammer’s claim that “any rational moral calculus” should lead one to his conclusion that sometimes the “monstrous evil” of torture is not only justifiable but a
“moral duty.” What follows, then, is a two-part response to Krauthammer’s article and the larger issue of torture. The first part seeks to set forth and explain appropriate basic principles of a Just War theory as they apply to conduct in war ( jus in Bello ) in order to establish the meta-ethical grounds upon which to debate the larger issue. The second part then provides a more direct response to Krauthammer’s argument.
1
Neighbor Love as Motivation
Whether or not any particular Christian stands for a state-sanctioned use of force or military engagement usually depends on how he or she negotiates the tension involved in
1 A full discussion of just war theory is beyond the scope of this response. However, for a fuller discussion on Just War Theory see my article “The Gospel and War” in
Faith and Mission 21/1
(Fall 2004) 84-104.

the application of neighbor love. On one side of the coin the Christian is called to express a strong moral compulsion to love all others as neighbors including a criminal or enemy.
On the other side of the coin there is likewise a strong moral compunction to love all others with an emphasis on the protection of the innocent (or victim). In any debate about issues such as war, capital punishment, or in this case, torture, the moral inclinations that revolve around the application of neighbor love often serves as the motivation for the debate.
With this in mind it is imperative to recognize that in the parable of the Good Samaritan
(Luke 10:30-37) Jesus clearly indicates that victims of injustice are worthy of neighbor love. Likewise it seems appropriate to understand that as the Jew and Samaritan were
“cultural enemies,” Jesus also taught that our treatment of the “enemy” should also be shaped by the principle of “neighbor love.” While I am not suggesting a direct analogy of circumstances, there is nonetheless an important principle at work that applies. Jesus shifts the focus away from what qualifies the other person as the recipient of love to how one can and ought to demonstrate neighbor love regardless of who the other is . Paul
Ramsey comments to this end when he argues that the good Samaritan parable “actually shows the nature and meaning of Christian love which alone of all ethical standpoints discovers the neighbor because it alone begins with neighborly love and not with discriminating between worthy and unworthy people according to the qualities they possess.”
2
Therefore, because the Christian must treat both parties (victim and attacker) with love, if a given situation calls for use of force as the most appropriate way to express neighbor love, then that use of force must be employed with a heart to protect one neighbor (the victim) from harm while limiting the way force is used on the other neighbor (the attacker). There is no room for the Christian to argue that this person is somehow less worthy of love or care. Concern to properly demonstrate neighbor love to all should simultaneously motivate one to just action and limit one from unjust response.
The larger question for the believer, then, is not whether or not he or she would personally support torture, but whether the state is given the right to use this kind of force in its God-given role to protect its citizens.
The Principles That Guide Neighbor Love
The question then becomes how to determine the appropriate expression of neighbor love when one is engaged in a just conflict. Just behavior in war depends much on the principles justifying going to war in the first place. For example, if peaceful resolution is the intended goal, and “peace” is defined simply as the absence of conflict, then any behavior—such as torture—that expedites the goal would not only be a justifiable means to the end, but arguably the best choice for it could be accomplished the quickest.
3
2 Paul Ramsey, Basic Christian Ethics (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951), 93.
3 James F. Childress, “Just-War Criteria,” in War or Peace? The Search for New Answers , ed.
Thomas A. Shannon (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1980), 48.

Obviously the intended goal would have been met, but at what moral cost? If, however, the correct aim of war is “a just peace,” as John Rawls argues, then “the means employed must not destroy the possibility of peace or encourage a contempt for human life that puts the safety of ourselves and of mankind in jeopardy.”
4
For Christians, then, utilitarian ideas like “all is fair in love and war” or “war is hell, therefore fight like a hellion” are not acceptable. While neighbor love provides the impetus for engaging in a just war, this proper motive does not legitimate any kind of behavior. As Jesus himself commented, “If you love me you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). True love is guided by commandments. Thus, while neighbor love serves as a motivating virtue it remains only a formal category until other principles guide it, order it, and give it proper shape in a real life context. Three such principles are crucial to this discussion.
First, the behavior of the just warriors must be subject to the deontological limits established by a legitimate authority . The establishment of a legitimate grounding authority forms the logical foundation upon which the entire discussion must rest and the boundaries within which appropriate discussion must fall. For the believer, the highest authority must be God and His Word. Just behavior in war requires acting in light of the legitimate authority that rests on scriptural principles to guide such questions as: “Who may be attacked?” “How may they be attacked?” and “What force is legitimate when one is attacking?” While I do not agree with Norm Geisler’s overall moral calculus, he is right to point out that “No individual member of the armed forces of any country should be excused for engaging in a war crime simply because he has been ordered to commit the act by a superior officer. Evil is evil whether a government commands it or not.”
5
Second, precisely because neighbor love does not rank the value or worthiness of neighbor and because individuals matter to God, it is imperative that the principle of discrimination be applied next.
Jesus clearly taught that “as you do to the least of these so you have done unto me” (Matthew 25:40, 45). The just warrior, therefore, must be careful to be discriminate about not only who falls under the category of legitimate target, but how those targets are treated. Scriptural passages prohibiting murder (Exodus 20:13) as well as those encouraging virtuous behavior (Micah 6:8—justice and mercy) transcend circumstances. In the treatment of prisoners, including terrorists, it is important to be shaped by the potent words of Christ. Therefore, both the targets of violence and the form of violence are subject to the category of discrimination. Arguing that terrorists are legitimate war targets does not therefore mean that it is morally appropriate to “string them up by their thumbs” or “put them on a spit and roast them over a fire.” In fact, the exact opposite would be true.
4 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), 113-4.
5 Norman L. Geisler, Christian Ethics: Options and Issues (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1989),
226.

The fact that napalm has been outlawed as a legitimate form of weapon against persons in warfare is an indication that certain types of force are simply beyond the boundaries of what is right or permissible. Neighbor love and the golden rule, in cases like this, not only serve as controlling elements of personal conduct, but shape what ought to be seen as permissible and impermissible for the state. Napalm may be effective, but the slow burning death of legitimate targets is simply wrong.
Third, once the legitimating authority of Scripture shapes the deontological limits of what type of force may be applied and to whom, the question of p roportionality becomes appropriate. The Scriptural principle of lex Talionis lies behind the idea of a proportional relationship between the projected gain from any particular act and its projected cost. The
Exodus 21:24 instruction of “an eye for an eye” is meant to be a limiting factor in the expression of retaliatory force. Only what is necessary and appropriate to a given scenario.
While the just warrior may be tempted to engage in an ethic of utility where “the ends justify the means,” a biblical ethics do not allow such reasoning to rule the day. What results from the application of these criteria is an ethic of proportionality violence within deontological limits . That is, weighing the potential positive effect versus the probable negative effect must be done only after one has first determined whether a particular form of engagement or use of force falls within predetermined deontological limits. The justifying claim that “it works, therefore its right” is based more on pragmatism than on a principled biblical morality of neighbor love. For this reason proportionality must be rejected as the chief determining mechanism for jus in Bello and only employed once the deontological limits of discrimination are firmly in place.
Returning to Krauthammer’s argument, it is now appropriate to evaluate the claim that
“any rational moral calculus” would lead to the conclusion that in certain scenarios the
“monstrous evil” of torture is “a moral duty.” The following is a point-by-point response to Krauthammer’s argument as delineated above.
1.
Krauthammer is right. Because the terrorist operates on a level of perfidy and subterfuge, terrorists are not entitled to the same forms of protection as a
“non-combatant.” However, as a human being they remain “neighbor.”
2.
While theologically speaking there is some question about any human’s
“innocence” before God, as far as the context of terror goes the potential targets of terrorism are indeed entitled to be left alone and remain unharmed.
3.
In the event of terrorism, both discrimination and proportionality are principles that must be engaged to settle the apparent moral dilemma. Thus, proportional violence can be used, but not any type. The State is given the sword (Romans 13:1-7), but to use the sword to slowly carve the enemy apart

is unjust. Even the State’s behavior must fall within deontological limits.
Torture, then, once it is clearly defined, would be off limits.
4.
Contra Krauthammer’s claims, it is simply wrong to claim that “any” rational moral calculus should tolerate torture and even further demand it as a “moral duty.” Further evaluation of Krauthammer’s moral calculus indicates why: a.
There is no doubt that terrorism is evil. b.
I am in full agreement with Krauthammer that torture is also evil. c.
It is most probably true that the act of terrorism will physically harm many “innocent” persons while torture would inflict harm on relatively few guilty persons. But it is important to note that the assumption of
Krauthammer is that the terror act will happen, not just that it might happen. Such certainly is reliant upon a predictive claim that would require omniscience in order for the torturer to act with certainty. d.
While a comparison of potential lives lost may indicate that torture is the lesser of two evils, potential life lost is not the only morally relevant means of moral evaluation. What about the cost to the moral soul of a nation? How can we know for certain the net evil of torture would be less? On what basis is it possible to accurately measure the cost of disobeying a divine command in doing the admittedly
“monstrous evil” of torture versus avoiding torture based on an allegiance to obedience and trusting in the Lord to work out circumstances while a third option is employed. e.
After all, there is no guarantee that torture will provide an effective means of gathering information, or more importantly, accurate information given in a timely enough manner to make any difference. f.
While the so called “moral realist” or “conflicting absolutist” may argue that in certain “borderline cases” evil must be done to stop evil, the Christian places command above circumstances and allows love to guide proper expression of love. If the argument stands that torture is contrary to commandment, then even in the so-called “borderline case” or “moral dilemma” the Christian is not at liberty to break the command. Two wrongs do not make a right.
While admittedly, the anti-torture stance argued for here may not satisfy the pragmatist, the Christian must remember that life on a fallen planet does not guarantee the kind of safety, security, and consequences Krauthammer is trying to use as motivation to justify torture. Nor does it become justifiable to break a command based on circumstances or an uncertain prediction of future events—even when the event appears likely. One does not always have to like the boundaries that commands give us to know they are best to be obeyed. Thus, the just warrior engages the enemy within principled boundaries if for no other reason than it is wrong to do so and breaking the boundaries makes him no different than the one he is combating. We worship God, not safety.

In making his case Krauthammer makes reference to George Bernard Shaw’s joke about the man who asks a woman if she’d sleep with him for a million dollars. When she says yes, he asks if she’d sleep with him for five dollars. Indignantly the woman then responds, “What do you think I am?” The answer given is: “We’re already established what you are, ma’am, now we’re just haggling over the price.” What strikes me as amazing about Krauthammer’s argument is that he so readily admits his is an ethic of prostituted principle. In his citation of Shaw, not only does he cavalierly toss aside the foundations of just-war principles at the price of speculative safety, like a profligate schoolboy he has the audacity to claim this is the only path to the moral manliness of his
“rational moral calculus.”
One can’t help in the final analysis recall the words of Caiaphas as he argued that crucifying Jesus was the only way to save the way of life the Pharisees had come to love and cherish: “It is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish.” Caiaphas was right in the sense that his prediction did prove to be of great value for the many, but this does not justify the ethic under which he functioned. One would need to be perfectly omniscient in order to have proportionalism or utilitarianism be the guiding moral principle. For those of us who are not omniscient, commands and principles must lead the way and shape how a utilitarian calculus is employed. Certainly one could foresee that if employed Krauthammer’s Caiaphas ethic may indeed provide the results he argues for—but at what price? The argument may sound good, but we must be careful lest we forget that this “Caiaphas ethic” is far more dangerous than it appears. Indeed, it can even be used to justify the murder of God.
Dr. Mark D. Liederbach is an Associate Professor of Christian Ethics at Southeastern
Baptist Theological Seminary (Wake Forest, NC).
*****************
Richard John Neuhaus
This is an argument very much worth having. Charles Krauthammer writes in the Weekly
Standard :
But if that is the case, then McCain embraces the same exceptions I do, but prefers to pretend he does not. If that is the case, then his much-touted and endlessly repeated absolutism on inhumane treatment is merely for show. If that is the case, then the moral preening and the phony arguments can stop now, and we can all agree that in this real world of astonishingly murderous enemies, in . . . very circumscribed circumstances, we must all be prepared to torture. Having established that, we can then begin to work together to codify rules of interrogation for the two very unpleasant but very real cases in which we are morally permitted—indeed morally compelled—to do terrible things.

Krauthammer is writing against Senator John McCain’s proposal for banning all forms of
“cruel, inhuman, or degrading” treatment of prisoners, a proposal which has overwhelming support in Congress but is opposed by the Bush administration. McCain has said that in extreme circumstances—such as the familiar “ticking time bomb” scenario—authorities will do what they have to do to extract information. Krauthammer says that means McCain’s proposed rule is “merely for show,” and comes close to saying that its supporters are guilty of hypocrisy.
I am not at all sure. Establishing a principle is not “merely for show.” Recognizing, clearly but sotto voce , that there will sometimes be exceptions to the principle is not hypocrisy. Those who, under the most extreme circumstances, violate the rule must be held strictly accountable to higher authority. Here the venerable maxim applies, abusus non tollit usus
—the abuse does not abolish the use.
We are not talking here about the reckless indulgence of cruelty and sadism exhibited in, for instance, the much-publicized Abu Ghraib scandal. We are speaking, rather, of extraordinary circumstances in which senior officials, acting under perceived necessity, decide there is no moral alternative to making an exception to the rules, and accept responsibility for their decision. Please note that, in saying this, one does not condone the decision. It is simply a recognition that in the real world such decisions will be made.
This understanding of the matter offends the legal, and legalistic, mind of Alan
Dershowitz of Harvard who has suggested that officials should have to get a court order in order to torture a prisoner. This, like Krauthammer’s proposal and the apparent position of the administration, would be a giant step toward “normalizing” torture and other forms of cruel and inhumane treatment. In short order, it would likely result not only in the very widespread abuse of the rule but in the effective abolition of the rule.
Krauthammer’s moral logic is that it is sometimes necessary to do evil in order that good may result. Here he is in the company of Michael Walzer who has argued that effective leaders must be prepared to have “dirty hands.” An alternative argument is that coercion, even brutal coercion, may be morally justified in extraordinary circumstances in order to save thousands of innocent lives. In that event, it is further argued, the use of such coercion is not evil but is the moral course of action.
Whether, in fact, the circumstances justified the action must be subject to the rigid scrutiny of higher authority. There will likely be cover-ups, rationalizations, and other forms of duplicity. Where possible, they must be exposed, in the full awareness that in this connection, as in all connections, we are dealing with fallen humanity. As with all rules, the aim is to make sure that the exception to the rule does not become the rule.
McCain is right: The United States should be on record as banning “cruel, inhuman, or degrading” treatment of prisoners. The meaning of each of those terms will inevitably be disputed, as will the case-by-case application of the principle. But again, abusus non tollit usus .

Richard John Neuhaus is the editor-in-chief of First Things. This essay originally appeared at the First Things blog, On the Square . It is reprinted here with the permission of the author.
]
*****************
Robert Vischer
Self-preservation is not the ultimate value underlying Christian ethics, and recognition of that fact must underlie any attempt to articulate a Christian response to torture. The specter of terrorists holding information that could save thousands of lives does not alter or eviscerate the Gospel’s call to transform our world through an abiding and uncompromising ethic of love. Foremost in any framework purporting to implement this ethic is a prohibition against using our fellow humans instrumentally, as a convenient means to our chosen ends, no matter how noble.
This principle is reflected in the Catholic Church’s inclusion of torture in the category of
“intrinsically evil acts.” Torture, as explained by Pope John Paul II, is by its very nature
“incapable of being ordered to God” because it “radically contradicts the good of the person made in [God’s] image.” Pope Paul VI cautioned that “it is never lawful, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil that good may come of it.”
We cannot, in other words, “intend directly something which of its very nature contradicts the moral order, and which must therefore be judged unworthy of man, even though the intention is to protect or promote the welfare of an individual, of a family or of society in general.” This uncompromising stand against torture is necessary not only for the well-being of the victim whose body is used as a means to achieving a greater good, but also out of concern for the perpetrators, for as the Second Vatican Council recognized, such practices “contaminate those who inflict them more than those who suffer injustice, and they are a negation of the honour due to the Creator.”
The notion of torture as intrinsically evil is utterly foreign to those who defend the practice as a prudent public-policy measure. Charles Krauthammer agrees that, in most instances, torture is bad. But not always:
However rare the cases, there are circumstances in which, by any rational moral calculus, torture not only would be permissible but would be required (to acquire life-saving information). And once you’ve established the principle, to paraphrase
George Bernard Shaw, all that’s left to haggle about is the price.
Krauthammer is correct in the sense that once we back away from the premise that torture is unacceptable per se, everything is negotiable. Witness the infamous August 2002
“torture memo”
in which the Office of Legal Counsel’s John Yoo provided President
Bush with considerable discretion in allowing interrogation practices that would generally be construed as torture under the prevailing understanding of the term. One

argument raised in the memo was that such practices were necessary, despite the harm caused to the subject being questioned, given the possible harms averted. Yoo wrote:
<blockquote>Clearly, any harm that might occur during an interrogation would pale to insignificance compared to the harm avoided by preventing such an attack, which could take hundreds or thousands of lives.</blockquote>
And in that single statement, we have the essence of why Christians cannot condone torture, no matter the justifications offered. An ethic grounded in human dignity can never hold that the purposeful infliction of pain on a person is insignificant, nor that its significance can be minimized as though concerns over human life and dignity are mere variables in a cost-benefit analysis. The Catholic Church’s teaching addresses the temptation to relativize human suffering by placing torture in the sphere of categorical prohibition, beyond the reach of well-meaning pragmatists.
But not all Christian ethical traditions fit comfortably within this sort of deontological framework. The “Christian realism” embodied in the work of Reinhold Niebuhr provides perhaps the sharpest Christian contrast to the Catholic Church’s mode of ethical inquiry, as Niebuhr gives short shrift to fixed principles, opting instead to grapple with fallen humankind at the ground level, letting the exigencies of geopolitical developments define the ethical course.
Illustrative of this approach is Niebuhr’s sharp criticism of Christian pacifists in World
War II. He asserted that the blanket rejection of violence in the modern world is grounded in a dismissal of “the Christian doctrine of original sin as an outmoded bit of pessimism,” and a reinterpretation of “the cross so that it is made to stand for the absurd idea that perfect love is guaranteed a simple victory over the world.” Such views are heretical not only when viewed through the lens of settled doctrine, but also when viewed through the lens of human history, as Niebuhr encouraged Christians to recognize a “lack of conformity to the facts of experience as a criterion of heresy.”
In the case of World War II pacifism, he pointed out that “[i]f we believe that if Britain had only been fortunate enough to have produced 30 percent instead of 2 percent of conscientious objectors to military service, Hitler’s heart would have been softened and he would have not dared to attack Poland, we hold a faith which no historic reality justifies.” Christian pacifists, in this regard, “make Christ into the symbol of their faith in man.”
But Niebuhr’s criticism of the pacifists should not be read as a denial of the absolute and uncompromising nature of Christ’s law of love; rather, it reflects his acknowledgment of man’s fallen nature: “Every law and every standard which falls short of the law of love embodies contingent factors and makes concessions to the fact that sinful man must achieve tentative harmonies of life with life which are less than the best.” In a world in which we are called to reveal Christ’s love, violence resistance may sometimes be preferable to unchecked power, whether that of Hitler or al Qaeda, and even when

violence is unnecessary, Niebuhr encourages us to embrace a “social structure in which power has been made responsible.”
So while Niebuhr’s realism may avoid bright-line prohibitions, its emphasis on sin offers another Christian foundation for opposing the state’s validation of torture as a means of pursuing the greater good. Human experience must inform the Christian’s ethical course, and the track record of torture is not a good one, either in terms of its efficacy or the ability of its purveyors to limit its application.
This reflects a broader point that torture as a government practice cannot be evaluated in the abstract through idealized hypotheticals; torture as a government practice flows from torture as a government policy, and that requires granting power to fallen individuals to decide when the instrumental use of human life is warranted. It is a power to inflict pain not as an unavoidable but unintended consequence of resistance to evil (as in the proper conduct of war or incarceration by the state), but as the deliberately cultivated path to achieve a certain outcome.
Under a Christian realist approach, such power is objectionable not so much because it is wielded, but because of who wields it—human beings steeped in their own sin and selfaggrandizement. If torture is justified when we are certain that an individual knows the location of a nuclear bomb threatening millions, what if we only suspect that he might know the location of an individual who knows the bomb’s location? Or what if it is a dirty bomb threatening hundreds, or dozens? Or what if the information pertains to the overthrow of the government, or the shutdown of a vital industry? Whether we can draw these lines to our satisfaction in academic discourse is irrelevant to the realist, for in practice the decision-maker cannot rise above our sin-saturated world.
The understandable reluctance to cede torture authority to a fellow human—however circumscribed that authority might appear as stated policy—may lead even the Christian realist to embrace a fixed rule prohibiting torture. Because categorical judgments tend to disregard the moral nuance that defines a fallen world, Niebuhr resisted bright-line rules.
But his intellectual descendents within Christian realism have recognized that human discretion fills the void in rules’ absence, and human sinfulness makes that discretion problematic if left unfettered. Even though the realist concludes that rules may not be capable of encompassing the best moral course in a particular case, the realist knows that individuals cannot be trusted to identify those cases accurately. My colleague Tom Berg has nicely captured the realist case for rules in a recent article :
<blockquote>If human beings are stubbornly partial in their moral reasoning, this strongly suggests that their decisionmaking should be constrained by nondiscretionary rules, rather than liberated for quite free-floating assessments of how general principles apply to each unique set of circumstances.</blockquote>
Niebuhr and his progeny thus offer no easy compromise in the torture debate. A
Christian’s steadfast opposition to the blanket legitimization of torture cannot be allowed to melt into ambivalence toward a case-by-case implementation of torture, as though the

existence of the “ticking bomb” scenario can blot out the sinfulness of those charged with searching out that scenario and resolving it within idealized boundaries.
It bears noting that a Christian approaching torture from the premises of natural law will have a markedly different journey than one coming from the realist perspective. But at least on this issue, they arrive at common ground. Whether we lean toward the natural law tradition’s deontological framework or the realist tradition’s consequentialist emphasis, the case against torture is formidable. Whatever our convictions as to torture’s purported necessity or connection to the public good, the Gospel’s call to honor human dignity while recognizing human sinfulness compels Christians to resist the temptation to embrace the utilitarian bent toward using another human life as an instrument of selfpreservation.
Robert Vischer is an Associate Professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis, MN and is a regular contributor to Mirror of Justice , a weblog devoted to the development of Catholic legal theory.