Former President George W. Bush has famously declared in his new
memoir any lack of regret for waterboarding three al Qaeda killers
in 9-11’s immediate aftermath. He plausibly asserts that their
waterboarding produced actionable intelligence saving lives from
impending terror international attacks. Of course, all three al
Qaeda operatives remain imprisoned and are reportedly in good
health. Despite the passage of eight years, the waterboarding of
three beastly mass murderers still excites selective outrage,
especially on the Religious Left.
The National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT),
which includes a host of Mainline Protestant denominations,
left-leaning, Catholic orders, liberal evangelicals, and the
Islamic Society of North America, naturally is indignant.
Responding to Bush’s recollection, it wants a “comprehensive
investigation of our nation’s use of torture” and asks: “Should we
as a nation hold accountable those who violated U.S. law and our
most fundamental moral standards?” NRCAT presumably wants formal
charges against President Bush.
Like most such religious groups, NRCAT’s interest in
“torture” is focused almost entirely on the U.S. and its aggressive
interrogation of al Qaeda prisoners in the hair-raising months
after 9-11. Ongoing and less ambiguous torture polices by various
communist and Islamist regimes, widely practiced against political
and religious dissidents rather than terrorists plotting murder, do
not much interest NRCAT.
National Council of Churches (NCC) chief Michael Kinnamon,
whose group belongs to NRCAT, even penned an aggrieved
column in the Huffington Post contrasting President
Bush’s “claimed” Christian faith with his approval of “torture.”
Kinnamon helpfully quoted Jesus’ Golden Rule: “Do unto others as
you would have them do unto you,” as an ostensible command against
waterboarding.
Personally, if I were so demonically possessed as to plot
the vicious mass murder of innocents, I would much prefer to be
waterboarded into revealing the scheme rather than some day stand
before God responsible for such horror. But Kinnamon admits no
moral complexity. And in typical fashion, like most of the
Religious Left, which is essentially pacifist, he confuses Gospel
commands for nonviolence by believers against personal enemies with
the divinely ordained punitive obligations of civil
states.
President Bush, like any chief magistrate of a nation, had
a moral responsibility to protect his people, by force when
necessary, against the depredations of foreign enemies. Christ’s
apostles specifically affirmed the state’s divinely ordained
vocation to “wield the sword” against evil doers. But the pacifist
Religious Left shuns these Scriptures and instead insists that
cheerfully turning the other cheek is the state’s virtuous response
to aggression and murder.
“Bush’s prideful defense of torture in his new memoir,
Decision Points, is utterly incomprehensible to me,”
Kinnamon tut-tuts, referring to the waterboarding recollection.
“It’s also unrecognizable to the fundamental values of this
country, and of Bush’s own professed Christian faith.” The church
official claims the admissions extracted from the three
waterboarded terrorists saved no one and actually “cost the lives
of both American soldiers and civilians.” He offers no evidence for
either assertion. And even if Kinnamon admitted their information
had saved lives, would he then refrain from criticizing Bush?
Almost certainly not. Confronted by the “sad and shameful moment”
of a U.S. President having “acknowledged ordering torture,”
Kinnamon insists President Bush “has left us no choice” but to hold
him “accountable” under “our own laws” against “torture.” So like
NRCAT, Kinnamon seems to want Bush prosecuted for waterboarding
three conspiring al Qaeda killers eight years ago.
Also
writing for the Huffington Post, former
National Association of Evangelicals lobbyist Richard Cizik, now
working for the reputedly George Soros-supported New
Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, similarly excoriated
Bush in an open letter to him. Cizik ominously asks:
“Should we as a nation hold you
personally accountable for violations of U.S. law and our most
fundamental moral standards?” Evidently also hoping for a show
trial of Bush, Cizik’s answer is clearly YES!
Cizik asserts waterboarding is “unquestionably torture,”
more than a “mere dunk in the water,” and intended to “scare the
victim into a desperate condition where he would reveal critical
information.” For Cizik, of course, the “victim” is Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed, the al Qaeda plotter behind 9-11, the
1993 attack on the World Trade Center, the 2002 Bali nightclub
bombings that murdered over 200, the beheading of Daniel Pearl, and
other grizzly crimes that Cizik, Kinnamon, and NRCAT prefer not to
describe.
Evidently Cizik has been very embarrassed during his
travels to North Africa and the Middle East, where “ordinary
citizens, “with a “pained expression,” purportedly have asked poor
Cizik: “‘Do you know that your government, allegedly a ‘Christian
country,’ is conducting torture? You should be ashamed.’” Cizik
does not mention whether he asked these offended North Africans and
Middle Easterners about their own regimes’ far more vigorous,
ongoing and undisputed torture policies.
Largely uninterested in torture elsewhere, Cizik wants a
“Commission on Inquiry” to really get to the bottom of “torture” in
America. He scoldingly concludes: “Messrs. Bush and Cheney, you
brought us to this place. Shame on you!”
Such scolding purists insist that all waterboarding is
“torture” and therefore a grave crime whose perpetrators from the
Bush Administration must be punished. Even if waterboarding does
meet this definition, does the simulated drowning of three mass
murdering terrorists eight years, all of whom are very much alive
and well, rank as one of our century’s great outrages, as critics
seem to believe? How far back in history would their “Commission on
Inquiry” go? Perhaps President Franklin Roosevelt’s quick 1942
secret trial and execution of six Nazi saboteurs, who had yet even
to commit their planned terrorism, should also be
examined.
And in the interests of clarity, religious critics of
waterboarding should directly articulate their seeming theology.
Preferably thousands of innocents should die anguishing deaths
before one terrorist must endure even a few moments of simulated
drowning. Such clarity would help us understand their arguments
better.
