The Gospel Coalition

I don’t know of too many ethical quandaries more difficult than that of torture. For many people, torture is so distasteful, so abhorrent, that there is nothing to consider. But often the real world does not allow us to think in perfectly clear categories of black and white. Of course we would never use torture lightly or recommend it widely, but I think any of us can dream up situations where it may be advisable or even necessary. The United States has often found itself in situations where torture could protect the country and save lives. Can we then say that it would be objectively evil?

Marc Thiessen’s Courting Disaster gives away its bias in the subtitle: “How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack.” The CIA kept America safe, he says, by their willingness to use Enhanced Interrogation Techniques to pry information from captured terrorists. Despite the benefit brought about by such measures, Barack Obama immediately banned them when he became President. Thus Courting Disaster is “the story  of how dedicated men and women at the Central Intelligence Agency went head-to-head with the world’s most dangerous terrorists, got them to tell us their plans, and kept America safe for eight years; this is the story of how Barack Obama has exposed their  secrets to the enemy, unilaterally disarmed us in the face of terror, and invited the next attack.”

Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EIT) is more than mere semantics; it is a useful way of drawing a distinction between these techniques and what we think of when we use the word torture. Thiessen is very careful to be up-front about what forms “torture” takes when used by the United States military or by the CIA and FBI. It is never a case of a brutal interrogator prying off finger nails or tearing out teeth with a rusty pair of pliers. Instead, each subject is evaluated individually and subjected to a set of techniques specifically chosen for him. The purpose of EIT is not to extract information during the act, but to convince a prisoner to give up information during a later process of debriefing. While we may be accustomed to the Jack Bauers of the world torturing people and immediately gaining information, this is not a realistic picture. Interrogation and the gaining of information are two distinct steps. And both are carried on in a deliberate, measured way that cause no significant or long-term physical harm.

The media has had much to say about waterboarding. The misinformation they have communicated is startling. In reality waterboarding is only ever the final step in EIT, the measure used if all else fails. It is not used lightly and is applied only within very specific contexts and under very clear guidelines. In fact, of the thousands of combatants captured in America’s recent conflicts, only three have been subjected to it. If you have never seen what is involved with waterboarding, be sure to head to YouTube to give it a look. There you’ll find videos of Christopher Hitchens undergoing it. And there you’ll see that, though it is obviously terrifying, it is also apparently harmless in the long term. No physical damage is done.

Thiessen carefully documents the vast amounts of critical information extracted from people who were subjected to EIT. And truly there seems to be a clear link between the use of EIT and the fact that there has not been a major terrorist strike on US soil since 9/11. Many planned attacks were disrupted by information gained by those who were subjected to enhanced interrogation. And yet President Obama has banned such techniques and, further, has freely released information that will allow terrorists to prepare themselves should such measures been allowed again in the future. Even worse, they now know that all they need to do is demand a lawyer and they will have extended to them the rights of U.S. citizens. It is near insanity.

What Courting Disaster offers is primarily a pragmatic defense of EIT. Though one chapter is given to ethical considerations, I suspect this defense will do little to convince naysayers. For such defense we must look elsewhere. And here I recommend Al Mohler’s book Culture Shift where Dr. Mohler dedicates a chapter to this thorny issue. He summarizes well my take on this: there are times in which torture, though distasteful, may be necessary; it may be the lesser of two evils, an unfortunate necessity in a sinful world. Such decisions must not be made lightly and such actions must be done in a measured fashion. But the Bible does not absolutely forbid such things.

The Bush administration’s dedication to EIT was important in that it emphasized capturing terrorists alive. Ironically, President Obama’s distaste of EIT has led to terrorists being killed rather than captured; he would prefer to kill them on the ground than to capture them alive and extract information from them. It takes tortured ethics to suggest that death is the better option.

As I read this book I was impressed by the care the CIA takes when it applies EIT to captives. And I was surprised to see how wrong the media has been in their descriptions of what they call torture–how they have slandered those who had been given task of using such techniques. The book gave me an understanding of EIT that was far more valuable than what I had before. And it has given me confidence that torture (at least defined in this way) sometimes can be ethical when used with care. I am increasingly confident that a Christian worldview can account for Enhanced Interrogation Techniques. Read the book and I suspect you’ll feel the same.

Verdict: Read it to better understand this thorny ethical issue.

Note: I’ve made a couple of minor edits to the post to better phrase my position