Torture and terror: From ’24′ to the underwear bomber

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The debate over torture is heating up on two fronts: politics and popular culture. The airline bombing attempt on Christmas Day brought renewed calls to use torture on terror suspects, and the Jan. 17 premiere of the new season of “24″ again thrusts that drama’s frequent depictions of torture into the mix.

Terrorism headlineThe attempted terror attack by suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian Muslim who has pleaded not guilty to the crime, embarrassed the Obama administration, dominated news coverage and angered Americans, many of whom want to use waterboarding or other torture techniques to extract more information from him.

A Rasmussen poll published Dec. 31, 2009, showed that 58 percent of U.S. voters say waterboarding and other “aggressive interrogation techniques” should be used on Abdulmutallab, who tried to ignite explosives secreted in his underwear. Some 30 percent opposed such techniques–which are considered torture under the Geneva Convention and U.S. military rules. A number of prominent commentators and conservative bloggers have also called for the use of torture.

These calls come as controversy continues over President Barack Obama’s ongoing efforts to close the Guantanamo detention center in Cuba, where many terrorism suspects are housed in a kind of legal limbo. Obama has also pledged to ban the use of techniques that would be considered torture, and he wants to try terrorism suspects in U.S. courts.

Critics of torture also argue that using such brutal techniques undermines the nation’s efforts to combat terrorism by eroding America’s moral standing. And they say  that torture does not produce useful intelligence the way other, nonviolent means of interrogation can. In fact, they say torture can produce misleading information because a desperate suspect is willing to say anything.

That is not the image presented in the hugely popular Fox television series, “24,” which begins its eighth season on Sunday, Jan. 17. In the series, agent Jack Bauer is often shown eliciting important information quickly and efficiently — and brutally — from suspects. Viewers like the show, but critics say it presents an unrealistic image of interrogations and some say the show has increased the public’s acceptance of torture in terrorism cases.

Together these two events — a jetliner attack and a television show — are rekindling a debate that has continued to smolder ever since 9/11 and the resulting “war on terror” that continues to bring terror suspects and other detainees into American custody.

How far should U.S. authorities go in trying to extract information from these suspects? Is torture ever useful? Is it ever justified ethically, or by the results? Or does it undermine American efforts to battle terrorism and win the moral high ground?

This edition of ReligionLink provides background and resources for covering this story.

What’s new

  • In a Dec. 29, 2009, column in USA Today, “What we don’t know may kill us,” Marc A. Thiessen, author of the new book Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack, sums up one line of conservative criticism of the Obama administration’s approach to terrorism suspects like Abdulmutallab. He also says the U.S. should use “enhanced interrogation” techniques like waterboarding, which others consider torture.
  • The arguments pro and con over torture do not necessarily line up in neat conservative/liberal, Republican/Democrat categories. Joe Carter, a writer and blogger at the site of First Things, considered a reliably conservative journal of religion and culture, took strong exception to Thiessen’s arguments. That led to a long-running debate between Carter at First Things and Thiessen at the conservative National Review Online.
  • A May 2009 Pew Forum survey shows that nearly half of Americans (49 percent) agree that torture can often or sometimes be justified to gain information from suspected terrorists. And the more often people attend church, the more likely they are to say that torture can be justified. Among those who attend at least once a week, 54 percent say it is often or sometimes justified. And the rate is highest among white evangelical Protestants, with 62 percent saying it is sometimes or often justified. In a follow-up analysis, Pew researchers noted that religion is just one of several factors influencing views on torture. The political divide — 64 percent of Republicans say torture can be often or sometimes justified, compared with 36 percent of Democrats — is wider than any religious split, for example.
  • Also in May 2009, Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, a leading Christian conservative and a supporter of former President George W. Bush, said that waterboarding — one of the most controversial tactics — is torture, and he condemned it and all forms of torture. But Land also said that Obama’s decision to release some Bush-era documents authorizing the techniques was wrong because it could lead to investigations that could “rip the country apart.”

Background

The debate over torture was first sparked by revelations of prisoner abuse by U.S. personnel at the Abu Ghraib facility in Iraq. The abuse of prisoners there became public with the April 28, 2004, broadcast of Sixty Minutes. Further revelations about questionable interrogation methods by the CIA and other government agencies intensified the debate during the latter years of the Bush administration.

The arguments were fueled after the election of Obama in part by the new administration’s release of graphic Bush-era documents related to what some called “enhanced interrogation,” and also by the lobbying of religious groups and others who are demanding a national accounting of what they say was government-sanctioned torture. Others say the tactics were not torture, while still another camp argues that even if the abuse was inappropriate or amounted to torture, pursuing the issue will only divide the nation further.

Public opinion polls present an interesting dichotomy: Church leaders across the spectrum reject the use of torture as “morally intolerable,” in the words of U.S. Catholic bishops. Theologians in various denominations — from Martin Marty, a Lutheran and pre-eminent religion commentator, to David Gushee, a Baptist professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University  – have bemoaned the findings of the May 2009 Pew survey.

On Aug. 19, 2007, the American Psychological Association voted to prohibit psychologists from participating in several interrogation techniques that have been used against U.S. terrorism detainees because the methods are immoral and psychologically damaging. (See an Aug. 20, 2007, Washington Post story and the APA press release.)

In January 2006 the Rev. George Hunsinger, a theologian at Princeton Theological Seminary, convened a three-day conference at the seminary to launch the National Religious Campaign against Torture. NRCAT is the largest and best-organized faith-based protest against torture to arise out of the Abu Ghraib revelations. Contact Hunsinger at 609-252-2114, antitorture@cctpp.org, or the Rev. Robert Moore, 609-924-5022. See this Religion & Ethics Newsweekly story about the Princeton conference.

An August 2004 survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press showed that 72 percent of Americans believe that U.S. policy should be conducted according to moral principles. But an October 2005 Pew survey shows that nearly half of all Americans also believe the torture of terrorism suspects can be justified. The results, posted at the National Catholic Reporter web site, break down attitudes by religious preference.

Resources

National sources

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  • Darrell Cole is an assistant professor of religion at Drew University. Cole is the author of When God Says War Is Right: The Christian’s Perspective on When and How to Fight, and was a participant in the 2006 First Things online symposium on torture.  Contact 973-408-3941, drcole@drew.edu.
  • David Danzig is director of the Public Programs Department and Primetime Torture Project at Human Rights First. He participated in the October 2008 symposium at Fordham. Contact through the organization’s New York office at 212-845-5200.
  • Todd Gitlin, professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University, is author of Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives. He also took part  in the October 2008 symposium at Fordham. Contact 212-854-8124, tg2058@columbia.edu.
  • Karen Greenberg is co-editor of The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib and executive director of the Center on Law and Security at the New York University School of Law. She is editor of the book The Torture Debate in America. Contact 212-992-8854.
  • Derek S. Jeffreys is an associate professor of humanistic studies and religion at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay. He is the author of a 2009 book, Spirituality and the Ethics of Torture. Contact 920-465-2672, jeffreyd@uwgb.edu.
  • James Turner Johnson teaches religion at Rutgers University in New Jersey and has written extensively on just war, morality and warfare and Islam. He is a former editor of the Journal of Religious Ethics and an editor of the Journal of Military Ethics. Contact 732-932-9637, jtj@rci.rutgers.edu.
  • Sanford Levinson is W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood Jr. Centennial Chair in Law and Professor of Government at the University of Texas School of Law and editor of the book Torture. Contact 512-232-1351, slevinson@mail.law.utexas.edu.
  • M. Cherif Bassiouni is president of the International Human Rights Law Institute and law professor at DePaul University in Chicago. Contact 312-362-5919, cbassiou@depaul.edu.
  • Mark Danner is author of Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror, as well as a writer and journalism professor. He divides his time between New York and San Francisco. Contact mark@markdanner.com.
  • The Rev. Richard Killmer is executive director of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, a coalition of more than 120 religious groups formed in January 2006. It includes representatives of Roman Catholic, evangelical Christian, mainline Protestant, Unitarian, Quaker, Orthodox Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh communities. Contact him in Washington, D.C.,202-547-1920.
  • Mahmood Monshipouri is co-editor of the Muslim World Journal of Human Rights, based in Berkeley, Calif., and political science professor at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn. Contact 203-582-3356, Mahmood.Monshipouri@quinnipiac.edu.
  • Daniel Rothenberg is deputy executive director of the International Human Rights Law Institute at DePaul University in Chicago. It posts a list of human rights research and training centers. Contact 312-362-5919, drothenb@depaul.edu.
  • Glen H. Stassen is a professor of Christian ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., who specializes in war, peace and ethics and the author of Just Peacemaking: Ten Practices for Abolishing War. He says that policies encouraged pressure on prisoners and removed needed checks and balances. Contact 626-304-3733, gstassen@fuller.edu.
  • Albert C. Pierce is director of the Institute for National Security Ethics and Leadership and professor of ethics and national security at National Defense University in Washington, D.C. He previously served as founding director of the Center for the Study of Professional Military Ethics (now known as the Vice Admiral James B. Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership) at the U.S. Naval Academy. Pierce’s books include Strategy, Ethics and the “War on Terrorism.” Contact 202-685-3506, piercea@ndu.edu.
  • David L. Perry is a professor of ethics at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa. Contact 717-245-4815, david.perry@carlisle.army.mil.
  • Psychologist Philip Zimbardo is one of the authors of the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment and retired professor of psychology at Stanford University. Contact Zimbardo through Jack Hubbard at Stanford News Service: 650-725-1294, jhubb@stanford.edu.
  • Robert Vischer is an associate professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis and is a regular contributor to Mirror of Justice, a blog devoted to the development of Catholic legal theory. Vischer was a participant in the 2006 First Things online symposium on torture. Contact 651-962-4838, rkvischer@stthomas.edu.

Organizations

Regional sources

STATE by STATE

• The National Consortium of Torture Treatment Programs has links to members and associate members in states across the country.

IN THE NORTHEAST

  • John Jefferson Davis is professor of systematic theology and Christian ethics at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Mass. Davis was a participant in the 2006 First Things online symposium on torture. Contact 978-646-4118, jdavis@gcts.edu.
  • Saul Kassin, professor of psychology and chair of legal studies at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., studies the interrogation and confessions — particularly false confessions — of suspects in the criminal justice setting. Contact 413-597-2253 (office), 413-597-3549 (lab), skassin@williams.edu.
  • Martha L. Minow is professor of law at Harvard Law School in Massachusetts. She has expertise in human rights and transitional societies, and religion. Contact 617-495-4276, minow@law.harvard.edu.
  • Reuven Kimelman is associate professor of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass. He has written about Jewish understandings of war. Contact 781-736-2963, kimelman@brandeis.edu.
  • Omer Bartov is professor of European history at Brown University in Providence, R.I., and has expertise in issues of war and killing. Contact 401-863-1375, Omer_Bartov@brown.edu.

IN THE EAST

  • Lori Fisler Damrosch is Henry L. Moses Professor International Law and Organization at Columbia University Law School in New York. She is a member of numerous international law and human rights organizations and has published extensively. Contact 212-854-7946, damrosch@law.columbia.edu.
  • Michael W. Doyle is Harold Brown Professor of U.S. Foreign and Security Policy and professor of international and public affairs and of law at Columbia University Law School in New York. Contact 212-854-3239, md2221@columbia.edu.
  • Hadar Harris is executive director of the Center for Human Rights & Humanitarian Law at American University’s Washington College of Law in Washington, D.C. She is an international human rights attorney and has specialized in issues of civil and political rights, gender equality and fighting impunity for torturers. Contact 202-274-4180.
  • Diane Orentlicher is a professor at the Center for Human Rights & Humanitarian Law at American University’s Washington College of Law in Washington, D.C. Her scholarly work has focused on issues of accountability for human rights crimes, transitions to democracy, corporate responsibility in a transnational context, and the relationship between ethnic identity and political participation. Contact 202-274-4180.
  • Ralston H. Deffenbaugh Jr. is president of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, which sponsors the Detained Torture Survivor Legal Support Network. Contact him in Baltimore through director of communications Susan Baukhages, 410-230-279, sbaukhages@lirs.org.
  • Harry Dammer is an associate professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania. He is expertise is in the role of religion in prisons. Contact 570-941-5853, dammerh2@scranton.edu.
  • Jefferson McMahan is professor of philosophy at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. He has written about war, killing and morality. Contact 732-932-9862 ext. 155, mcmahan@philosophy.rutgers.edu.
  • Julie A. Mertus is assistant professor at American University’s School of International Service. She has expertise in women, human rights and war. Contact 202-885-2215, mertus@american.edu.
  • Advocates for Survivors of Torture and Trauma is a Baltimore treatment center. Contact 410-464-9006.

IN THE SOUTHEAST

IN THE SOUTH

  • Kenneth Magnuson is an associate professor of Christian ethics at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. He is a member of the Evangelical Theological Society of America and the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity. He was a participant in the 2006 First Things online symposium on torture. Contact kmagnuson@sbts.edu.
  • Forrest E Harris Sr. is president of American Baptist College in Nashville, Tenn., and director of the Kelly Miller Smith institute on African American Church Studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School. As a member of the Human Rights Commission, he traveled to other countries to speak about human rights and ethnicity. Contact 615-343-3963, forrest.e.harris@vanderbilt.edu.
  • Hugh Thompson was a helicopter pilot who protected Vietnamese civilians during the My Lai massacre. He received a medal for heroism in 1998 and works as a veterans assistance counselor supervisor in the Louisiana Department of Veterans Affairs in Lafayette, La. He says poor leadership is responsible and that if people started thinking and applied something as simple as the Golden Rule, abuse would not happen. Contact 337-262-5628.

IN THE MIDWEST

  • George E. Edwards is director of Program in International Human Rights Law at Indiana University School of Law, Indianapolis. Contact 317-278-2359, gedwards@indiana.edu.
  • David Weissbrodt and Kristi Rudelius-Palmer are co-directors of the Human Rights Center at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Contact Weissbrodt at 612-625-5027, krp@tc.umn.edu and Rudelius-Palmer at 612-626-7794, weiss001@tc.umn.edu.
  • The Center for Victims of Torture is a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan organization founded in 1985 in Minneapolis. It provides treatment, training, education and research. Contact 612-436-4800.
  • Doug Cassel is director of the Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern University and a frequent commentator on human rights issues. Contact 312-503-2224 (office),773-750-5387 (cell).
  • William Eckhardt of the University of Missouri Kansas City Law School prosecuted Lt. William Calley for the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and taught at the U.S. Army War College. Contact 816-235-2377, eckhardtw@umkc.edu.
  • Ann Annis and Michelle Loyd-Paige are co-authors of Set Us Free: What the Church Needs to Know From Survivors of Abuse, together with Rodger R. Rice, a sociologist who is now retired. The book cites dozens of interviews from a 1990 survey of the incidence of child abuse among members of the Christian Reformed Church who felt religion played a part in their abuse. Annis is a researcher at the Center for Social Research at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich. Contact 616-526-6420. Loyd-Paige is a professor of sociology at Calvin. Contact 616-526-6239, lopa@calvin.edu.
  • Louay Safi is a political scientist who has written and taught internationally on the Islamic world. He works in leadership development for the Islamic Society of North America in Plainfield, Ind. Contact 317-839-8157 ext. 247, louay@att.net.
  • Oren Gross is a professor at University of Minnesota Law School. He is author of the paper “The Prohibition on Torture and the Limits of the Law.” Contact 612-624-7521.
  • Regina Schwartz is director of the Institute for Religion and Global Violence at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. Contact 847-491-5588, regina-s@northwestern.edu.

IN THE SOUTHWEST

  • Manuel Balbona is executive director of the Center for Survivors of Torture in Dallas. He is an adjunct associate professor in psychology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and also in private practice. Contact 214-827-2314.
  • John A. Wood is professor of ethics and religion at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and has written about the ethics of war. Contact 254-710-6327, John_Wood@Baylor.edu.
  • Robin Lovin is an ethicist at Southern Methodist University, the author of Christian Ethics: The Essential Guide and a frequent commentator on war and peace issues. Contact 214-768-4134, rlovin@mail.smu.edu.
  • Martin L. Cook is the author of Ethical Issues in War: An Overview. He teaches philosophy at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo. His book The Moral Warrior: Ethics and Service in the U.S. Military is forthcoming. Contact 719-333-8664, martin.cook@usafa.af.mil.
  • The International Human Rights Advocacy Center is at the University of Denver. Sharon Healey is director of its Asylum Project and has expertise in human rights and humanitarian law.

IN THE WEST/NORTHWEST

  • Khaled Abou El Fadl is professor of Islamic law at the University of California-Los Angeles’ School of Law. He has written extensively on war, Islam and terrorism. Contact 310-206-5401, abouelfa@law.ucla.edu.
  • Craig Haney, an author of the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, is professor of social psychology at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Haney went on to earn a law degree from Stanford and a doctorate in psychology. He has been a leading legal consultant on prison reform litigation. He teaches psychology and law and the psychology of institutions. Contact 831-459-2153.
  • The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles is an international Jewish human rights organization dedicated to preserving the memory of the Holocaust by fostering tolerance and understanding. The Center contemporary issues including racism, antisemitism, terrorism and genocide. Contact executive director Rabbi Meyer H. May at 310-553-9036.
  • Eric Stover is Director of the Human Rights Center at the University of California-Berkeley. The center’s research focuses on war crimes, justice and postwar reconstruction, health and human rights, and globalization. Contact 510-642-0965.

This edition updates previous editions from Oct. 15, 2007, and May 12, 2009.

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