Posted by
Aaron Miller on Wednesday, April 15, 2009 8:00:00 PM
According to Brit Hume today, stuff like waterboarding and banging heads against a wall... "Some people, including Senator John McCain, consider this stuff torture."
Well... duh?
It's bad enough that liberals and media constantly play word games, undercutting rational debate. Must conservatives do it, too?
Torture is the deliberate causing of pain or discomfort. Whether it's as severe as cutting someone with knives or as mild as blaring annoying music, whether the intent is masochism or extracting life-or-death information, whether it takes months or mere moments, whether it's done by a psychotic maniac or by a considerate, upright military interrogator... it's still torture. The word is attached to all sorts of terrible images of evil in popular perception, but we accomplish nothing by calling the morally justified military and espionage uses by any name other than simple "torture".
Say it with me: torture can be alright. It's not "torture" only when the use is evil or unnecessary.
And while we're on the subject, I might as well call attention to another aspect of the torture debate: hedonism.
Yes, hedonism. Too many laws and practices in our "post-modern" society are founded in a hedonistic worldview... an obsession with the body and all that is physical. Many modern Americans and Europeans believe that physical harm is categorically worse and more reprehensible than psychological harm. If you're like most people, you've probably never given it much thought. Well, now's your chance.
It is because of this obsessive protection of the body, without balance alongside the mind and soul, that so many believe torture (the deliberate causing of pain/discomfort) can
never be acceptable -- that an absence of pain is more valuable than life itself. It is because of this obsession that people believe a weeks-long injury resulting in a scar is less humane than locking someone up in jail for half their life. It's because of this obsession that mild spankings are now labeled child abuse by many.
The body is good. Pain is bad. But life, my friends, is a bit more complicated that that. The end doesn't justify the means. But let us also consider that a people can recover from pain, and regularly do.