As Americans Move on, David Gushee Stuck on Torture

Immediately following his inauguration in January 2009, President Barack Obama issued an executive order banning the use of torture and “humiliating and degrading treatment” on terror suspects in US custody. The executive order, which fulfilled a key campaign promise, came after many religious groups heavily lobbied the Bush administration to ban what the administration termed “enhanced interrogation”. At the forefront of the religious campaign to end the torture of terror suspects was evangelical Christian ethicist and Mercer Professor David Gushee, who in 2007 successfully lobbied the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) to issue a statement condemning torture.

One might have expected the torture issue to die then and there, especially since by most accounts United States officials have not practiced torture or “enhanced interrogation” since. However, Senator Pat Leahy (D-VT) proposed that a national commission be set up to investigate the United States’ use of torture under the Bush administration. When President Obama declined, the Soros-backed Constitution Project stepped up instead, creating a Task Force on Detainee Treatment. Chosen to represent the Christian community on the task force was none other than David Gushee.

Today, Gushee is still giving speaking engagements discussing the Task Force’s Report, which unsurprisingly declared that “enhanced interrogation” techniques such as water-boarding were torture and that the US violated its international treaty obligation by torturing terror suspects. On November 21, Gushee spoke at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs in New York City, alongside fellow task force member David Irvine, a former Army brigadier general.

Gushee lamented that many of the cultural aspects that have for centuries kept the United States from using torture, included its religious traditions, failed to prevent its use in the aftermath of 9/11. Christians, he said, have a concept of “fallenness” and a belief in our own fallibility that helped informed the Founders when they created legal protections against cruel and unusual punishment.

“Despite being led by a self-identified Christian president,” Gushee said, “national realism and humility about our own fallibility did not prevail. We were the aggrieved victims, entirely innocent. They were evil. We could be trusted to improvise in the dark. They have no particular rights that must be respected.”

But what about Christians who support the use of torture if it has the potential to produce intelligence that could save lives? Well, they support a flawed, politicized version of Christian ethics according to Gushee. “My involvement in this work led to ferocious opposition from former friends in the Christian community, whose ethics got blinded by partisan loyalty, and by versions of Christian that did not apparently emphasize human dignity, human rights, and human solidarity.”

In fact, according to Gushee, torture had nothing to do with obtaining information, and was driven by a national sadistic attitude: “I’m increasingly wondering if it was really about interrogation. Torture works if what you want is to demonstrate power over a powerless people. It works if you’re really angry and you want somebody to suffer… If you want to do a little psychology, I think after 9/11 we were enraged, grief-stricken, we felt violated and powerless, and we were in lash out mode. I think the resort to torture was in part about national lashing out after 9/11, more than it was about interrogation.”

Now I happen to agree with Gushee that our nation’s use of torture (or “enhanced interrogation”) was immoral and illegal. But any honest conversation on that point becomes muddled and difficult when Gushee attacks the motives of his fellow Christians. Whatever one’s stance on torture, it seems clear that proponents legitimately believe that its use can save lives and that they are driven by a compassion for innocents, not some burning hatred.

Now is hardly the time for Gushee to start demonizing those who support the use of torture in extraordinary cases, given that Americans opposition to torture has actually been softening in recent years. A 2007 Rasmussen poll found that 27% of Americans believed the United States should torture captives in the War on Terror. By 2011, a YouGov poll found that 36% of Americans favored the use of torture by the United States, compared to 38% who opposed it. In 2012, another YouGov poll found time that more Americans supported the US use of torture than opposed it, 41% to 34%. Contrary to Gushee’s assertion that defenders of the use of torture were blinded by partisanship, the commissioner of the latest poll proposes that opposition to torture was higher in the Bush years for political reasons. “…Americans are more likely to think assassinations and harsh interrogation practices are justified if a Democratic president uses them,” Professor Amy Zegart wrote.

Perhaps the most enlightening poll on torture came after President Obama banned its use in 2009. Rather than asking whether or not the US should torture, the Pew poll asked about the morality of torture in general, and found a stark difference between religions. Despite the lobbying efforts of the NAE and mainline churches, Christians are more likely to support torture. 49% of Americans said that torture is either “often justified” or “sometimes justified.” By comparison, 62% of evangelical Protestants, 51% of non-Hispanic Catholics, and 54% of those who attended weekly worship services said the same. Gushee might sincerely believe that an absolute prohibition against torture is the stance Christians should embrace, but only 16% of evangelicals and 25% of Americans share his view.

If, as Gushee asserts, America’s ethical center was momentarily shaken in a time of crisis and politicization, one would expect that more Americans would renounce torture as time passed and the controversy faded. Instead, the opposite seems to have occurred. For all of his moral certainty, increasingly Gushee’s fellow evangelicals and Christians are beginning to believe there are instances when inflicting violence is justified to save the lives of others.

As I stated earlier, I happen to hold a very similar position to Gushee. But where I differ is that I recognize that many Christians with the best intentions disagree with us. There are valid moral arguments in favor of the very limited use of torture in very extreme circumstances. I cannot accept Gushee’s premise that those arguments are a smokescreen used by vindictive partisans to gleefully inflict pain, and I hesitate to judge individual uses of torture when hindsight is 20/20 and so much of the program remains classified.

But most importantly, I recognize that in world where so much hurt and suffering continues unabated, and where dictatorial governments take part in unambiguously evil acts, there is little to be gained from constantly litigating a practice that ended at least five years ago. President Obama put it best when he declined Sen. Leahy’s request for a torture inquiry back in 2009. “I have a belief in looking forward, not backwards,” he said. The American people appear to be moving on, but five years later, David Gushee is still looking backwards.