There is no room for torture as part of the United States’ intelligence gathering process, in Richard Land’s view. The practice known as “waterboarding” is torture, he said.
Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said there is no circumstance in which torture should be permissible in interrogations by U.S. officials, even if the authorities believe a prisoner has information that might involve national security.
Land’s position puts him among a minority of Americans according to a new Pew Research Center poll.
Only a quarter (25 percent) of those surveyed said the use of torture “can never be justified” against suspected terrorists.
Nearly half of the sample (49 percent) agreed that torture is often or sometimes justified.
“I don’t agree with the belief that we should use any means necessary to extract information,” Land said May 4. “I believe there are absolutes. There are things we must never do under any circumstances.”
Furthermore, Land said, if he could not in good conscience “waterboard” someone, he would not — if he were a public official — have the right to authorize someone else to do it.
“For me the ultimate test is this: Could I in good conscience do whatever I am authorizing or condoning others to do? If not, then I must oppose the action,” Land said. “If I could not waterboard someone — and I couldn’t — then I must oppose its practice.”
Land said he considers waterboarding torture because included in the definition of torture is whether a procedure causes permanent physical harm, noting he is unable to “separate physical from psychological harm” in this instance.
The practice contravenes an individual’s personhood and their humanity, he said.
“It violates everything we believe in as a country,” Land said, noting that the Declaration of Independence says: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Land said that while he “appreciates the concerns and lengths to which the Bush administration went in limiting the use of any enhanced interrogation techniques,” the administration went too far in allowing waterboarding.
Land said the assertion that a procedure such as waterboarding is permissible, given the potential to save innocent lives, relies on faulty ethical reasoning: utilitarianism.
“That is ‘the end justifies the means’ argument,” he explained, adding, “That is a very slippery slope to dark and dangerous places.”
The Pew Research Center study, conducted in late April, revealed that support for torture in some circumstances was higher among white evangelical Protestants than the population at large.
More than six in 10 (64 percent)individuals in this demographic said torture was often or sometimes justified in the interrogation of suspected terrorists. That compares with 49 percent support among all those polled.
A poll of Southern evangelicals, released in September, indicated their support for torture in some cases involving possible terrorist suspects was softer, with 57 percent saying torture could often or sometimes be justified.
The poll was commissioned by an organization named Faith in Public Life and by Mercer University in Macon, Ga. (BP)
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