In my class on worship and ethics, we read William Cavanaugh's Torture and Eucharist, a book about Chilie under General Pinochet. One comparison students made with the US was that while in Chile the torture was to gain false confessions renouncing communist or marxist allegiance, in the US the object was information that would keep us safe from future terrorist attacks. Frank Rich's amazingly clear case, built in the op-ed he has in today's NYT, shows our government's reason for torture (enhanced interrogation techniques) shifted in the aftermath of 9/11. Early on traditional interrogation techniques were used to gain such "protective" intellegence. But as pressure grew internally to make the case for invading Iraq, the aim shifted and torture methods were okay'd in order to gain 'proof' of the Iraq-Al Qeada connection. They cynically believed that only such information would turn the fearful US 100% behind the administration's desire to overthrow Sadam Hussein.
Five years after the Abu Ghraib revelations, we must acknowledge that
our government methodically authorized torture and lied about it. But
we also must contemplate the possibility that it did so not just out of
a sincere, if criminally misguided, desire to “protect” us but also to
promote an unnecessary and catastrophic war. Instead of saving us from
“another 9/11,” torture was a tool in the campaign to falsify and
exploit 9/11 so that fearful Americans would be bamboozled into a
mission that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. The lying about Iraq
remains the original sin from which flows much of the Bush White
House’s illegality.
Read the rest of Rich's column here.
We're in the season of Easter, called into the post-resurrection rejoicing. Yet I find myself responding to such circumstances as Rich writes about with much more like an Advent spirit. Advent is the cry of the in-between. Yes, we know Christ's life, death, and resurrection center all of history in God's fundamental word of mercy and life in response to this world's perpetulation of judgment and death. Yet all is not completed, our suffering under mutual condemnation and death continues, and the suffering seems so deep, so broad, so high, that only something as dramatic as the return of Christ to judge the nations and renew all of creation seems appropriate to the challenge. So here's an Easter cry for today: Come, Lord Jesus.
Anon, and peace,
Chris
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