In a USA Today editorial this morning, Republican Congressman Trent Franks manages to warp the fabric of American freedom in two different ways in his effort to justify torture.

First, he claims that “America’s distinguishing hallmark, its bedrock foundation, is that we hold to the self-evident truth that all men are created by God”. Of course, that’s not true. There have been plenty of theocratic governments in history, and many autocratic governments that have used believe in God as a tool of oppressive power. People came to America to be free of them, and when political independence was achieved, the ban on governmental establishment of religion was established. Freedom from belief in God is actually part of America’s bedrock foundation.

Secondly, Franks tells the story of the prisoner who refused to talk to interrogators for months, but after just 90 seconds of waterboarding, agreed to tell them anything they wanted to hear. Franks quotes accounts as saying, “he cracked real quick”.

In spite of that, Franks asserts that he doesn’t support torture, implying that it’s possible to simultaneously maintain waterboarding and a ban on torture just by saying that waterboarding isn’t torture.

It’s nonsense. To say that a procedure that creates so much agony that it can “crack” a prisoner in 90 seconds who has been resisting interrogation techniques for months is not torture is to ignore the central meaning of torture. Congressman Franks might just as easily claim that ripping out someone’s toenails isn’t torture, because it doesn’t threaten organ failure or death.

What’s the connection between these two ideas, God and torture? Franks suggests in his editorial that America can’t possibly torture because of what he regards as USA’s “hallmark” of belief in God. He regards institutional government religion as a bulwark against any erosion of liberty.

In doing so, he ignores a truth staring him right in the face: It hasn’t worked for the “merciless jihadist ideology” he says is the reason America must perform waterboarding torture on its prisoners. Jihad is a religious term. The terrorism of Al Quaeda on September 11, 2001 was a faith-based initiative.

Islamic terrorists believe in God just as much as Trent Franks does. They want to establish governments based on religion as much as Franks does. That religious belief does nothing to stop Al Quaeda and its allies from performing their own acts of torture.

Religious fervor also didn’t stop the Catholic Church from performing massive amounts of torture during the Spanish Inquisition. In fact, the Spanish Inquisition is where waterboarding torture was invented. The interrogators of the Spanish Inquisition thought that waterboarding was a way of honoring God, just as Islamic terrorists do, just as Trent Franks does.

Americans should not allow their nation to travel the path of warped ideology into such disreputable company.

(Source: USA Today, November 13, 2007)

Share This