Torture: What Would Jesus Do?

Prisoner at Abu Graib, Baghdad, tortured by American soldiers in 2003.

Notice the electrodes attached to the fingers of both hands.

Church sign just down the street from here: "We Are Proud to be Christians and Americans." The conflation of religion and politics, church and state is actually nothing new in American history; but like a harmful virus it has mutated into a new and even more virulent strain in recent years.

I don't know personally anyone who attends that little church; but statistically, the overwhelming majority are likely to vote Republican and think W has done just a dandy job in "protecting our freedoms" the last 8 dismal years. None of them are likely to feel that torture, now an official policy of the United States government, is a big deal. So what? "We" only do it to bad people, who probably deserve it. Yawn. Flip the page, sing another hymn to the Prince of Peace.

Oh but God forbid two men and a little dog should live together in peace and dignity out here on the prairie. Why, that would violate every moral principle since time began. Destroy the family. Ruin the nation. Bring the wrath of God down on the whole country, if not the world.

It's so great a threat to all that's sacred, 9 out of 10 of my neighbors in this rural county voted for the state constitutional amendment in 2005 banning every kind of gay union, whatever it might be called. None of that sick, twisted, filthy, perverted, disgusting immorality allowed here in God's country, no sir!

Right. But torture? Deliberate, official, legal torture of, oh, say, anybody the President feels like needs a cattle prod up their butt today--well now that's just fine and dandy. Go for it, W! Protect us. Save us. Amen to all that.

Bullshit. What filthy thinking. Just what God are they really worshipping?

Andrew Sullivan spells it out nicely; the corruption of fundamental civilized morality here is Osama's greatest victory:

After an admirable 1999 Supreme Court attempt to stop it, the Israeli intelligentsia moves toward the Bush-Cheney model of torture for terror suspects. On this issue, Israel is a saint compared with its neighbors in the region, of course. But when you see more than one democracy jettisoning a core foundation for a free and moral society, you realize how far we've come, and how strong an influence the most powerful torture-nation, America, now has. When the country that led the global campaign against torture is now in the vanguard of legitimizing it, it is unsurprising that global standards of human rights collapse.

What amazing success Osama bin Laden has had in destroying the integrity, freedom and morality of the West. It is his greatest victory - and he could not have done it without Cheney.

Is this really what America is all about? Do we really want to live in a torture society? I'm more than certain that some, at least, of my good down-home neighbors here would see it as just part of God's plan for this great Christian nation, and the Constitution be damned.

I say, to hell with that idea.