Is Torture Ever Justified?

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Human beings are sinful through and through (Rom. 3:10-18). We are not to be trusted. We are especially dangerous when unchecked power is concentrated in our hands. This applies to all of us.

So certainly it is likely that authorizing even the “lightest” forms of torture risks much abuse. As Richard John Neuhaus puts it, “We dare not trust ourselves to torture.” Or as Gary Haugen wrote, “Because the power of the state over detainees is exercised by fallen human beings, that power must be limited by clear boundaries, and individuals exercising such power must be transparently accountable.”

Haugen rightly emphasizes both the procedural and substantive regulation of detainee interrogation. Given human sinfulness, it’s not just that people should be told not to torture, but also that structures of due process, accountability, and transparency must buttress those standards to make them less likely to be violated and subject to redress if violated. This is what is so dangerous about the discovery of secret CIA prisons in Europe and “ghost detainees” who are located no one knows where. As Manfred Nowak, UN special rapporteur on torture said at the time the CIA’s secret prisons were revealed, “Every secret place of detention is usually a higher risk for ill treatment, that’s the danger of secrecy.” Just because U.S. government officials say that we can be trusted to act “in keeping with our values”—without due process, accountability, and transparency—does not make it so. No government is so virtuous as to be able to overturn the too often verified laws of human nature, or to be beyond the need for democratic checks and balances.