A National Summit On Torture In Atlanta

The best way to love America, defend
our nation, and support our troops is to pivot sharply away from "the dark

side" and back to our most cherished moral values.

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When the first revolting images of prisoner abuse in Abu
Ghraib surfaced in April 2004, the Bush Administration responded by condemning
the acts of "a few bad apples" working the night shift.

But those who had been involved in secret decisions related
to detainee policies knew that the humiliation and abuse of Iraqi prisoners in
Abu Ghraib was not an aberration. These acts at the bottom of the chain of
command represented the terrible but predictable consequences of policies that
had been corrupted from the top.

The story of what happened in the upper reaches of the Bush
Administration in the fevered days after 9/11 has been trickling out since late
2002. Now the dots have been connected in a critically important new book by
Jane Mayer, an investigative reporter who has been covering detainee issues for
the New Yorker since 2003. In The Dark Side, Mayer reports that a
cadre of top figures in the administration, led primarily by Vice-President
Cheney and his then-legal counsel, David Addington, in late 2001 and 2002 drove
through a series of historic changes in longstanding United States policies
related to the treatment of those our nation detained during the U.S. response
to hostilities.

These changes were multilayered, led by secret legal opinions
related to presidential authority in responding to acts of terrorism and the
applicability of domestic and international law in the treatment of detainees held
in that effort. Once having decided that presidential authority in this area
was nearly unlimited, and that suspected terrorists were not covered by
historic human rights or prisoner of war protections or by the standards of
criminal law, the door was opened to the development of new interrogation
protocols that went far beyond anything that had ever been officially permitted
by the United States government.

Put more directly, the United States government authorized what
by any historic standard amounted to the torture of detainees. It began with
detainees caught in Afghanistan after our 2001 invasion there. It was employed
in CIA-run "black sites" around the world. It took especially cruel forms with detainees
who were "rendered" to allied nations. It was employed with chilling rigor at
Guantanamo, and from there migrated to Iraq.

Both international and domestic law forbid torture. These unequivocal prohibitions were evaded
through a series of secret legal determinations that redefined torture beyond recognition.
The narrowing of the definition of torture included a requirement that the
interrogator have the intent to inflict suffering "equivalent in intensity to the
pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure," or "result
in significant psychological harm…lasting for months or years."

Moves such as these made it possible to define acts that had
been understood as torture for decades as something other than torture. The government
could say categorically that "the United States does not torture," while
explicitly authorizing waterboarding (classified as a criminal act since 1901
in the United States), shackling in stress positions, prolonged enforced
standing, religious and sexual humiliation, stripping of all clothing, hooding
and other forms of sensory deprivation, exploitation of detainee phobias such
as fear of dogs, and threats of execution for the prisoner and/or his family.

Despite the best efforts of the administration to keep these
legal and policy decisions and their implementation secret , the truth will
out. Once it did, a miserable kind of moral debate erupted. While the government
still officially claimed that America does not torture, but only uses "enhanced
interrogation techniques," some of its defenders offered explicit defenses of
torture itself. A nation which from its
birth had made the humane treatment of prisoners of war a cardinal principle,
and had led the way in the development of international human rights agreements
banning torture, descended into a debate over whether to abandon this heritage.

Softened up by fear, anger, and grief, not to mention years
of watching "24," a significant minority of Americans is willing to tell
pollsters that torture is a morally acceptable practice to protect national
security. One BBC poll found 36% of
Americans agreed that the use of torture for this purpose was acceptable, one
of the highest percentages of all the nations polled.

There are some of us who believe that this moral corruption
of American practices and attitudes is one of the worst things that has
happened in this country in a long time.

But there is good news. A community of resistance has
emerged. This community includes numerous Christians and other people of faith.
Across party lines, it believes that the United States must defend itself
without resorting to cruelty, inhumanity, and torture. It also believes that
America needs a moral accounting of what has happened not just to our policies
and laws but to our national soul.

Leaders of this anti-torture/pro-human rights community will
gather at the Mercer University campus in Atlanta on September 11^th
for a two-day national conference on these issues. We will not debate the
question of whether the United States has engaged in torture or whether torture
is wrong, though we will certainly hear evidence for both. We will instead
discuss how our beloved nation lost its moral bearings, and how we can get them
back. We will pay special attention to the resources for human rights that are
available in the religious beliefs that are so important to millions of
Americans. Jews, Muslims, Christians,
and others will participate as both speakers and attendees. Any reader of this
column is invited to register at www.evangelicalsforhumanrights.org,
but space is limited and registration closes September 1.

As organizer of the conference, I can say confidently that
no speaker will deny the vicious evil of 9/11 or the significant threat of
terrorism. No one will gainsay the fanaticism and brutality of hardened
terrorists. No one will denigrate the discipline and service of our armed
forces. No one will reject love of the United States. No one will treat torture
as a partisan issue. But all will say that the best way to love America, defend
our nation, and support our troops is to pivot sharply away from "the dark
side" and back to our most cherished moral values.

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David P. Gushee is
Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University and
President of Evangelicals for Human Rights.

A National Summit on Torture in Atlanta