{"id":36886,"date":"2012-07-31T00:01:24","date_gmt":"2012-07-31T07:01:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=36886"},"modified":"2014-12-30T15:35:39","modified_gmt":"2014-12-30T22:35:39","slug":"this-will-all-be-relevant-again-soon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2012\/07\/this-will-all-be-relevant-again-soon.html","title":{"rendered":"This will all be relevant again soon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Those who remember the Bush years\u2013when dutiful Catholic servants of the Administration labored for *years* to offer ever more tortured defenses of torture\u2013will recall that one of the favorite rationalizations was \u201cHey!\u00a0 We waterboard our own troops! So that makes it OK.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ahem: According to the invaluable Zippy Catholic: \u201cour own government\u2019s memoranda<\/a> on the subject concludes (page 43, footnote 51) that \u2018the SERE waterboard experience is so different from the subsequent Agency usage as to make it almost irrelevant.\u2019\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

In other words, as was said here all along, the equation of SERE training with the torture of prisoners is invalid because what happens in SERE training is fundamentally different than what happens to a helpless prisoner.\u00a0 The core element\u2013psychological terror and fear of death\u2013is not there because the troops undergoing the exercise not only know their trainers are not going to kill them, but they are even socially reinforced by their peers with the sense that they are enduring hardship manfully.\u00a0 The point of the training, in other words, is to build them up and it actually makes them feel like stronger men ready to heroically endure suffering.\u00a0 The point of the torture, inflicted on helpless prisoners who do not know their captors, is to dehumanize and destroy the prisoner with terror\u2013to tear them apart, not build them up.<\/p>\n

The irony, of course, is that in the years long campaign to try to square the use of torture with the obvious teaching of the Church, apologists for torture often wound up contradicting themselves and each other. On the one hand, we were to believe waterboarding (which was, remember but *one* form of torture\u2013we murdered prisoners with other forms) was \u201cjust a splash of water\u201d and not torture at all since we did it to our troops. On the other hand, we were to believe it was so terrifyingly effective that it unhinged the reason of victims to the degree that they no longer felt themselves morally responsible for confessing under torture and were thus grateful to their torturers for relieving them of a sense of guilt. No, really:<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

That Marc Thiessen\u2013a Catholic\u2013could offer this absolutely disgusting rationale for torture as a sort of blasphemous parody of baptism (drowning somebody in order to relieve them of a sense of sin) is one of the most memorable moment in this long and obscene campaign by \u201cfaithful conservative Catholics\u201d to rationalize this grave and intrinsic evil.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, any Catholic who is actually listening to the Church\u2013the Church that teaches that \u201cthe prohibition against torture \u201ccannot be contravened under any circumstances<\/a>\u201d would be swift to both look for and figure out the blazingly obvious distinction between SERE training building people up and torture tearing people down and would be able to do so in about 10 seconds.\u00a0 He would see the blasphemy of trying to argue that torture taketh away sin. However, Catholics who have sold their souls to justify their tribe\u2019s favorite form of grave intrinsic evil can and have taken eight years to make elaborate rationalizations for it.\u00a0 And not just this one, but many others, all lousy.<\/a> The only reason the argument stopped was because the GOP lost. And when they have had the chance, the GOP has attempted to proudly assert their noble legacy of torture in order to, for instance, try to take credit for finding Osama bin Laden (a lie, as well as a further attempt to justify stupid counter-productive mortal sin<\/a>).<\/p>\n

And this will all be relevant again very soon, since a President Romney has, like the Bourbons, remembered everything and learned nothing from the Bush Era choice to make the US into a torture regime.\u00a0 He\u2019s all in favor of it\u2013as were all the GOP candidates except Paul.<\/a>\u00a0 Because torture is hugely popular with the Talk Radio-educated partisans of the Thing that Used to Be Conservatism.\u00a0 If and when he is elected, the GOP, which has never retracted a word of the lying filth it vomited to justify this stupid and evil policy, will immediately burst into cheers when he re-activates it. We will be back to square one as Catholics faithful to the Magisterium resume attempting to argue for a consistent adherence to Catholic teaching, not only to the cafeteria Catholics of the left like Nancy Pelosi, but to the Cafeteria Catholics of the Right who, in greater percentages than the average American, support torture in absolute defiance of the Church\u2019s clear and obvious teaching<\/a>.\u00a0 Pelosi and company make no claim at all to be faithful to the teaching of Church.\u00a0 They are frank and open about their contempt for the Magisterium when it comes to abortion, contraception, gay \u201cmarriage\u201d et al.\u00a0 But boasting about being Faithful Conservative Catholics[TM] who are not like that liberal over there, all while endorsing the grave sin of torture? That kind of hypocrisy is what will be remembered in the history books as the other, and perhaps graver, derangement of our age.\u00a0 For Pelosi and Co. don\u2019t make a special claim to be devoted to the Magisterium.\u00a0 Conservative Catholics do.\u00a0 Those to whom much is given, much will be required.<\/p>\n

And when Caesar finally feels safe to use \u201cenhanced interrogation\u201d against his own citizens (as he already feels safe to indefinitely detain and murder them without due process) it will be a bit late for Catholics who resist Caesar\u2019s iron will to say, \u201cI never thought the state would use torture against us<\/em>!\u201d\u00a0 Dude, you had 2000 years of precedent.\u00a0 How could you have been so blind?<\/p>\n

Do not do evil that good may come of it.\u00a0 It\u2019s not just a good idea.\u00a0 It\u2019s the moral law.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Those who remember the Bush years\u2013when dutiful Catholic servants of the Administration labored for *years* to offer ever more tortured defenses of torture\u2013will recall that one of the favorite rationalizations was \u201cHey!\u00a0 We waterboard our own troops! So that makes it OK.\u201d Ahem: According to the invaluable Zippy Catholic: \u201cour own government\u2019s memoranda on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[44],"class_list":["post-36886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-consequentialism-on-parade"],"yoast_head":"\nThis will all be relevant again soon<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Those who remember the Bush years--when dutiful Catholic servants of the Administration labored for *years* to offer ever more tortured defenses of\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2012\/07\/this-will-all-be-relevant-again-soon.html\" \/>\n<meta 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