Torture in the Name of Jesus
by Clay Evans
Many Americans stand with President Bush on virtually everything
simply because he is a self-declared Christian, a once wayward man
miraculously turned prayerful.
"The Lord has just blessed him," televangelist Pat Robertson once
gushed about Bush, summing up the apparent beliefs of millions. "...
It doesn't make any difference what he does, good or bad, God picks
him up because he's a man of prayer and God's blessing him."
Wow. Must be nice. And you certainly wouldn't want to criticize God's
anointed leader on Earth, would you?
I guess that explains the deafening silence of the president's minions
when it comes to torture. President Bush has said, time and again,
that he does not support torture. But as is his wont, his deeds make a
liar of him.
On Oct. 5, the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate voted 90-9 in favor
of Sen. John McCain's anti-torture amendment to a defense
appropriations bill. But Bush has threatened to use the first veto of
his presidency to kill the entire bill (which pays soldiers' salaries
and funds the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq) because he opposes
the provision to ban the use of "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment
or punishment" by the military, in accordance with the U.S. Army Field
Manual.
This is as much about protecting U.S. personnel as anything. If we
resort to cruel and inhumane treatment, we hand our enemies a
dangerous excuse to torture our soldiers when they are captured.
But Bush swats away such practical concerns. Evidently, God has told
him that torturing other human beings is fine as long as you are
born-again, which is all that seems to matter to some evangelical
Christians. Hey, the Crusaders and witch-burners and slave holders did
it, right?
This is a revolting distortion of what our Christian president's
savior stood for. Sure, Jesus ripped the moneychangers in the temple
and offered the occasional inconsistent message ("For I have come to
turn a man against his father, a daughter against his mother...,"
Matthew 10:35), but torture?
The only person tortured in the Gospels is Jesus himself, and it
wasn't pretty. Ask "Goremaster" Mel Gibson.
When the president (and his faithful lieutenants, including Colorado
U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard, one of the nine loyal lapdogs who voted
against the McCain amendment) suggests that torture is a necessary
response to the threat of terrorism, I wonder if he remembers what
Jesus told a disciple at Gethsemane: "Put your sword back in its
place, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword."
Anyone who argues that Jesus would advocate torture is torturing the
scriptures for immoral ends. As incredulous people are now asking, Who
Would Jesus Torture?
Allard, meanwhile, recently told the Daily Camera editorial board that
there's been no torture or ill treatment of detainees in the "war on
terror"; it's all good, he says. This from a man who boasts on his Web
site, "I have worked closely with my colleagues and the current
administration to spread democracy and prevent human rights violations
worldwide, regardless of people's political, ethnic, or religious
affiliation."
Who Would Jesus Deceive?
When the leaders we choose say it's OK to torture anyone we like, and
destroy whole cities in vengeance (Fallujah, including women, elders
and children, in retribution for the murders of four American
mercenaries — the president should reread that whole "eye for an eye"
passage) while claiming the mantle of Jesus, we roam the same level of
earthly Hell as terrorists who proclaim that Allah urges them to
slaughter innocents.