« Thoughts on Advent - God with us | Main | World AIDS Day 2005 »

Torture, American style

Today's Washington Post ran this excellent opinion piece on the cruel, inhumane and degrading interrogation techniques used by the US government against detainees, and their relationship to torture as defined by US and international law: Torture, American-Style. The article does a good job of deconstructing the Bush administration's doublethink and doublespeak, concluding that:

Shamefully, it is a system that permits cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, smudges long-standing lines about what is and is not permitted in routine interrogations -- and then expresses hypocritical horror when soldiers and interrogators cross the blurry line into torture and murder.

As a Christian, one must ask inevitably what Jesus, no stranger himself to the experience of torture at the hands of an imperial power, would make of this. How can a government which calls itself 'Christian' fail to heed the example and words of Christ himself? Who would Jesus torture?

Comments

Right on with your piece on torture. Appreciate your site and worked, have added a link to it and blogged it at http://jesuswasaliberal.blogspot.com Keep it up, please.