Dear Etty,

Our country is at war in Iraq.  I did not support the war and now it turns out that we have been torturing people.  Am I responsible for the actions of my country?  Am I responsible for our injured soldiers?    

Feeling Guilty

Dear FG,

 There but for fortune, may go you or go I -- you and I [Phil Ochs] 

Torture is wrong, whether committed by puritans seeking witches, sadists seeking pleasure, or interrogators seeking information.  Some argue for a cost/benefit analysis whereby the more dangerous the perceived threat, the more appropriate the use of torture.   This end justifies the means argument crushes the human and civil rights principles that we cherish.  If torture is useful to protect the United States then certainly it can be justified by despots to protect their societies.  What is the greater good we protect through torture?  Torture is wrong because it devalues both the person being tortured and the torturer.  Torture infects an entire society by inflicting a wrong in our name.  Just as acts of kindness have a ripple effect that make us feel good about ourselves, acts of malice have the opposite consequence.  Does torture committed in our names place a collective responsibility on us to object?   I believe that ignoring an obvious wrong committed by our government makes us culpable.  The American Ethical Union adopted a statement reaffirming its opposition to torture in April 2008.  I look forward to our government expunging the use of torture through a public accounting, restitution, and enactment of laws that prohibit its use.

 I think we learned from the Vietnam conflict that we could disagree with our involvement in a war without demonizing our soldiers.  I hope we also learned that we could disagree with a war without ourselves being demonized.  I am proud that our NoVES community collected monies to assist charities in their efforts to help injured soldiers.  Despite all the speeches, whether our government fulfills its promised benefits to our soldiers and whether we integrate returning soldiers into our social and work lives will be the measure of whether we accept responsibility for having sent our young men and women to fight.