But torture has been around a long time in the West — it was first formalized in medieval Europe as the Inquisition, aimed at heretics and religious minorities. As theologian William Schweiker points out in “Baptism by Torture,” this very often meant using water to create asphyxiation, much like today’s use of water-boarding.  Meanwhile Christians routinely slaughtered Jews, burned millions of women as witches, and fought horrific religious wars over such critical theological questions as how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.

 
When Europeans went out to conquer the world, they took this blind addiction to theological conformity with them.  But they combined it with something even more dangerous — the idea that people of color were inferior to white Europeans.  The result was genocide, the slave trade, the destruction of indigenous societies — and more torture.

The Americans inherited this ghastly belief-system and eagerly employed it in their own imperial adventures.  In an article in the Feb. 25 edition of The New Yorker, Paul Kramer writes about systematic torture in the Philippines by American troops in the early 20th century.  Untold numbers of suspected Filipino insurgents were subjected to a primitive form of water-boarding referred to as “the water cure.”  In defending such abominations against the Filipinos, one General said simply, “These people are not civilized.”

America became a world power during the Cold War, creating alliances in the developing world with brutal dictatorships.  The US supported their anti-Communism with huge infusions of money, even though these “allies” were often no more than street thugs.  By the 1980s, torture was endemic among American-supported dictatorships.  Especially popular in Latin America was the practice of pouring water on the faces of detainees through a wet rag — exactly the same as the water-boarding used by the CIA in post-9/11 torture sites.  Many dictators were first taught torture techniques at the notorious School of the Americas at Fort Benning, GA.  But when U.S. reporters tried to report on torture by America’s proxies in Latin America, they were accused of “advocacy journalism” by the Reagan administration, and silenced.

At the same time, it became almost impossible to report on torture in Israel, and also on torture by other US client states in the region.  Once the San Francisco Chronicle made the mistake of mentioning Israeli torture, and was soon compelled to carry a page-long rant by local “leaders” who explained that only anti-Semites would say such a thing.  This argument, reframed in dozens of ways over the next few decades, morphed into this simple injunction: “Maybe Israel does it, but you can’t report it.”

Little by little, a cynical acceptance of torture by America’s corrupt allies seeped into the collective unconscious of the American people.  Then came 9/11 — and soon it was Americans doing the dirty work.  Now an American president has formally embraced it.  Islamophobia is a basic element of the Bush administration’s policy on torture, along with Bush’s belief that America should not cooperate with the world, but dominate it.  His political allies, the power-worshipping neo-cons and demented theo-cons of the Religious Right, have long ago accepted torture of Muslims.  They want American hegemony over the Middle East, with its oil and its opportunities for religious war.  For them, state terrorism — and especially torture — is a good thing, because their imperial ambitions are based entirely on the belief that the strong should trample upon the weak.

Torture, like genocide, is a symbolic acting out of this sadistic worldview, but it is also a sacrament of evil.  It is a deliberate, spiteful and diabolical violation of the laws of God. The children of Abraham — Jews, Christians and Muslims — have a special commission to end this insult to the Almighty.  Today I pray for the victims of water-boarding, extraordinary rendition, and the mindless abuses at Bagram, Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib; and I pray also for the soul of America, which I believe is in great peril.

Lawrence Swaim is the Executive Director of the Interfaith Freedom Foundation. He taught for eight years at Pacific Union College, and his academic specialties are American Studies and American literature. His column addresses current affairs from an American Christian and Interfaith perspective.