I read this article today on a Latter Day Saint interpreter/interrogater in Iraq who committed suicide when she saw the interrogation techniques being used (now I know it's the Huffington Post, but you can confirm the facts of the case through other sources). This raises some questions for me...
1) It's one thing to be in direct combat, where you essentially kill or be killed (as horrific as even that situation is). What of those who are asked by their leaders to interrogate criminals who are defenseless? How much accountability do they have?
2) How should Moroni be used as our exemplar in this situation? He did not torture...he saw the subjects of the interrogation as battlefield combatants and killed them on the spot if they would not swear an oath to give up their arms and their aggressive ideology of war.
3) Let's just remember that we join an infamous fraternity when we torture...(the Gulag, the concentration camps--both the South African and Nazi versions, and many notable others)...
It's one thing to talk about the "heavy hand of war" when thinking about these ruffian, hardened CIA agents who live on the edge of morality...it's quite another to think of a Latter Day Saint daughter of Zion (a returned missionary, no less) who's driven to madness by this warped world of morality...
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Very astute and poignant, Russ. There seems to be very little scriptural/gospel precedent for torture if any at all. Even in the "rough times" of the Old Testament, when God ordered the deaths of whole nations and cities, when did He ever command that undue pain and suffering be placed upon someone? Rules were even delineated regarding the humiliation of those being executed, etc. Let us not think that torture could be used for the "greater good" because apparently the Greatest Good has no need of it.
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