Don’t justify torture on my behalf.
Don’t talk about increasing my safety
or reducing unknown, unmeasurable threats
by applying pain and hideous fear
to a person you suspect of something
you can’t quite define or explain.
When I watched the endless loop
of towers crumbling and people falling
my first stab of coherent thought:
how can anyone do this to another?
we live under the same sky
we bear and hold the same children
how can anyone do this to another?
my second wave of thought: oh damn
we’re bound to throw whatever bombs
whatever we’re able to inflict
all in the name of protection and safety.
Not in my name. No revenge in my name.
No torture in my name.
If you tell me that we should have been torturing people before, during or after September 11th, and if you tell me it would have and will be totally justified (despite research to the contrary), we’re done here.
No one can justify using torture.
If you think you can, it just means you’ve talked yourself into being just as bad as anything you think you’d be “fighting” against. It’s evil. Evil doesn’t beat evil.
When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall — think of it, always. What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
There are many causes that I am prepared to die for but no causes that I am prepared to kill for.”
Mahatma Gandhi
The Story of My Experiments with Truth, 1927
Need more time to think it over? A different, well-written response to the same social media tripe I’ve been seeing.
or this:
