We are confronted with the now inescapable evidence that our country has been involved in torture in the prosecution of the so-called War on Terror. In fact, with the revelations shared by former President George W. Bush as he promotes his memoir, it is not only admitted by him but affirmed. This has been part of a constellation of activities done by our leaders in response to the terrorist attacks, activities that represent an abandonment of moral and constitutional principles previously the norm. Why are these practices, so foreign to what we all were raised to believe America stood for — practices that our enemies did but we did not — suddenly necessary and right?
My thoughts on this issue have been guided by insights that come from a place that some might find surprising. Both of my sons are Marines. Little did I foresee a few years ago that I would one day send both of them off to war. But, like it or not, my wife and I have found ourselves part of a military family.
When one of my sons was promoted, I was present at the ceremony. His commanding officer spoke about the oath of office a military officer takes when commissioned, and he pointed out something that surprised me. The oath is: “I (state your name) do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.” The commander noted that this oath is focused first and foremost on the Constitution. As another officer, Lt. Col. Kenneth Keskel, USAF, says, “The oath requires officers to support and defend the Constitution — not the president, not the country, not the flag, and not a particular military service.”
My surprise was based on my assumption that a military officer’s oath would focus on the qualities needed to fight to defend our country and its people. After all, is not the purpose of the military to defend our nation and its citizens and keep us safe and secure? Defending the Constitution seems so cold and abstract compared to defending our homeland and loved ones. I think like virtually all Americans, I bought into the premise that this conflict is about keeping the homeland secure, about keeping Americans safe, about saving lives.
This assumption does appear to be shared by our nation’s leaders. When President Barack Obama gave his speech on “Protecting our Security and Values” on May 21, 2009, at the National Archives Museum, he made this statement: “My single most important responsibility as president is to keep the American people safe. That is the first thing that I think about when I wake up in the morning. It is the last thing that I think about when I go to sleep at night.” His statement echoes repeated statements by his predecessor, as well as a host of our political leaders, all stating that the first duty of the president is to keep Americans safe.
But as Christians, we also know that when we take a good thing, but make it a god before which we worship, and to which we subordinate everything else, that good becomes demonic and leads us to destruction. We have the severe warnings of Jesus about those who make safety and security their god. He who seeks to save his life will lose it. A call to follow Christ is not a call to be safe and secure, but to take up your cross. We are also aware of the harsh words Jesus has for those who hoard their safety and comfort at the expense of others.
All this leads me now to believe that the officer’s oath is precisely what it should be, focused as it is on the Constitution, and that it is wise that these things such as saving lives and defending the homeland are simply unmentioned.
The Constitution is not in essence a document in the National Archives that should be surrounded by troops and protected. It is, rather, the way a human community, our nation, orders its life. As such, the Constitution transcends the lifespan of the individual. Its creators and original defenders are long dead. I hope it will live on after all of us here today are gone. So an officer does not swear first of all to defend land and people, home and family. Instead of focusing on these precious but transient things, the oath requires us to look beyond them at a more encompassing entity, a certain kind of community, specifically a Constitutional democracy. In the military it is understood from the beginning that defending the Constitution may well involve killing and the risk of being killed. The oath, however, reminds us that the ultimate success of the officer’s mission is the defense and preservation of a certain kind of community.
In fact, I think in all the sound and fury of the torture debate, many have missed the voices coming from the military. Those who are critical of torture are often caricatured as people who lack the toughness and courage to fight against the enemies who attack us. Yet when a nominee for the United States Attorney General could not bring himself to say out loud that waterboarding was torture, the retired Judges Advocate of the Navy, Army, and Marine Corps stated in a letter to Senator Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, “Waterboarding is inhumane, it is torture, and it is illegal.” What courts have actually convicted and punished people who have abused detainees? We have the courts martial that tried and convicted some of the military personnel responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib. What is the antidote for “enhanced interrogation techniques?” It is the Army Field Manual. Military lawyers have been heroes in the legal battles to see the Constitution upheld in the treatment of detainees.
But if the Alpha and Omega of the leaders of our diverse nation is our safety, and not the Constitution, then torture is justified, along with a host of other violations of the Constitution, if it saves American lives. Those who maintain there is indisputable evidence (usually still classified, but if declassified, usually not so indisputable) that torture (as opposed to other interrogation techniques) has produced information that has directly “saved lives” are simply affirming the logical extension of the premise that “safety” trumps all other considerations.
For those in the military and their families, not a day goes by in which there is not some vivid reminder of the possibility of death and injury for those in that profession. But life and safety are transient and precarious for us all. Thus the military enforces a spiritual discipline that many of us can avoid, but which we should all practice, facing up to our own mortality.
Safety is a poor deity to worship. It does not take a Samson to bring its temple crashing down. Any individual can do that with a gun or an explosive or even a box cutter. If safety is our god, we will always be in terror of those who threaten our lives. And if we continue to make safety, this will-o’-the-wisp that finally escapes the grasp of every last one of us, the be-all and end-all of our national defense, we will find we are in danger of losing the soul of our nation, and we will be dishonoring the sacrifices of those who have sworn this oath.
DAVID G. VELLENGA is a tentmaking Minister of the Word and Sacrament who currently serves as stated supply to Nutbush Church in Townsville, N.C., and also serves on the staff of the North Carolina State University Nanofabrication Facility in Raleigh, N.C.
