No to Torture

Because of a comment that was left on my blog recently, I want to make sure that my position is clear to everyone: I am categorically against torture. Moreover, my husband, Jim Berkley, director of Presbyterian Action at IRD, is categorically against torture, and IRD itself is categorically against torture.

Also, here is an example of another IRD staff person stating his position on torture, which is that he is completely against it:

http://www.newsobserver.com/663/story/481121.html

People who say that IRD supports torture have misinterpreted what IRD has written. Sometimes it's just because of their prior assumption that IRD is evil. Other times it's because they misinterpret the facts, which are the following: 1) IRD does not want to join people who blame only the US for torture, since the evidence that the US does indeed engage in officially sanctioned torture is not clear, and 2) IRD wishes that people who are against torture would focus on nations that are truly egregious torturers. The people who misinterpret these facts take them to mean that IRD is for torture. This is logically fallacious thinking. It's analogous to this situation:

Group A: "There's a guy that we know, and we think he killed another guy. Join us in a campaign against him!"
Group B: "We don't know that he killed him, and we think efforts should be focused on known murderers, so we won't join your campaign at the present."
Group A: "From what Group B just said, we can tell that Group B is in favor of murder, and we will now proclaim this to everyone."

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who have decided, on faith, without any facts to back up this faith, that IRD is evil. And so whenever they read or hear about anything that IRD says or does, they do so through an IRD-is-evil filter, and they interpret what they read or hear accordingly. It thus becomes extremely difficult for IRD to do anything at all that is not interpreted as more evidence of evil. For example, my husband once wrote to Steven Martin, who has made an anti-IRD film. His note to Martin was polite and kind, and Martin acknowledged that it was when he wrote about it in a comment on the Talk2Action website. The politeness and kindness was, to Martin, evidence that Jim was similar to Osama bin Laden. So, Jim was condemned ahead of time. There was no manner in which Jim could have written to Martin that would not have been taken as evidence of evil. IRD has been pre-judged (what stands at the root of the meaning of prejudice) as evil.

It is a sad state of affairs to see people who consider themselves to be open, liberal, and broadminded, fallen into prejudice, suspicion, and poor reasoning, and it is more than sad when this leads them to do injury to others.