International House’s second lecture at Drexel, “Overcoming Conflict: What Torture Has Taught Me” was presented in the A.J. Drexel Picture Gallery of the Main Building on March 5th, 2007.  Dr. William F. Schulz, witness to torture, death, and human cruelty in our technologically-advanced age, was the speaker.  Schulz is an advocate of human rights, and has spent 31 years in the Unitarian Universalist Ministry, and the last 12 as the Executive Director of Amnesty International.  He is one of many at Amnesty International that would like to see an end to human torture.

Schulz spoke frankly about the nature and the horror of torture.  In 1994, he had his first exposure to torture when he learned of the Taliban’s horrifying method of tying dead bodies that were left to rot in the desert together with living people.  He is familiar with one form of torture where a person is left in a room with a boa constrictor, as well as many other forms of torture involving simulated drowning, and molasses and red fire ants. 

In the United States, torture is certainly not a new phenomenon brought on by the war against terror.  George Washington had beaten men “within an inch of their lives.”  Schulz said that the “US does a bad job of promoting human rights,” but he does not want to talk about the US’s use of torture.  He wanted to talk about the phenomenon of torture itself, saying that “we need to understand it in order to get rid of it.”  Putting torture into perspective, two-thirds of the world’s countries commit torture.

Ancient Greece, father of philosophy and mathematics, is not exempt.  The Greeks tortured slaves in order to learn the truth about some event because they believed slaves were too stupid to lie, if a little stubborn.  The Romans felt no differently.  It wasn’t until 1754 that the first country, the Kingdom of Prussia, banned the use of torture.  Afterwards, torture fell into disfavor, until it was revived in the 20th century.  In modern time, torture ceased to be a method for gaining information and turned, for those inflicting the torture, into a source of pleasure.

Why is torture such a wide-spread phenomenon?  In the Paleolithic Era, Schulz said, we were hunters.  Blood and death screams of hunted animals became associated with power.  Also, we hunger for death as an easy means of getting rid of our problems. “The impulse to harm others might be hardwired in our brains,” Schulz said.  Even more surprising, a vast majority of torturers in our own time are “average Joes and occasionally average Janes.” Countries outside of the United States allowed their soldiers to focus their anger in brutalizing their enemies.  So, under the right conditions, might anyone become a torturer?

Schulz bared his own experience as a torturer with us.  He recounted an episode in his childhood where he found it fascinating to wield power over a dog with impunity.  He pulled at one of the dog’s back legs until is cried out in pain.  After that, whenever the dog saw him coming, it would cower and slink away from him.  Seeing this, he realized what he had done and felt ashamed.  He realized that he had displaced his frustration on the dog from his own experience with bullies and parents.

However, he does not believe that everyone can become a torturer.  Some people have a nature that is so temperate and so against hurting others that it would be almost impossible for them to become torturers.  He also believes that even torturers can have a conscience.  He read to us a section from The Battle of the Casbah, in which a torturer regrets killing a man that has just died from his torture.

So what can we do about it?  What constitutes torture?  It is severe pain or suffering --mentally or physically.  But what’s severe?  Severe pain is pain like organ failure, death, or psychological pain inflicted for months at a time.  The meaning of “severe” is subjective, but it is generally accepted that it is “cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment.”

Many people think torture is justified.  If a ticking time-bomb is known to be within a city, is it justifiable to torture a suspect until you get the needed information, in order to save hundreds of lives?  What if that suspect doesn’t have the information you need?  What if you have ten suspects that have to be tortured before you find the right one with the right information?  Was the torture of the other nine justified?  Even worse, what if you have to torture the suspect’s daughter before he will tell you the truth?  There is no way to argue that the moral good will outweigh the torture of even one person.

We need to change popular culture’s view of torture, Schulz said.  He mentioned numerous television shows, such as “24” and “Lost,” where torture scenes are depicted as part of our evening entertainment, scenes that terrorists might try to imitate.  Already, steps are being taken to better control torture, one of which is called “universal jurisdiction.”  This term states that torture crimes can be punished by any country through international criminal courts.  Amnesty International is taking more steps in its goal to fully eradicate, or at least greatly lessen, torture crimes.

Schulz closed his lecture with some haunting words:  If you have been tortured and succumb to the lasting pain it can inflict, then you can never find home again.  You carry your shame until it either kills you or destroys your spirit.  Schulz ended his speech with the vow to “make the world worthy of our trust again.”