Naming Torture

     Yesterday Andrew Sullivan deconstructed an NYT article that avoided using the word "torture" for assaults that are obviously torture.  The money graf:

It is not a disputable opinion that waterboarding is torture. There is no debate here. There aren't two sides to the issue. That waterboarding is torture is a legal, empirical, historical fact. There are many legitimate and legal methods of interrogation, and all can and should be debated. But torture isn't one of them. And the cowardice in refusing to use plain English to state the truth is part of what enables torture to endure.

     Brings Analects 13.3, on the rectification of names, to mind:

Naming enables the noble-minded to speak, and speech enables the noble-minded to act.  Therefore, the noble-minded are anything but careless in speech.

    Confucius would agree: we must name torture as "torture" as so enable ourselves, and the world, to act against it.

Comments

[China Law Blog]

This is the equivalent of the media's refusal to call terrorists terrorists.

[Sam]

Perhaps, though my sense is that there is more hesitation to name torture than terrorism....