It is easy to forget what it was like in the days and weeks after the terrorist attacks and the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center falling on September 11, 2001. Americans were afraid. The church I was serving at the time sits directly across the street from the 100 story John Hancock Building, a potential target if, as many feared, there were more attacks coming. I will never forget the sight of residents and office workers streaming from the Hancock Building and walking down the middle of the street past the church, west and away from the building. We sent the children and the staff of our pre-school home as well. I will also never forget the eerie sensation of realizing that the constant flow of incoming flights over the city heading toward O’Hare had ceased. The sky was empty– and the equally unsettling sensation days later when flights resumed and United and American planes – the same planes that were hijacked and turned into lethal weapons slamming into buildings, were descending over the city again.

For the first time in our lives we realized that there are people in the world who want to kill us for simply being who we are – citizens of the United States of America, and that our nation was terribly vulnerable. And so, at that moment of fear and vulnerability, our government moved as quickly as possible to prevent another attack, using every resource at its disposal to track down the people who planned and carried out the attacks, their support networks and other organizations and networks and individuals who had made no secret of their intent to harm us again.

Twelve years later we are discovering the methods our government employed. Before we condemn those methods – and some of them are abhorrent and worthy of condemnation- it is good simply to remember the situation that precipitated them and suggested to reasonable people that they were worth employing.

In addition, religious faith requires, I believe, realism about the human condition and the world we live in. The distinguished 20th century theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, broke with prominent pacifist academics and journalists in the 1930’s who, in his estimation were failing to take seriously the implications of the rise of fascism in Germany and Japan. It is not morally responsible – it is irresponsible – Niebuhr taught, to ignore evil and its potential for enormous human suffering and tragedy. Sometimes faithful people must resist, fight and overcome. So, before I begin to assess what we now know about the methods we used to combat terrorism, I must affirm my gratitude for our armed forces and intelligence agencies and the men and women who devote their lives to our security through them – and who are on the front lines in ways that the vast majority of us are not.

That said, what I now know about our practice of torture, secret prisons, renditions, makes me deeply sad and ashamed of us, all of us. There is no way, ultimately, to argue morally that the ends (national security) justify any means (torturing prisoners). There are simply things we should not do and torturing another human being is one of them. Our military has always understood that and forbids torture, not only because torturing one’s enemy invites the enemy to reciprocate, but more importantly, because it is wrong. Our nation, even in all-out war, has always held to certain core values that we like to think are particular to us as a nation and which must never be violated, and the God-given value of every human life is at the very center of them.

It is not, after all, as if torture is a proven method for getting at the truth. Reasonable people argue both sides, but even if it were proven that torture works, it would still be a denial of our highest and best national values.

My moral guide in this matter in addition to Reinhold Niebuhr, is Senator John McCain, certainly no shrinking violet when it comes to using military force, and anything but a pacifist. Yet, Senator McCain continues courageously to argue forcefully against the use of any form of torture. The authenticity of his argument is grounded in his own experience. He understands as few do. He was subjected to years of torture at the hands of his North Vietnamese captors during the Vietnam War. John McCain says torture doesn’t work and is wrong. I believe him.