During the Spanish-American War, a U.S. soldier, Major Edwin Glenn, was suspended from command for one month and fined $50 for using “the water cure.” In his review, the Army judge advocate said the charges constituted “resort to torture with a view to extort a confession.” He recommended disapproval because “the United States cannot afford to sanction the addition of torture.”
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Stephen Rickard, Washington director of the Open Society Institute, says that throughout the centuries, the justifications for using waterboarding have been remarkably consistent. “Almost every time this comes along, people say, ‘This is a new enemy, a new kind of war, and it requires new techniques,'” he says. “And there are always assurances that it is carefully regulated.”
(excerpts from Waterboarding: A Tortured History)
It’s been said that waterboarding created quick, effective results after 9/11. That turned out to be a lie, an oft-repeated lie, but a lie nonetheless. The specific case mentioned was that of Abu Zubaydah. Problem is, interrogators had already gotten excellent, actionable information from Mr. Zubaydah, including the identification of José Padilla, the dirty bomber. That information was not obtained by torture, it was obtained through traditional methods. (Zubaydah provided this information between March and June of 2002; waterboarding was authorized in August of that year) In addition, recently declassified memos show that Zubaydah was waterboarded “at least 83 times,” [Ed.—or 83 pours, as noted in the comments below] not the 30-35 seconds that Rush Limbaugh and others like to talk about.
I could go on and on, but plenty has been written about the foolishness of using torture techniques that have been proven historically to provide false confessions, much has been reported following the declassification of the memos about torture. What is important for us to remember, though, is that we were deceived. Again. We put our trust in politicians and professional soldiers to give us reliable information about what they were doing and why. As the people of God, we cannot place ourselves blindly in the hands of ungodly people, letting them make decisions about whom we should hate, whom we should kill, whom we should torture and what is right and what is not. The kingdoms of this world, all of them, promote their own interests. They do not put God’s kingdom first. They will lie to us to get us to do what they want. They will hide information from us, distort the facts, and present partial truths. A quick look at history confirms this fact. Monarchs and revolutionaries, Democrats and Republicans, capitalists and communists, … we dare not let them make our moral decisions. They will promote their own interests by any means necessary.
Our government will never do that, for our king cannot lie.
One reason 
Most Christians that I know can see the flaw in the “prosperity gospel,” the idea that God intends to bless Christians with material wealth here on earth. In the same way, they recognize it’s close cousin, the “health and wealth” gospel. It doesn’t take a lot of reading in the New Testament to recognize that following Christ is not about always receiving the things we want in this life.
Do you remember Gershom? He was Moses’ oldest son. When Gershom was born, Moses was a fugitive. He had killed an Egyptian for mistreating one of Moses’ fellow Hebrews and had fled the country to escape prosecution. Moses ended up in Midian and settled there for forty years. He married a Midianite girl named Zipporah, and they had a son. Moses chose the name for the boy and called him Gershom, which sounds like the Hebrew phrase “a stranger here.” The explanation for the name that Moses gave was that he called him Gershom because “I have become an alien in a foreign land.” (Exodus 2:22) All of his life, Gershom carried the reminder of his father’s alien status. Moses had grown up in the Egyptian palace, adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter, yet he was not Egyptian. He was Hebrew, a descendant of Abraham, of the lineage of Israel. He, along with his people, belonged in Canaan, not in Egypt, yet they had come to live in Egypt in slaves. Moses could have lived life as an Egyptian, a comfortable life. He could have denied his alien status and made himself at home in what was, at that time, the most powerful nation in the region.
It’s one of those e-mails that just won’t die. They pop up again and again, right alongside the fake virus warnings (no, AOL didn’t say “This is the worst virus ever.”), the promises of money for forwarding a message (don’t hold your breath), and the offers of untold riches from a dear Christian brother in Nigeria (keep that bank account info to yourself). This one shares some of Teddy Roosevelt’s thoughts on immigration. If you haven’t seen it, you can read the e-mail and background information