Speaking of prudence, our recourse to methods such as waterboarding in order to keep us safe strikes me as morally flawed and deeply imprudent. I've written quite a bit about what I see as a torture policy of our government. Justifications for such cruelties in the name of security abound, especially among conservatives, who are supposed to be defenders of the permanent things--like justice, human dignity, and the souls of men and women. I've linked before to the brainy Charles Krauthammer's Machiavellian defence of torture (yes, under that dreaded name) in the pages of The Weekly Standard. The Wall Street Journal has argued for the dangers of defining torture down. Rudy Giuliani implies waterboarding doesn't qualify as torture as long as we do it for good reasons.
Now we get this from National Review:
...Congress should either give us an honest debate about what interrogation tactics should be proscribed or, better still, drop the subject. Waterboarding should not be part of the regular interrogation menu, and there is no reason to believe it is. But unless we’re prepared to say it should never be on the menu, no matter how dire the threat, we should stop talking about it.Drop the subject, huh? At least Krauthammer says we should be honest about doing terrible things. Fellow neoconservative John Podhoretz blogs on Commentary Magazine:
As universally understood, torture is the infliction of physical injury through the application of physical force. It is the negation, the reverse image, of medical care. The monstrous intent of torture is, literally, to cause physical injury. That injury need not be permanently scarring or even temporarily bruising to be torture, as in the disgusting use of electric current, but it must be an actual injury in any case.By this definition, were brain scientists able to manipulate a person's mind to make him believe he is experiencing the most excruciating, horrible pain imaginable, that wouldn't be torture. Okay. Mental or emotional cruelty can never be torture. Good to know. Deroy Murdock, writing in National Review Online (also posted on Human Events), offers his consequentialist defence of waterboarding by saying:
Punishment techniques like waterboarding were invented precisely not to be acts of torture as commonly understood, but rather to simulate acts of torture.
While the White House must beware not to inform our enemies what to expect if captured, today’s clueless anti-waterboarding rhetoric merits this tactic’s vigorous defense. Waterboarding is something of which every American should be proud. Waterboarding makes tight-lipped terrorists talk.Let's be clear. This technique is what conservative Deroy Murdock says we should be proud of:
[Waterboarding] is used to describe several interrogation techniques. The victim may be immersed in water, have water forced into the nose and mouth, or have water poured onto material placed over the face so that the liquid is inhaled or swallowed. The media usually characterize the practice as "simulated drowning." That's incorrect. To be effective, waterboarding is usually real drowning that simulates death. That is, the victim experiences the sensations of drowning: struggle, panic, breath-holding, swallowing, vomiting, taking water into the lungs and, eventually, the same feeling of not being able to breathe that one experiences after being punched in the gut. The main difference is that the drowning process is halted. According to those who have studied waterboarding's effects, it can cause severe psychological trauma, such as panic attacks, for years.Following World War II, we convicted Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American and Allied prisoners of war. We used to consider it a crime, but you know, 9/11 changed everything--morality included, it seems. At least conservative Andrew Sullivan understands that threat of our use of torture:
The United States knows quite a bit about waterboarding. The U.S. government -- whether acting alone before domestic courts, commissions and courts-martial or as part of the world community -- has not only condemned the use of water torture but has severely punished those who applied it.
This is not some technical issue with respect to interrogation techniques. In my view, it is much more fundamental than that. Many seem to think that because these techniques are only used on terrorists, they are no threat to American liberty. What this complacent view doesn't grapple with is that these torture techniques can be used against any terror suspect; that such suspects are not subject to due process under president Bush's understanding of his powers; that such suspects can be captured within the United States; that they can be citizens; and that the war that justifies this extraordinary power is defined as permanent. That is why combining the power to detain without charge with the power to torture is an effective suspension of the rule of law and the Constitution. And such a suspension is astonishingly broad and open-ended.Whether or not we want to consider waterboarding as torture, just cruelty, or something to be proud of, waterboarding causes harm, particularly spiritual harm, upon the its practitioners. Its use may save lives; its use will harm souls. It is a shame that conservatives today should be so forgetful of how the violence we perpetuate inflicts violence upon our souls, our consciences, and our virtue. We close ourselves off to that truth to our peril and moral ruin.
That is why this has become a fight for the West's values against the moral relativists, legalistic parsers, and advocates of total executive power. The point is not a subjective judgment about the intentions of the torturers. It is not about whether Cheney and Bush can be trusted. It is about whether any individual can be trusted with such power. In a republic based on the rule of law, the intentions of the torturers - whether good or bad - are utterly irrelevant. In the West, we assume that the intentions of our rulers are likely to be evil. That's what distinguishes the Anglo-American tradition from those who trust individuals to govern them, rather than those who trust the law to allow us to govern ourselves. The point is that no person in the United States should ever have the power to detain and torture another person without due process. Once you make an exception for one man, the rule of law is over. The Decider may decide out of his own benevolence not to torture again. But he can still torture. And the knowledge that he can, and the knowledge that he was never stopped, and the knowledge that he was able to distort the plain meaning of the law to mean whatever he wants it to mean is a precedent that is staggeringly dangerous.
I close with the words of a conservative who got it:
The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiations of the Convention [Against Torture]. It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.
- President Ronald Reagan