The Torture Debate
While I respect the opinion on those who insist that water boarding is torture, I would like to see a couple of elements added to the debate.
That of who has the moral high ground?
And what is torture?
I feel like we need to realize that we have captured very bad people who have done or planned very bad things against US citizens. The strange thing is, we’re willing to shoot or otherwise blow them up, but if caught alive, we have to treat them well?!
Most people can’t even define torture other than to say, “waterboarding is…and whenever anything else comes up we don’t like, that will be too.” John McCain, the hero of one side of the debate, was tortured in Vietnam. He had permanent damage done to his arms. That is torture. The “waterboarding is torture” crowd make me wonder if laying a hand on detainees is torture? Can you strike them? If so, how much? Is sleep deprivation torture? If so, at what point does it become so? Do our special forces and navy diving commandos undergo torture in their training? Oh, but it is by choice? Then is it not a psychological technique to waterboard or inflict severe discomfort? And discomfort it is, temporary at that. These people can walk away like they just got tasered.
And are terrorists’ actions in any way dictated by whether or not we subject them to water boarding or not when they’re caught? Not sure that is why they’ve been blowing things up for a couple of decades…
I’m all for less “aggressive” techniques if they are backed up by results, but when the case made in a liberal saturated media is that we should simply let ideals govern ourselves, it is unconvincing. Not a merit less argument by any means. Having the moral high ground indeed also hinges on how we treat detainees, but lets hear the case made for that more powerfully.
This article by Mark Davis on the subject clarifies some of my sentiments:
We have heard much from the portion of America that grows queasy at the thought of tough treatment for al-Qaeda detainees. But I’ll share what makes me queasy: my countrymen in tattered clothes perched at windows a thousand feet high against the Manhattan skyline, their lungs burning with jet fuel, making the decision to jump to their deaths because it was a better fate than what awaited them if they did not.
Against the backdrop of that memory, anyone worked up about the occasional, carefully targeted waterboarding is simply not serious about protecting our nation.