Waterboarding
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With the Mukasey hearings going on, torture is back in the news.
Some people have been saying that it's time for a national debate on torture, but a letter writer to the WSJ today had a better, more efficient idea. Building on the letter writer's idea, I would say that anyone who has written a memo explaining (especially in technical legalese) why waterboarding (simulated drowning) is NOT torture should just get to experience it. They could decline the experience, of course, which would be telling in and of itself. If they agreed to experience it, it should be in a very controlled environment, where they could signal "stop" at any time, etc.
Even under such controlled conditions, I bet 99% of people who experience it would call waterboarding "torture"...but of course it would seem even worse to anyone who experienced it under "less controlled" conditions. However, I have never experienced it either, so I am guessing here. If I am wrong--if people experience it and say: "That absolutely wasn't torture!" then all the better for them: they would have that much more credibility in their memos.
People justify torture for many reasons, including anger and frustration against our enemies. But John McCain said it best in a November 2005 Newsweek essay--I reprinted two of his paragraphs in a blog entry at the time, and it's worth reading those two paragraphs again, below:
"Our enemies [in Vietnam] didn't adhere to the Geneva Conventions. Many of my comrades were subjected to very cruel, very inhumane and degrading treatment, a few of them unto death. But every one of us—every single one of us—knew and took great strength from the belief that we were different from our enemies, that we were better than them, that we, if the roles were reversed, would not disgrace ourselves by committing or approving such mistreatment of them. That faith was indispensable not only to our survival, but to our attempts to return home with honor. For without our honor, our homecoming would have had little value to us.
....
"Those who return to us and those who give their lives for us are entitled to that honor. And those of us who have given them this onerous duty are obliged by our history, and the many terrible sacrifices that have been made in our defense, to make clear to them that they need not risk their or their country's honor to prevail; that they are always—through the violence, chaos and heartache of war, through deprivation and cruelty and loss—they are always, always, Americans, and different, better and stronger than those who would destroy us."
Some people have been saying that it's time for a national debate on torture, but a letter writer to the WSJ today had a better, more efficient idea. Building on the letter writer's idea, I would say that anyone who has written a memo explaining (especially in technical legalese) why waterboarding (simulated drowning) is NOT torture should just get to experience it. They could decline the experience, of course, which would be telling in and of itself. If they agreed to experience it, it should be in a very controlled environment, where they could signal "stop" at any time, etc.
Even under such controlled conditions, I bet 99% of people who experience it would call waterboarding "torture"...but of course it would seem even worse to anyone who experienced it under "less controlled" conditions. However, I have never experienced it either, so I am guessing here. If I am wrong--if people experience it and say: "That absolutely wasn't torture!" then all the better for them: they would have that much more credibility in their memos.
People justify torture for many reasons, including anger and frustration against our enemies. But John McCain said it best in a November 2005 Newsweek essay--I reprinted two of his paragraphs in a blog entry at the time, and it's worth reading those two paragraphs again, below:
"Our enemies [in Vietnam] didn't adhere to the Geneva Conventions. Many of my comrades were subjected to very cruel, very inhumane and degrading treatment, a few of them unto death. But every one of us—every single one of us—knew and took great strength from the belief that we were different from our enemies, that we were better than them, that we, if the roles were reversed, would not disgrace ourselves by committing or approving such mistreatment of them. That faith was indispensable not only to our survival, but to our attempts to return home with honor. For without our honor, our homecoming would have had little value to us.
....
"Those who return to us and those who give their lives for us are entitled to that honor. And those of us who have given them this onerous duty are obliged by our history, and the many terrible sacrifices that have been made in our defense, to make clear to them that they need not risk their or their country's honor to prevail; that they are always—through the violence, chaos and heartache of war, through deprivation and cruelty and loss—they are always, always, Americans, and different, better and stronger than those who would destroy us."
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