In a series
of earlier
posts, I delved into the pragmatic debate over whether
interrogation techniques such as waterboarding were effective at
extracting actionable intelligence from terrorists who otherwise
would not be willing to talk. But, clearly, for many people, this
is not the determining issue in the debate.
Citing a video in which Shep Smith used colorful language to
describe his stance that America should not use torture under any
circumstances, Andrew Sullivan,
added, "for Americans to be discussing if torture worked - if
it worked - is staggering." Now, a lot of people whose
moral judgment I respect have more or less expressed this view to
me, so I have no desire to belittle it.
But for me personally, I believe it is morally justifiable to
waterboard a terrorist such as KSM if doing so is necessary to
save the lives of thousands of innocent Americans. When I think
of all of the lives that were shattered on 9/11, all of the
fathers and sons and brothers and sisters who perished because of
a deranged ideology that celebrates death, there's no way in good
conscience I could say that it's worth suffering a repeat of that
attack in order to protect a terrorist from waterboarding, sleep
deprivation, or some of the other techniques that were employed.
Now, some people may respond that such a scenario never plays out
in real life and that we didn't gain useful intelligence that we
didn't already learn through other means. As I've noted
previously, I'm open to persuasion on that point. But that brings
us back to the debate over whether or not using such techniques
worked, and moves us away from the narrower moral question as to
whether it would be justifiable to use those techniques if they
were effective.
One way in which Sullivan, and other absolutists, try to convey
the immorality of waterboarding is to note that it was a
technique used by the Chinese communists and the Khemer Rouge.
However, even if we concede that waterboarding is torture, it's
important to note that not all forms of torture are created
equal, and we have to take into account the reasons why such
techniques were employed. After all, the Nazis, like Americans,
used guns, but they were used in different ways to achieve
different ends.
The website
of Cambodia's Killing Fields Memorial Museum describes Toul Sleng
prison (aka S-21):
The families of offenders were often brought to the prison as
well in order to keep the deaths of their loved one from being
avenged. Almost all of the prisoners had worked in the armed
forces, factories, or administration. Upon arrival at S-21, the
prisoners were photographed, tortured until they confessed to
whatever crimes their captors charged them with, and then
executed in Choeung Ek or the Killing Fields.
A recent AFP
story on a the confession of the regime's prison chief
explained:
Only a handful of people are known to have survived their time
at Tuol Sleng prison, which is now a genocide museum lined with
photographs of some of the more than 15,000 men, women and
children who died there….
"From the day it claimed its first victim, the policy was that
no one could leave S21 alive," [prosecutor Robert] Petit told
the court.
Waterboarding may have been one technique used against the
prisoners in Cambodia, but it was far from the harshest
technique:
"Victims were beaten with rattan sticks and whips,
electrocuted, had toenails and finger nails pulled out, were
suffocated with plastic bags forcibly tied over their heads and
were stripped naked and had their genitals electrocuted," Petit
said.
While Sullivan likens the Bush administration to other
authoritarian regimes based on very narrow factors, it's
important to draw a distinction. Bush wasn't routinely rounding
up political opponents like members of MoveOn.org, Code Pink or,
say, Sullivan, beating them until they confessed to being
traitors, and then executing them. The idea was to employ
techniques such as waterboarding and sleep deprivation to prevent
future attacks against innocent civilians, and Bush made his
decisions in the wake of the worst attack on U.S. soil in the
nation's history. If somebody wants to argue that the
interrogation program was an utter failure and that it damaged
our reputation while producing little value, that's one thing.
But calling it "staggering" to think that Americans would be open
to the idea of waterboarding terrorists to prevent attacks on
innocent civilians is another.
