On Waterboarding and Torture

[lyonspotter]

The Attorney General has said that waterboarding our troops is “not torture in the legal sense because you’re not doing it with the intention of harming these people physically or mentally, all we’re trying to do is train them.” And this is not a former Attorney General, but Obama’s own AG Eric Holder, as cited here: http://corner.nationalreview.com

The right has gone to great lengths with this statement to get Cheney, et al off the hook for war crimes. I've heard a lot of comments like the following:

1) “If waterboarding can be done without inflicting severe pain or suffering, then waterboarding is not always torture.”

I am completely skeptical that waterboarding can be executed in military situations (and yield the desired results) without committing the antecedent of the above conditional statement. If waterboarding did not inflict severe pain or suffering, I am highly skeptical that it would work as a coercive tool in prying information from enemies intent on our destruction. Looking at things from a commonsensical angle, the fact that waterboarding indeed inflicts severe pain and suffering would in fact be the reason it is effective in training troops (more on this below) as well as frightening prisoners into confessing desired information. The threshold of pain must be intense enough to coerce the confession, to induce a complete betrayal of both cause and one’s military fellows… and so interrogators therefore must toe the line of pain infliction to the place on the continuum where a prisoner feels his only and best remaining choice is betrayal and confession. (That the confession of information he offers is factual is a different subject entirely, and whether something like waterboarding is both effective AND moral is another consideration entirely as well). A little water up the nose is not going to get it done when these individuals are willing to strap bombs to their stomachs or run airplanes through sky scrapers… It’s gonna take a lot of water.

2) “Severe pain or suffering is not something people volunteer for, unless they are masochists; severe pain or suffering is not something we inflict on our own troops for training purposes, for why would we cause prolonged harm to our own special forces?”

The issue from here on out becomes one of context. Let us say that a man, for whatever sadistic reason, forces his 12-year-old daughter to tread water in the icy Atlantic for 2 hours – mind you while naked and posing as shark bait. The man imposing this excruciatingly painful task against her will would rightfully find CPS on his front doorstep. However, the same very task is imposed upon Navy SEAL candidates, who willingly take on such circumstances. The intent is to determine the overall pain tolerance and strength of the men attempting to pass BUD/S tribulations. Without question, the icy water and corresponding hypothermia, fatigue, and fear of death are painful in both cases. In the case of the daughter, the imposed suffering is considered child abuse, while the SEAL candidate opts to embrace such great suffering as an indicator of his military qualification. Thus, in the case of the SEAL, we find a refutation at one and the same time of the claim that “severe pain or suffering is not something we inflict on our own troops for training purposes” and that only masochists volunteer for severe pain and suffering: the SEAL proves his worth through willingly enduring such pain and danger. (If the test were not excruciatingly painful, the test would fail to certify that the SEAL candidate is capable of immense pain tolerance).

The difference in context (between US military training versus the interrogation of a known terrorist) reveals a great deal as well: the US military authority imposes waterboarding on our special forces who willingly sign up for such procedures as part of personal training and endurance trials, as preparation for and simulation of what might be imposed by the enemy, an enemy that chops off the heads of United States’ servicemen. If the Navy SEAL cannot endure the above oceanic scenario, however, he is taken out of the water and sent home, having failed the tribulation, but not pushed to the brink of death except in his own choosing. In all such cases the ability to decline further pain is afforded. There is, of course, no such friendliness offered in the context of the imprisoned terrorist. We inflict this pain against his will and with the aggressive intent to coerce – hopefully with the more water poured comes the eventual breaking of his will – and it is in such light, in such a context, that the entire debate must hinge.

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