If waterboarding isn’t that bad, then why do we use it?
This is what I don’t understand about conservatives who think it’s just “putting water on their faces,” as talk show host Mancow stated, before undergoing waterboarding and admitting it is torture (video inserted below) . I agree with Talking Points Memo that it is surprising that Mancow was surprised. In addition to just being surprised at the ignorance involved in such statements, I am perplexed by the coherence of this stance on interrogation. If it is really “just” pouring water on someone’s face, then why is it so especially important that we use the method? Why in the world would it be effective at all (as pro-torture advocates claim)? It seems to me that if it is not harsh treatment or torture, then it wouldn’t be used. By denying the severity of the method, advocates insult the intelligence of the specialists who develop the methods.
To me, a much more respectable position goes something like this: Of course it’s torture, and I don’t care.
As I’ve said before, I think torture can be justified much more easily than war. I’m pretty suspicious of both, but how some people can support just war theory and not an analogous just torture theory, I’ll probably never figure out.
Watch the mind-numbing asininity here:
I wonder if we could just give these poor “enemy combatants”–otherwise known as our “neighbor”–good ol’ fashioned swirlies.
And perhaps there’s a subtle but appreciable distinction between torture and death or injury (the costs of war). I, for one, tend to think there is. If such is the case, just war theory in its many versions is justifiable–that is, if it ever was.
If war were just widespread physical torture-in-the-real-sense, then of course it wouldn’t be a credible justification for war.