George Giroux lives in Ketchum.
By GEORGE GIROUX
In his column last week (Nov. 7, Idaho Mountain Express), David Reinhard joins the unconscionable effort to excuse waterboarding—a means of torture our nation's leaders have admitted to authorizing and which our security agencies have perpetrated on detainees of the terror war. In defense of the indefensible, Reinhard presents the seriously flawed ticking-time-bomb scenario.
The ticking-time-bomb (TTB) scenario is the thought experiment that supposedly reveals to us the clear-cut case for justifying our nation's use of "extreme interrogation techniques." The impending doom inherent in the TTB scenario is the stuff of TV terror thrillers. It compares the loss of countless innocent lives with the temporary "discomfort" of a crazy Jihadist. Given the setup, it's natural to side with those who claim we should stop at nothing to get the information we need to keep Americans secure.
One of the many flaws in the TTB rational for torture is that it is unfailingly presented in a way that assumes waterboarding will work to save the day in every case. But what if it doesn't? What if our nation's interrogators don't get the information they need by nearly drowning the suspect? What next awful "extreme interrogation technique" would you suggest is now also justified? Quick! The bomb is ticking! Are you prepared to let them go even further?
I pray that we, as a people, haven't come to that. I pray that our fear will not lead us that far astray. Follow the ticking-time-bomb scenario to any one of its possible conclusions and find there a justification for just about any sort of inhumane abuse—not just waterboarding. That can't be right. That's the stuff of a police state. It's simply un-American.
The TTB scenario is particularly flawed because it is too specific. If this one dramatic situation can legitimize waterboarding as a means of interrogation, then which other countless scenarios also warrant it, or bar it? And who are we going to trust to be the judge? This slippery slope just keeps getting steeper. After all, its terrorists we're dealing with and there's always the possibility that they know about some ticking time bomb out there somewhere, right?
The way I see it, if there is a ticking time bomb, it's strapped to some fundamental part of our nation's consciousness. Its fuse is burning and it threatens a pillar that for generations has held up our nation as a symbol for the great struggle toward justice and fair play even during wartime. Clearly the Jihadists want to destroy our country. Also clear is our duty to keep them from succeeding. I submit though, that if we stoop to the depths of torturing our enemies (and make no mistake about it, waterboarding has historically been prosecuted as torture), we lower ourselves to the brutal level of our enemies. Like them, we justify our inhumane behavior by proclaiming our enemies to be the greatest of all enemies, this battle the greatest of all battles.
In essence, when the presenters of the TTB scenario use it as a justification for torture, they make the case that we can only beat our enemy by becoming more like them. If we listen to these masters of spin and turn a blind eye toward government-sanctioned torture, we will seriously undermine the foundation of this country's soul. If we, as a people and its government, are so quick to abandon our longstanding fight for justice and fair play in exchange for the flimsy rhetorical devise that is TTB, then we find ourselves in serious jeopardy of handing the Jihadists a success beyond their hopes.
Reinhard ends his column by saying that if Americans want to put a stop to waterboarding, they should get Congress to outlaw it. We don't need to do that. Torture is already illegal. What we need to do is stop kidding ourselves and call waterboarding what it has always been called—torture.
