We’ve discussed before how incredibly awful the waterboarding torture technique truly is. As Malcolm Nance– former master instructor and chief of training at the U.S. Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, California — noted: “Waterboarding is not a simulation. Unless you have been strapped down to the board, have endured the agonizing feeling of the water overpowering your gag reflex, and then feel your throat open and allow pint after pint of water to involuntarily fill your lungs, you will not know the meaning of the word.”
This is what came to mind when I watched this chilling video of Christopher Hitchens being waterboarded, after to took up a challenge from the editor of Vanity Fair. Watch the video. It seems so innocuous. Hitchens is tied to a bench, and hooded, his large bulging belly quite evident. The “demonstrators” place objects in his hands, and he is told to drop them if the stress becomes too great. They also give him a code word (“red”) that, if uttered, everything stops. Then it begins. They place a small towel over his face, and take a big plastic jug of water, like the ones we have seen a million times in restaurants and cafeterias. They pour what looks like a small quantity. Stop. Another small amount. And a few more times. Just as I was wondering when the real torture begins, Hitchens starts panicking and drops the objects in his hands. He is untied, and can barely sit up. He is visibly shaken, completely freaked out.
In an interview, Hitchens confirms Nance: what he went through was no simulation, he was being drowned slowly. He noted a “smothering feeling as well a drowning feeling”. All he wanted to do was make it stop, he could think of nothing else. He actually thought he had uttered the code word when he had not. And now, he admits to panic attacks and nightmares of being smothered, something he was never afflicted with before. Truly chilling.
In another revelation, the New York Times is reporting today that Bush administration’s menu of torture techniques was lifted verbatum from a 1957 study of Chinese Communist techniques used to extract confessions from American prisoners during the Korean War. Even worse, the point of these techniques was to solicit false confessions. In perhaps the understatement of the year, the article notes that “officials who drew on the SERE program appear to have been unaware that it had been created as a result of concern about false confessions by American prisoners.”
Back then, these techniques were considered torture, undertaken by an odious regime. But now, they are merely “enhanced interrogation techniques” and are important tools of national security. Moral relativism in action.
I don’t think there is any question that waterboarding is indeed torture. And even if one could argue that it is something less than troture, who really wants to flirt with crossing the line and supporting an intrinsically evil act?
I, for one, have no interest in such line drawing.
Dayum, Hitch is serious in what he does. I’ve liked him for many years,
It is a good article. The views among those that support our in Iraq, like Hitchens, and the Global war on terror are quite diverse on this subject.
Michael Yon had similar thoughts that he put out just last week.
Its hard to watch the video. At the same time its hard to know if this is torture. If this were interrogation it would be. If it were training it wouldn’t be. Since it was being done as an example, which is it?
This was “training” of a sort, Phillip, and it was indeed torture (if not, why is Hitchens having bad dreams?)
The use of waterboarding, even in a training setting, is intrinsically evil, and is always and everywhere wrong.
Actually, many on this blog disagree with you about there being no difference. Such a distinction is also being made on Shea’s blog on the same topic today. Some have pointed out there that not being able to distinguish between the difference in training and interrogation is a sign of moral incompetence.
The act itself is intrinsically wrong – what is incompetent about that moral judgment?
The act seems to be of matter and form. The matter is waterboarding itself. The form are the circumstances (intent?) of who is doing it. At least that is the way it was explained to me. Others will explain the distinction better.
Phillip – at the end of the day (or more exactly, at the end of the life) I somehow doubt that the Almighty will entertain responses that begin, “Well, technically, Lord…”
I don’t think they’re technicalities. They’re aspects of the moral act. But again others will explain it better.
Fond as some of you lawyers might be at that idea, BTW (I kid)
Matt,
Torture may be intrinsically evil, but I can’t accept that waterboarding in a training exercise is intrinsically evil (as long as the training exercise is to prepare someone who might be tortured, not to train torturers).
If you remember Lawrence Olivier drilling Dustin Hoffmann’s teeth without anesthesia in Marathon Man, had that happened in real life, it would definitely have been torture. But I don’t think you could argue that a dentist drilling teeth is intrinsically evil.
It seems clear to me that for a particular act to be torture (and as such intrinsically evil), it must be intended to be torture.
Waterboarding a trainee can reasonably be predicted to produce psychological trauma in the trainee: it is not permissable to do evil that good may result.
Analogy: It’s not ok to perform abortion, even if you’re a med student learning to do the procedure.
Should add: “…in a way that assures the safety of the mother.”
Matt,
You would have to weigh the potential harm against the intended good of preparing someone who might really be waterboarded or otherwise tortured. I think it is somewhat analogous to vaccination, in which there is obvious damage (a needle into the skin), potential damage (a low but real risk of side effects), but then immunity from the disease, which is a benefit to the individual and the community. Some forms of vaccination actually produce a real infection. One could argue that deliberately infecting someone with a disease is intrinsically evil. But I don’t believe there are moral objections (at least within Catholicism) to vaccinations.
This is a side issue, but I don’t think you could accuse the people who waterboarded Christopher Hitchins of committing an intrinsically evil act. Even deliberately killing someone is not an intrinsically evil act (for example, in self-defense). I am not sure appealing to “intrinsically evil acts” is really very helpful in almost any discussion. Evil is evil.
David – But in the case of vaccination, isn’t the risk of getting the real disease an unsought possibility, and not the object of the act? The object of waterboarding a trainee is to deliberately inflict trauma-inducing panic, and thus prepare him for the possibility of being waterboarded by an enemy. The evil (trauma-inducing panic) is directly intended.
Your phrase “really be[ing] waterboarded” kind of begs the question, I think. If the act is wrong, why you’re doing it, or even the setting of the act (training versus performing the act on a prisoner), doesn’t make it right, yes?
Someone who can’t tell the difference between what Hitchens went through and what a prisoner goes through in an actually hostile environment without any code words or objects to drop is a moral incompetent. That doesn’t mean that waterboarding isn’t torture even when done in this manner though. There are different sorts of murder also, and one has to be a moral incompetent to be incapable of telling the difference between them. I think the tired ‘gotcha’ game Phillip has played on this point, since I first noticed his comments, long ago jumped the shark.
Didn’t say there’s no difference, Zippy: I said torture is evil, and the possible circumstances of that torture don’t make it not evil.
Matt:
I should have been clear that I was responding to Phillip’s statement:
Some have pointed out there that not being able to distinguish between the difference in training and interrogation is a sign of moral incompetence.
Although Phillip’s tone is ironic, I indeed affirm that not being able to tell the difference between interrogation and training is a sign of moral incompetence.
What about tortured logic ? :)
Matt – As far as can’t-do-evil-to-achieve good goes …. isn’t that how people justify God ? “Sure it was God’s will that 6 million jews be murdered but look at xyz” (No, I can’t come up with a reason, heck I can’t even come up with a ‘greater good’ for the 8 year old girl being raped so violently her anus came out her vagina (Supreme Court case)). This is where the old saying comes from. “God’s only excuse is that he doesn’t exist”. The old-school Jewish explanation of “bad dog, no biscuit” makes more sense than looking for a ‘greater good’ as the Maccabees concocted (since they deemed themselves good, instead of asking “WTF ?”, they came up with the “yes, but in the long run….” – or, as Heinrich Heine called it, the Eiapopeia vom Himmel – the lullaby of heaven)
(Self-inflicted waterboarding is no joke. Participants risk the following side-effects: a severe increase in self-righteousness and self-pity; a tendency to write really boring copy; and heavy fits of moral outrage.)
http://www.amconmag.com/blog/
Actually Zippy, here’s a post where people clearly argue that waterboarding in training is not torture:
http://vox-nova.com/2008/02/07/white-house-waterboarding-is-legal/
Also you can check out Shea’s blog for Dec 17th, 2007 where the distinction is clearly drawn by several.
Also see CAEI, Jan 10, 08
Just one comment from the combox at CAEI pointing out the dilemma:
“Waterboarding in training (though it might well be immoral) isn’t waterboarding a prisoner. The use of the same word as a shorthand convenience for speaking doesn’t make two clearly distinct kinds of acts into the same kind of act.
Waterboarding a prisoner is torture.
Maybe you could build a machine and waterboard yourself. That wouldn’t be torture, though it might for all I know be immoral. Waterboarding during training has greater resemblance to self-waterboarding than to prisoner-waterboarding.”
Phillip:
I understand that some people argue that waterboarding during training is not torture. (That might even be true, though I think it is far from a certainty).
That isn’t really here nor there though, and doesn’t modify anything I said in my previous comments in this thread.
Maybe. FYI the quote I give above is from you.
Also, it seems tha you now have some doubt distinguishing between interrogation and training.
FYI the quote I give above is from you.
That is good, because I agree with it.
…it seems tha you now have some doubt distinguishing between interrogation and training.
I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever about distinguishing between interrogation and training. They are obviously, manifestly different. I can’t imagine what one would have to do to one’s mind, even if one had only the cognitive capability of a chimpanzee, in order to be incapable of distinguishing them.
Whether waterboarding in training is or isn’t moral is to my mind at least an arguable question. Whether waterboarding a prisoner in interrogation is or isn’t moral is not an arguable question.
You seem to be under the impression that moral reality cares about your semantic games. It doesn’t.
Actually I initially agreed that in both cases it was torture. Then I came to accept that it was torture in interrogation and not in training based on arguments given as I cited. I have no problems distinguishing between training and interrogation. You do.
I’m sure that Mr. H., atheist, will be fair and equitable in his ‘journalism’, and voluntarily experience the jihadi’s favored torture technique – beheading. Or, he may voluntarily expertience Obama’s fave human right: scissors puncture base of skull, suction out brains = partial birth abortion.
I get his point and your calumnies as well.
I imagine school’s out for all of you. Have a lot of free time, now?
Here’s your assignment for Independence Day eve: Write out the 500 reasons, in addition to torture, you hate the USA.
I have no problems distinguishing between training and interrogation. You do.
You seem to think that just saying that will make it so. I have never found the differences even slightly puzzling or obscure.
Shouldn’t we, as always, be asking what the object of the act is? Having sex with one’s spouse is virtuous. Having sex with somebody who is not one’s spouse is gravely immoral.
Phillip,
What zippy and I and others have replied to is the contention that one believes that waterboarding a captive is torture and thus intrinscially evil, then one must also accept that waterboarding for training is also intrinsically evil and oppose it with the same ferocity. If not, then that reveals that waterboarding isn’t intrinsically immoral, and thus isn’t torture, and the morality surrounding it is hopelessly clouded, so we should get off the Bush Administration’s back.
This is nonsense.
John,
That is not what I have said. I’ve just said that waterboarding for training, as many have argued, is not torture and thus what Hitchens did is also likely not torture. That’s all.
But to follow along your line, if its use in training is torture then we should oppose it in training with equal ferocity. If it is immoral but not as grave as torture, then we should still oppose it though perhaps not at the level of torture.
…if its use in training is torture then we should oppose it in training with equal ferocity.
Even that isn’t true, really. That something is evil doesn’t imply that we should oppose it with equal ferocity to everything else that is evil. We should oppose the legalization/normalization of torture ferociously, for example, and I have personally opposed it with what some might characterize as a degree of ferocity. But those who contend that the legalization/normalization of abortion is more grave, and ought to be opposed with even greater ferocity, do have a point.
That argument has often been misused, amounting basically to ‘shut up about torture as long as abortion is legal’. That is obviously claptrap. We can’t talk about everything at once. But that doesn’t mean that, properly construed, it doesn’t have validity.