Waterboarding: A Demo
I am still processing what I saw in this video and hope to offer some further thoughts, later. What do you see? What do you think?
(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan.)
UPDATE (14 November 2007): I apologize to recent visitors who encountered an outdated link to this video by Kaj Larsen. There is also the uncut version of his waterboarding demonstration. As video journalism goes, Larsen's exposé is still the most serious treatment I have seen.
3 comments:
Welcome back, Steve! I check your blog every day for updates. This is a very informative post. It takes "waterboarding" out of the realm of literary description and shows what the practice entails. I thought Dershowitz was a very able advocate for his "warranted use of torture" position. I found Kayyem a bit less persuasive. Whatever the case, the reporter certainly displayed courage in going through this progress a second time.
It is my opinion that the person undergoing this method of interrogation is in complete control of his circumstances. He can choose to endure the interrogation or he can choose to tell the interrogators the information they request.
The demonstration was indeed difficult to watch and I personally would not want to undergo such techniques yet I would have to decide if my honor to withhold information from my enemy was greater than my will to live. I would have to decide whether or not I was willing to resign myself to the fact that I would die before giving any information to my captors and then act accordingly.
I am not aware of anyone who was killed undergoing this method of interrogation. The results of this interrogation method may leave emotional scars but not physical ones. I would hope that the people performing this method are trained well enough to know how far it can be taken without causing death. This is far more humane than seeing a beheading using a sword, a firing squad, dragging a soldier behind a moving truck through the streets of town or methods that result in permanent physical damage to a person.
I also believe that if this method saves yet one innocent American life, that the technique is justified and acceptable. War is never pretty. We grew up with the notion that all American soldiers act with a moral character that is above our enemies. The dirty little secret is in war, you do what ever is necessary to win. Only through the complete devastation of your enemy can peace be established.
Thanks, Bob, for your comment.
Two responses:
1. One problem with your argument, as I see it, is that the interrogator does not necessary know if the detainee has the knowledge in question. In fact, I think it is often not the case. Your argument assumes the questionable proposition that the detainees does in fact have the knowledge you think s/he has. That is a very, very rare case where you know that someone knows something and are withholding it. That works on "24" and other fictionalized worlds but the real world of detention and interrogation usually operates under circumstances of far less certainty.
2. I do not at all subscribe to the proposition you state at the conclusion of your comment--"The dirty little secret is in war, you do what ever is necessary to win. Only through the complete devastation of your enemy can peace be established." It is completely antithetical to the Just War tradition from Augustine through Grotius. Just War tradition argues that restraint of war is possible and indeed the only honorable path for people of good conscience. So if you are going to argue that destroying individual lives through 'tough interrogation' is acceptable because we ought to annihilate our enemies, then we cannot have a very fruitful dialogue this. It is one thing to argue that this or that technique is within the acceptable moral limits of warfare; it is another thing to say there are no such limits and that victory is the only goal. That, Mr. Fowler, is precisely the contentious moral premise our terrorist enemies embrace--and which we must reject, if we are not to become like them.
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