Good enough for government work.
“Freedom is not free.” All too frequently during the Iraq war we heard this phrase used by hawks to justify the invasion. There is truth to this statement, the real reasons for the Iraq war not-withstanding. Freedom does require vigilance, but often in ways we do not want to consider.
There has been much controversy over the recent release of memos revealing that the US policy of water-boarding was not only used on many occasions by numerous individuals, but that it was also institutionally encouraged by the chain of command. Water boarding has been in the public eye for some time, but now we know it was more than the result of an over-zealous interrogator. This disturbing reality has raised hard questions: Should we prosecute? Do we pardon the offenders? Do we do nothing?
Our nation has long held the belief that torture is wrong and that any one who practices it is contemptible and despicable. But we face a moral dilemma: here we have men who we think may hold information that will vital to public safety. Does that justify pouring water into their lungs to make them talk? If so, why stop there? Why not shove bamboo shoots under their fingernails or hook car batteries up to their genitals if it reveals nefarious plans? Do not the ends justify the means if it saves even one American life?
Here the supporters of water-boarding blanch. If we approve of water-boarding, the logical progression to more violent means is unavoidable. To justify the practice, they re-classify water-boarding. Now no longer “torture,” it is euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation,” which sounds like a feature on a new car. (See how marketing-speak leaks into our national vocabulary?) With this linguistic firewall between what we want to do and what we shouldn’t do, we can water-board as many people as we want.
But that solid barrier merely semantics, a construct that can be built and un-built in the span of an official press conference. Once we allow one form of cruel and unusual interrogation, we can push ahead to even more brutal methods unhampered by ethical standards. And once we allow the government to torture one person in the name of national security, we implicitly allow them to torture anyone, including you and me.
“But what if it’s your child who dies in a preventable terrorist attack?!” you might hear shouted by cable pundits. This argument is unassailable. Even if one ethically opposed to torture wouldn’t dare wish death upon his own child. Ah, but here is the rub.
For most of our nation’s short history, the cost of protecting our freedoms was borne mainly by our soldiers. Those on the home front may have made many sacrifices for the war effort, but rarely were their own lives directly at risk. With the advent of modern terror, this has all changed. As former President Bush intoned repeatedly, we are no longer fighting a traditional war. Everyone is now an enemy combatant – including us.
This new type of war does not justify torture on any level. To the contrary, we must be more vigilant to stop it from ever being done. To allow torture brings our government one step closer to tyranny. I do not wish to die in a terror attack because the US refuses to torture somebody. But to quickly resort to such inhumanity just to save my own ass is pure cowardice. I would be willing to pay the ultimate price to ensure we remain true to our ideals and our society remains free.
No one said being American was going to be easy.
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(Scene: Friday, 2 a.m. underground at a Brooklyn subway station. The hallway is sparsely populated by a few lone late-night revelers.)