Calling it ‘torture’ waters down term
Published 11:59 am Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Have the moral absolutists sermonizing about the CIA’s interrogation of terrorists actually read the declassified interrogation memos? Judging from their one-dimensional condemnations, I’m guessing not. It’s ironic. I thought only narrow-minded “right-wing” simpletons believed in one-dimensional absolutes.
I’ve read several of the memos. They provide extensive (and largely unreported) detail regarding harsh interrogation: its legal justifications, rigorous criteria, strict safeguards and limitations, and extremely narrow scope of implementation. The techniques used are indeed brutal. To equate them with torture, however, is to hollow out the meaning of the word.
A Nazi concentration camp is torture. North Korean prison guards suspending 13-year-old Shin Dong-hyuk over a burning fire is torture. Saddam Hussein’s Fedayeen throwing bound and blindfolded victims off rooftops is torture. Al-Qaida “interrogators” popping out eyeballs with ice picks is torture.
It’s an offense against victims of real torture to equate their suffering to the fate of unrepentant terrorists who engage in ruthless disregard for the very rules of war they now appeal to for their self-preservation.
Only 28 detainees were subjected to coercive treatment. Only three were waterboarded. They were all hardcore terrorist leaders possessing high-value knowledge of impending attacks on you and me. Former CIA Director George Tenet wrote in his memoirs that these few interrogations yielded accurate intelligence that prevented “more than 20 (al-Qaida) plots” after conventional interrogation failed. It proved necessary and effective — period.
Necessity has compelled us to compromise the moral high ground before. During World War II, FDR ordered internment camps, secret domestic surveillance, detentions without trial, executions, and the firebombing of German and Japanese civilians. America’s moral compass survived intact — but only because America itself survived first.
Reed Purcell
Everett
