WWII POW Remembers Waterboarding
Joshua Foust on Mar 04 2008 at 2:07 pm | Filed under: Around the Web
He calls it “ghastly, quite the worst experience of my life.” Also, the Japanese Captain in charge of the waterboarded was executed for war crimes.
But I mean, it’s just “enhanced interrogation” for bloodthirsty terrorists, right? Who really cares?
Update: The Times Online moved the story, and I couldn’t find it. Original link, and similar commentary, by the good country-serving folks at Abu Muqawama.
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Boy it’s fun being morally superior, isn’t it?!?
Oh, and BTW, nice link … goes nowhere.
Unless the link was supposed to go to an article explaining that the war crime the Japanese Captain was executed for was waterboarding and NOT a laundry list of other offenses, I’d say this post is deliberately misleading.
Actually, it is—especially when it IS morally superior to be opposed to torture. Since when is it defensible?
And Synova, the Times moved the link - I linked above to the blog where I found it, and they excerpt it. The story itself is not about the Japanese Captain, though it does mention his involvement in the waterboarding of British and Australian POWs is what led to his conviction for war crimes and subsequent hanging. But that is a sidenote: the story itself is about how horrific the act is, and how that man eventually worked up the courage to find one of his captors and forgive him. Which is uplifting, but still, and I’m shocked I have to keep repeating this, does not make it okay to torture… ever.
Please, Josh. We all know what you’re attempting to do here and it’s neither morally superior nor in line with your ability to make a salient point.
It will never cease to amaze me that when you have a chance to state a valid argument you choose “morally-superior snark” instead. Why? Are you afraid of an actual debate on the issue? Can you not handle reasonable opinions contrary to your own? What’s the deal?
I think noting that we used to execute people for waterboarding at war crimes tribunals is a pretty damned salient point, Michael. I throw snark at this topic because it will never cease to amaze me people still defend what is so obviously indefensible.
I say bring on a debate. Quite visibly no one commented when I posted the interview with the FBI interrogator stating boldly that not only does torture not work, but that it ruins our moral position in the eyes of everyone else (Craig Murray, badly written book or no, went basically crazy trying to oppose the systemic use of torture and torture renditions in Uzbekistan). And what’s worse, and this matters coming from him because he actually hunted Bin Laden for many years, he says the “ticking bomb” scenario so often toted out as a reasonable hypothetical to enable the use of torture simply does not exist. It never has. And it is difficult to imagine a scenario in which it can.
There are countless other examples of this, including the horrendously incompetent ways “enhanced interrogation” was foisted upon agencies that have never conducted interrogations (the CIA, for example), and then placed in units where interrogation is most likely to lead to abuse (NCO).
I could go on, if you’d prefer. And if you think, beyond it being deeply morally offensive, ineffective, and enacted by incompetents, there is a lot of argument to be made here, please bring it on.
I followed the link and read where the guy said that two others were tortured to death and thrown in the latrine.
The implication is that the war crime that led to being hanged was waterboarding (which, frankly, doesn’t sound like what we’ve ever had described to us other than that water was involved) and not *other* crimes, such as torturing prisoners to death.
It seems to be… oh, look… when it happened to us we thought it was bad enough we hanged the guy for war crimes…
That’s dishonest.
I watched the interview (or at least part of it) with the FBI guy. I’m willing to say that he knows what he’s talking about concerning his own experiences. That “ticking bomb” never happens though…. sure it does. I recall an account of a soldier in Iraq who saw someone place a package on an air conditioner. He physically tackled that person, pressed his pistol to the guys temple, and screamed at him what was the package? The man confessed that the package *was* a bomb. The building was evacuated. No one was hurt… except maybe the person who put the package on the air conditioner.
Making someone believe they are going to die is not allowed. It’s against the rules. So the GI broke the rules.
Now… is a ticking time bomb scenario going to apply when everyone has time to transport a prisoner somewhere, assemble expert interrogators, and set up waterboarding? No, probably not.
I do have to wonder, though… this year long process the FBI guy described… was the information they eventually obtained worth the expense?
Maybe, what we ought to do, is not bother interrogating at all.
Synova, I’d need to hear more about this GI who was trying to defend his unit (did this actually happen? If so, what happened to the soldier who was yelling?). Because this is most certainly NOT against actions on the battlefield, nor is that kind of action considered torture. A uniformed solider on patrol has a completely different set of actions at his disposal than the deliberate utilization of a technique meant to induce drowning on a captive, or the ways in which humiliation and dehumanizing treatment was used in Abu Ghraib (i.e. once they were removed from the battlefield and were in custody).
Frankly, I doubt your story. A brief google brought up this story, in which a GI got REWARDED for defending his unit in a combat situation. Because he did not break any rules, nor did he apply anything that could be considered torture. Also, he tackled the guy and yelled at him… he did not induce drowning, or pull fingernails, or beat the man until he confessed. Apples and oranges.
Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, for example, whom we all know was one of the “only” three water board victims (that the government will admit to), was not on the battlefield. His front door was kicked down and he was arrested. Then, in U.S. custody, he was tortured. That’s what this kind of debate is about.
Bullshit. You “throw snark” to signal your moral superiority, as you admitted. In addition, you have not shown any evidence that we’ve executed people for waterboarding (which Synova pretty clearly pointed out).
Absolute statements don’t necessarily generate debate, but argument from entrenched positions. Especially statements that something “never happens.” How could he possibly know that? If Mohammed Atta had been detained on 9/10 pursuant to a tip that something big was in the works, do you really think that would not have been a “ticking time-bomb” scenario?
And, aside from the question of whether waterboarding should be considered torture at all, if “torture” does not work, then why does it ever get used? Just because people are evil? Does that really make sense to you? Do you think that Kalid Sheik Mohammed would agree that it doesn’t work?
The premises buried in your snark don’t lend your posts to debate. They instead lead to shouting matches over whose morals are indeed superior. That does not interest me.
Moreover, while I have quite clearly stated that waterboarding is illegal under current law, I notice that you didn’t bother to comment on the moral aspects that I tried to elicit with this post. Does that mean that you don’t want to debate. I don’t think that’s true, but using your logic it must be, correct?
That’s not an opening for a debate. It’s a statement that only your position (with it’s embedded premises) is the right one, and there is no argument to be had about it. Clearly you are not going to be convinced that there are any reasonable arguments to the contrary, are you? Judging by that statement, there’s nothing to debate. So, once again, we’re left with you wagging your morally superior finger at the rest of us lesser beings who haven’t come around to your enlightened position. Excuse me if I reject your preaching.
So, I forget, are all questions of morality automatically up for debate? If I take a strong anti-murder stance but don’t leave the floor open to debate, am I being preachy and snarky? Must we open every such question to reasonable arguments to the contrary?
Because that’s the argument you’re making, since I’m pretty sure we agree torture is a horrendous practice that should have remained outlawed.
I’m packaging it wrong. Fine: I don’t allow for enough debate over practices I find morally and pragmatically reprehensible. I freely confess to preaching about the immorality of torture. But I maintain there are some issues on which we cannot (or perhaps should not, if we value ourselves as moral beings) budge.
They are unless you’ve got a big book of moral absolutes handy (hint: some people think they do, whether they call it the Torah, Koran or Bible). If we don’t debate morals, they cease being normative statements of behavior (”one should act”), and instead become laws (”one shall act”) without any basis in our everyday lives. In the process, we lose that internal compass that we call a conscience, and modify our behavior out of fear of legal reprisal instead. In short, we lose our moral agency.
So yeah, I think questions of morality are up for debate.
You? Probably. Most people? Not necessarily.
You bring up the moral case against murder, but I wonder if you’ve really thought about that. Is it as absolute as you think? What is the moral that makes murder wrong, and where does it come from? I’m guessing that you’ll say something along the lines of “no one has the right to take another’s life without just cause” or some other, secularly based libertarian answer. Fine, but what constitutes just cause? Who gets to decide, and based on what underlying logic/morality/principles/rule of law?
Taking it further, is the death penalty justified for a murder? Presumably you would agree that the person murdered would have had the right to kill his assailant, so why would it be wrong for the State to employ that right in his stead? Is abortion murder? Why not? If you believe that “life” is not one’s own until the moment of birth, such that one has no right to be free of an unjustified taking of it prior to fully emerging from the vaginal walls, what is it that magically happens at that moment in order to bestow that right upon you? Why is it murder on one side of Mother, but a simple medical procedure on the other?
These are exactly the sorts of moral questions that can’t be fleshed out and discussed when one side presumes their answers to them are correct, and that no other answers can possibly be correct. That is where moral superiority comes in, and that is where we begin to lose our way.
Of course we must! Otherwise your moral stance is based on faith, not reason.
Why would anyone be afraid of reasonable arguments? How can you be so incredibly sure you are right about a moral issue, that when confronted with a viable argument counter to your thinking, you reject it out of hand? If it’s reasonable, then by definition it should be considered in any rational discussion.
By that, I don’t mean to claim that any argument to the contrary is automatically reasonable.
Although we basically agree on torture, I’m not sure that we agree on what should be included as “torture.” As to the banishment of its practice in all circumstances whatsoever, I must admit that I’m less inclined to agree to such an absolute regarding our enemies who either cannot or will not reciprocate. That does not mean I think we should be torturing terrorists, mind you. Only that I’m willing to entertain arguments as to why we might consider it, as well as arguments as to what really is “torture.” These are difficult questions in my view, that cannot be easily decided based on platitudes and moral pronouncements from on high.
But as I think I’ve shown above, “valu[ing] ourselves as moral beings” means very different things to different people. It’s fine that you don’t think we should “budge” on particular issues, but how do you sell your position as the morally correct one to those who are undecided or opposed to you? Through rational argument, entertaining questions about the soundness of your position, or by declaring a moral law that none shall question or transgress?
Considering that these are morals we’re talking about, don’t you have a duty to ensure they are instilled? If you don’t convince enough people to adopt your moral stance, can you just give up? I would think the answer is that you do have a duty, and that you can’t give up, because you value yourself as a moral being.
Ergo, in order to create the best conditions possible for those morals to be followed, you would need to employ such means as will persuade a majority of people that your stance is the morally correct one. You can do that either through rational argument, shame or fear. Rational argument allows for the most fertile ground in which those morals can continue to grow. Shame will work for some, but it is divisive and will push many others away, including some of whom could be great agents for the morality being pushed. And fear is simply a tool of tyranny, which if used to spread morality raises serious (I’d say insurmountable) questions as what real value such morals have anyway.
In sum, yeah your packaging sucks, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that your arguments do. Unfortunately, when you use snark (i.e. employ shaming), you unnecessarily cloud the issue, which in turn makes it much harder to spread those morals you hold so dear. If you truly want others to adopt you moral stance, then convince them to do it, don’t bully them.
“Because he did not break any rules,…”
He captured a suspect and made him think he was going to die in order to get information from him.
No, he didn’t get in trouble.
Yes, he was rewarded.
But technically… he most certainly did break the rules. Because making a prisoner fear that they are going to be killed is against the rules. It’s considered torture.
But who’d object to that? Who would actually say that this soldier did the wrong thing? Well, no one saner than Code Pink would.
My “issue” with rules and the need to clearly take the moral high ground and clearly outlaw all the stuff someone wants to include as torture is that once that is done the ability to judge situations individually is destroyed. And frankly…. I don’t want to tell our soldiers on the front lines that it’s okay to rough up captives in the heat of the moment. This seems *worse* to me than taking some very few extremely high status captives and making them think they are going to die while being certain they will not.
I want soldiers to have clear and aggressive… but mostly *clear*… ROE. And that clear ROE must not include any hint of “it’s okay to rough up people you just captured in the heat of the moment.” It is grossly unfair to ask young men or women to take responsibility for deciding how much is too much in that sort of situation.
As for the rest of it… probably the biggest reason I don’t find myself more upset about the notion of waterboarding some few master-terrorists is because of all the noise about such things as wrapping an Israeli flag around around someone. Or exposing them to pornography or fake (why bother with fake!) menstrual blood. Granted, those things are probably not *useful* but the outrage over them sort of wore out my outrage. It seems fairly clear that *unpleasantness* is considered torture. Why not flush a Koran down the loo? Well, other than it not being *useful*. But get credit for extreme care in handling, and providing (!) holy books to prisoners or get credit for feeding them meals that aren’t pork, pork, and more pork? Heck no. Get credit for investigating before media exposure and then trying and convicting soldiers who mistreat prisoners out of pure meanness? Heck no.
But in the end? I’d rather we took the high ground and said we *didn’t*, than not take the high ground and say we did. And so very many of the arguments that I hear for making a clear stand against torture are suggested with the little aside… if something is *really* necessary that our people will do it *anyway*. So we go for reputation and screw honor?
I’d rather we behaved well in private and let our enemy, and our friends, believe whatever they care to believe.
Look what happened while I was away.
Snark is fun when it is used against pompous people spouting moral absolutes to poke holes in their self assuredness. Such as Glenn Reynold’s uses against many anti torture people who he generally agrees with, but can’t stand their moral cluelessness. Which is what it is. It reduces serious questions of moral reasoning to unthinking platitudes.
Michael and Synova have made some great points, and I want to reiterate them.
“what is so obviously indefensible”
Why? Why is any categorical behavior morally indefensible, not to mention, what belongs in that category, and what doesn’t. Even finer, is one particular thing, say waterboarding, always the same thing? You consistently collapse all these distinctions. If you need to do that, it should make you wonder about the strength of your case.
“especially when it IS morally superior to be opposed to torture”
Leaving aside the question of whether any particular method of waterboarding qualifies as torture, like in the case of the killing of a human being, the same act can be murder, or something else. So you are elliding from torture is wrong to a particular act, in a particular class of activities, in a particular case, is torture. That is a serious discussion. Even then, even if you decide it is torture, that doesn’t make it immoral. Erwin Rommel and other officers conspired to kill Hitler. It was certainly murder, but it was not in my mind immoral. You are free to disagree, but to claim it is obvious that torturing KLM (conceding for this statement that he was) was immoral is not a serious argument, nor helpful as Synova and Michael have pointed out. In fact, I would argue that it is not only not obvious, but is likely impossible to construct a consistent moral argument for or against. It lies in that grey area of human judgment where people of goodwill can easily disagree.
“So, I forget, are all questions of morality automatically up for debate?”
Yes, and those who have used that argument in the past have created great mischief, nor are they very tolerant of those who use it on them in other settings. That doesn’t mean some things should not disappoint us we see debated, but this isn’t near as clear as some of those areas. There are competing moral claims here, and those should always be up for debate.
“If I take a strong anti-murder stance but don’t leave the floor open to debate, am I being preachy and snarky? Must we open every such question to reasonable arguments to the contrary?”
Of course, as has been pointed out, the definition of murder, and its appropriateness in extremely morally difficult situations, is precisely similar. So yes, you have to leave the floor open for debate to avoid possibly, through obtuse refusal to consider things, make an even graver moral error. The examples of this from history are many. That you admit that the arguments are reasonable should give you pause, and is frankly baffling.
“the story itself is about how horrific the act is”
That act, but not what was done to KLM. In fact, it was very different.
“does not make it okay to torture… ever.”
Why? Why never? I have read you many times on this issue and you have never made it clear why this is so, but rather treat it as self evident, when what is self evident is that it is not self evident. Millions of people’s expressed doubts, confusion and serious questions demonstrate this. They are not just unthinkingly crafting justifications, but trying to engage the issue. Your disrespect for those who are doing that, with arguments you say yourself are reasonable, needless to say irritates. Take pride in that if you wish.
“There are countless other examples of this, including the horrendously incompetent ways “enhanced interrogation” was foisted upon agencies that have never conducted interrogations (the CIA, for example), and then placed in units where interrogation is most likely to lead to abuse (NCO).”
That does absolutely nothing to defend your point. That is a practical argument, which may be valid, but says nothing about the questions being asked of you.
As for the ticking time bomb, Synova’s case is actually very relevant, but in the end it is a red herring. In KLM’s case he knew of a great many plots and plans, which could have been imminent, or not. The interrogator has no way of knowing, but we happen to know now that there were plans in action, and while they might or might not have occurred, a subject such as him is always a ticking time bomb. No grey area there. If we captured Zawahiri he is automatically a ticking bomb, we just don’t know how long the timer is.
Faced with such a situation, you can choose what you wish, but do not tell me that the decision on what is the greater evil; not getting the information which might save many innocent lives, or avoiding causing KLM to fear for his life; is somehow an obvious one where you get to sneer.
It is no accident that all three people running for President have said, even as they condemn waterboarding, that they would do what they had to do when faced with just such a situation. Given waterboardings characteristics we might wonder whether we will not end up doing worse in trying to avoid this particular set of techniques. In fact, I think we do worse things to people on a regular basis, including imprisonment, which is far more common and used against people of no great moral consequence on a regular basis.