Against Waterboarding

In some sort of magical trick involving water, bad guys, and heroes, terrorists are thwarted and disasters are averted. The CIA itself purportedly waterboarded top Al-Qaeda suspects after the 9/11 attacks. What exactly, then, happens in a waterboarding session? The details are somewhat murky—skewed by media and word of mouth—but general procedure states that a prisoner is blindfolded, restrained, and reclined while water is poured over the head. Some sources claim that water flows through the trachea and into the lungs in a situation of “controlled drowning.” Other reports claim that no water enters the body, and a sensation is created merely by the flow of water over the face. The supposed severity, or triviality, of the technique seems to vary only according to the political motivations of the source.

But what of its ethics? With the recent surge of media regarding waterboarding, it has become quite a polarized issue among many students at Brown. In formulating my own judgments on the matter, I was confronted with two issues. Firstly, the use of waterboarding by the United States and its reported effectiveness may encourage others, including enemies, to waterboard our own soldiers and staff. Additionally, several students have expressed interest in waterboarding each other to prove its supposed triviality and harmlessness. This outlandish plan has left me with a question that would make Socrates’s own head spin: do conservatives approve of waterboarding because it is a suitable interrogation method, or has it been deemed suitable merely because President Bush approves?

The debate over waterboarding appears to hinge on one categorization: is waterboarding a method of torture or not? The United Nations Convention Against Torture, of which the United States is a member, defines torture as “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person.”

I grant that waterboarding is physically disparate when compared to harsh beating, but to claim pain is uninvolved is ridiculous and untenable. In triggering the reflexes and self-preservation instincts of the human body, waterboarding causes feelings of drowning, terror, and imminent death. To relate with the experience, one must only observe the reaction of a child who, though playfully dunked in the swimming-pool by his playmate, has been confronted with a situation of survival. Waterboarding is a murderer cocking a loaded gun to your head. Who would actually wish this on another human being, no matter his supposed guilt? The potential for severe long-term psychological damage, including post-traumatic stress disorder, panic disorders, and so forth, seems quite apparent, and yet some conservatives, friends of mine and Spectator staffers included, persist that waterboarding is merely a simulation. It is just a reflex, no worse than going to the doctor’s office and having them tap on your knee with the cute little hammer. Many conservatives would have us believe that God had foreseen the needs of interrogators, and hardwired an “easy button” in the brain. Call it the confession reflex. Just like a Staples commercial, “that was easy!” Poof – a signed confession appears, and the terrorist goes home smiling, hand in hand with the CIA agent. No. The prisoner is talking not because the interrogator said the magic words, pushed the secret button. He is talking because you are torturing him, causing him pain and distress that he can no longer bear, and he fears for his life.

Of course, one could argue that the prisoners know they are being waterboarded, that they know they will not be actually drowned or killed. This conscious realization, one could argue, precludes the most grievous elements of waterboarding and lowers it below the torture threshold. But this position would be naïve. In triggering the most base survival reflexes and instincts, higher order thought processes become difficult to impossible. It is not likely any prisoner could control his reactions, tell himself that he is not actually drowning, for more than a brief moment.

Even if one stubbornly maintains that the effects of waterboarding do not comprise torture, there is the schizophrenic history of the United States to contend with. Of course, President Bush has made clear the importance of waterboarding to the anti-terror movement. But why has former Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, recently gone on record stating that waterboarding indeed constitutes torture? Even more disturbing, the United States has prosecuted waterboarders in the past. In 1947, a Japanese officer named Yukio Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor after performing the procedure. If we trust Bush to permit waterboarding in the present, perhaps we should wonder why it was illegitimate in the past.

Waterboarding comes down to a question of values. Personally, I strongly endorse individual rights, and believe that torture is a violation of these rights. Rights should not be violated even if many lives can be saved. But others may favor utilitarian principles, and claim that torturing one person is acceptable to avert the next terrorist attack. Which system is correct is not within the scope of my article. Regardless, one should never endorse waterboarding in itself, either as a method of interrogation or as a joke or political statement. Even if you value homeland security as the greatest good, I beseech you. Support not waterboarding, but instead the examination of prisoners in the most humane methods that yield results. Only a fool would argue a (simulated?) drowning makes the world a better place.