Waterboarding in North Carolina

North Carolina is a summer paradise for tourists the world over who flock to our state to enjoy its pristine beaches and gorgeous mountains.

The writer Christopher Hitchens recently traveled here for a very different purpose: to be waterboarded.
Specifically, he wanted to find out for himself if the controversial procedure the U.S. has used to extract information from three al-Qaeda terrorists is a rough form of “enhanced interrorgation” or out-and-out torture.

In a compelling new article in Vanity Fair, this steadfast defender of the Iraq War describes his experience in harrowing detail. Hitchens' first-person account of being waterboarded comprises the meat of his piece; but the moral crux revolves around what he sees as the slippery-slope of torture: 

It opens a door that cannot be closed. Once you have posed the
notorious “ticking bomb” question, and once you assume that you are in
the right, what will you not do? Waterboarding not getting
results fast enough? The terrorist’s clock still ticking? Well, then,
bring on the thumbscrews and the pincers and the electrodes and the
rack.

This argument is less than persuasive. First, if we knew with some certainty than an enemy was aware of an imminent catastrophic attack, would thumbscrews and pincers really be too much? Are five thousand — much less 500,000 — lives worth our moral ideals?

The problem is not the phony "ticking boomb" scenario — how many times has that happened? In such cases I say bring on the pincers. The problem is that by using  one form of torture to extract information information that is simply vital or useful we open the door to using harsher techniques if that inital effort fails. It is truly a Pandora's Box.

On other crucial point has been lost in our necessary discussions of torture. A causal observer might conclude from the coverage that the U.S. has descended into barbarism. In fact, our conduct of the wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrate a remarkable concern for human life. Compare our mass bombings of civilian populations during World War II and Vietnam with our modern military's specific strategies to avoid such carnage. One innocent death is one too many; but we have made great strides in limiting these gruesome losses.