According to the Navy Times, Veterans Affairs decided to pay for medical treatment of a veteran who underwent waterboarding as a part of Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) training. The vet will receive counseling for PTSD and medication.
When will people have the courage to denounce the use of torture? Advocates of its use have but one dubious utilitarian argument for its justification: the information that it could potentially produce will potentially save more lives than the ones it will ruin. In its most callous formulation the previous argument substitutes a single American life for "saved lives." After all, if one has committed to torture, then one has committed to the abject devaluation of at least one life to glean information that only might be true, may not be valuable, and may save none. In other words, what makes torture such a horrible transaction is that the price of admission to the event must be paid with no knowledge of the contents of the mind of the person the torturer has committed to breaking. The economics of torture sets the cost to be the minds of men on the basis of a hunch, a guess, a grotesque hope that something valuable will be learned to retroactively justify that rueful price.
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2 comments:
Chris!
Looks like I'll be taking classes shortly with one of the architects of the waterboarding policy, John Yoo. Should be interesting to say the least. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barry-yourgrau/why-is-torture-lawyer-jo_b_94630.html
Chris, I think that torture is all in the eyes of the recipient. I also think that careful use of information extraction methods is the way to go and we should use these methods as we use force. If someone is trying to come in our house, not noticing the "Do not trespass" sign in our yard, we don't shoot first, we give a warning with our german shepherd by our side (a measured show of force). The waterboarding mentioned in the article is something that happens with every class that goes through SERE training. Only one or two students endures it though. From the persons that I have talked to that have gone through SERE, the school is to teach them to withstand many interrogation techniques. The people are treated horribly, probably not in a manner that they will ever be treated again. But, the aircrew personnel that have been captured have all been thankful for that training. Another thing, if all people in the world agreed that they would not try to extract information from prisoners by any means necessary, then we wouldn't have to worry about it. I can assure you though that I will not break the laws of my country, nor the LOAC while I am here. Lastly, please define torture ensuring that all areas and all cultures are covered.
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