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Waterboarding, torture, and the law of unintended consequences.

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  December 4th, 2009 at 07:38 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

I think that Allahpundit is over-analyzing the reasons why support for ‘torture’ is currently polling at 54/41 in favor (God help us all).  It looks fairly simple to me: the antiwar movement has spent the last five or six years attempting to equate waterboarding to torture.  They even more or less succeeded – but then they made a classic mistake: they assumed that stigmatization would inevitably follow.  Their thinking presumably was that if you can define X as Y, and Y is bad, then it becomes inconceivable that people could possibly support X.

Apparently, what happened instead was that they got the American people to define X as Y… and then the American people decided that perhaps this meant that Y wasn’t so bad after all.  This answer allows them to keep doing X, which was after all keeping us from losing any more national landmarks and innocent civilians to terrorist attacks.  Men not being angels, that’s enough for a justification right then and there.

Mind you, it’s not the waterboarding that’s the problem here: it’s that this strategy also makes it slightly easier for the CIA to feel better about handing over suspected terrorists caught abroad to say, France; who will hand them over to, say, Egypt; who will hand them over to people with car batteries.  Which is bad, by the way; but it’s now also easier.

Oops?

Moe Lane

PS: Yes, all of this was incredibly stupid of the antiwar movement – not to mention morally shortsighted of them.  Antiwar progressives, remember?

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

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COMMENTS

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  • redneck_hippie

    Leftists torturing of language is biting them in the butt. Just a few more bites and they’ll be devoid of all cerebral matter.

  • mschmitt

    People screwing with the pollster’s narrative..

  • Old_Crow

    Very well put.
    I’ve been waterboarded when I was active duty and while it’s quite intense, I don’t feel it is torture.

    The real world can be a nasty place.
    I would prefer that we wouldn’t have to use such techniques, but just the fact that we have it as an option, gives us a powerful and necessary tool.

    The public, in their gut instinct, understands this.

  • redneck_hippie

    when they see the civil court for KSM, the PC danger leading to the Ft. Hood terror attack, and so forth.

    When the sun is shining hot and bright, who is in favor of carrying an umbrella? The PResident’s policies are dangerous and people can see it.

  • roscopico

    Not in a gross way, but I’d take a bullet for you, brother.

    I read the Allah post and was getting revved up to put a boot in his a55 for equating waterboarding with torture, until I saw the way Pew framed the question. Seems to me like a push poll, but at this point who cares. People just aren’t as “wee-wee’d up” as the Statists intended.
    Your insight is well-stated, and thank you for elaborating what people such as I had the notion but couldn’t articulate.

    Best regards.

  • johnt

    99th floor kept crossing peoples minds, sill little things like that. Then some of the cruder and less enlightened of us thought of the benefits that could and were gained from “torture”, like saving lives and waging war against barbarians.
    We all can’t be as smart and humane as liberals, even though the above thoughts don’t seem to have crossed their sophisticated minds as often as with us unwashed racists.

    In any case they enjoyed the same protections and may live to see Obama and Holder handing out parking violations and trespassing tickets to the soldiers of islam.
    Just another reason why they call themselves “progressives.

  • archer52

    This is really a no-brainer. The average Joe gets the current situation in spades. They understand the enemy in this war isn’t another Western culture like Germany or France, where the rules they follow in the war are the same as the ones we follow. Instead, we are facing a group of people willing to kill children to make a political point, every day if necessary. Not to mention beheading women, non-believers, soldiers and anybody else that looks cross-ways at them.

    So, when you ask the question, “Can we torture these people to get information to prevent the aforementioned crimes?”, the answer is going to be yes. Of course we can and should. The average Joe also understands that we are the good guys, regardless of what Obama says, and that will prevent us from becoming out of control. We may waterboard someone, but we aren’t cutting off fingers or putting them on the rack. We may smack some terrorists in the gut once or twice just to get his attention, but we aren’t going to throw him off a two story building with his arms tied behind his back (like the Iraqis did).

    Don’t panic, our citizens aren’t nearing a Nazi mindset. I can’t say that about some people in power, but the average Joe is fine.

  • mbecker908

    The a-hole in the very front of the ranks who worked to brand waterboarding, etal as “torture” was none other than John Sidney McCain. Which is the prima facia reason why I will insist that he is not “pro-troops” or “pro-military”. He is no better, and is arguably worse, than Obama on that score.

  • redneck_hippie

    I wasn’t thinking of that particular exponent of the kumbaya crowd. Kinda painful we had to take him as our nominee; that said I wish he had won. He was right to push for the surge in Iraq. No way would McCain have foisted the present non-strategy on our brave sons and daughters who fight.

  • aesthete

    That John McCain and leftism are mutually exclusive.

  • David123

    I vote for outcome1. And I don’t think it’s a really hard decision to figure out either.

  • bk

    Would you rather people like the scumbag at Fort Hood be waterboarded to prevent incidents like that or that they be handled with kid gloves for fear of offending terrorist sympathizers like CAIR until after they have committed crimes?

    I’m thinking the general public would average around 2 if those choices were put on a 1 to 10 scale (1 = waterboarding and 10 = political correctness).

  • mbecker908

    McCain never pushed for “the surge”. He wanted the same thing Colin Powell wanted, a footprint that looked like GW1.

    And as far as the current “strategy” is concerned, he probably would have a better strategy, but I still wouldn’t trust him any farther than his mother could throw AceInTX.

  • http://www.ssce.net/Web-Articles/Web-articles-indexed-authors.html#authors-l JLenardDetroit

    While I no longer have my PREEMPT THE TROLLS post on the subject, I do still have a handy hyperlink ;-) lol EIT’s are NOT torture — but Moe has given them a good lesson (they won’t learn) about being careful what they wish for when the completely twist/torture the language.

  • Tbone

    Let’s see, propane torch and 1 terrorist or 3,000 people and a gillion gallons of jet fuel?

    I do believe Mohammed would tell me everything he ever knew.

  • larueladue

    Well said!

  • 10ksnooker

    Circular logic is the stock and trade of the leftards.

    Notice how global warming, became climate change and then became fraud.

  • partyof1

    In releasing highly classified documents on the CIA interrogation program
    last week, President Obama declared that the techniques used to question captured terrorists “did not make us safer.” This is patently false. The proof is in the memos Obama made public — in sections that have gone virtually unreported in the media.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/20/AR2009042002818.html

  • johnt

    Amazing, we have a president who would rather blame and hide behind his predecessor, who would rather strike what he thinks are noble poses while cheaply politicizing the interrogations, then recognize and admit the validity of what was done.

    We are at war and all this dog can do is grandstand, think of himself, harm the intelligence process and increase the risk of death to Americans. Miranda rights for all !
    This is ego to the point of insanity.

  • antisocial

    Life is beautiful. Everybody is happy and content. There is no evil. There are mistakes from everyone. If we can stop making mistakes all of this will stop. Government will take care of everything. Like everybody I will get my share from the stash. Now where did I keep the cigarette I just rolled?
    /

    I like to be alive. I don’t care how CIA interrogates and to what degree. If they use other extreme measures (drills, clippers etc.) and that is what it takes to keep us safe fine.

  • Veronica Estrada

    We love our violence and we love our sex.

    The success of Terminator, Star Trek and other action thrillers during this eco slump proves it. Nm America’s passion for football & Nascar crashes.. Then there’s the corpse-driven junk on tv like CSI, etc.

    You’re telling me the peta/veggie freaks don’t appreciate action..among other “things” that we can count among the crass, rough, down ‘n dirty?

    They don’t give a hoot about those extremist Muslims ..if they did, maybe under the guise of sympathy or compassion, there would be some BS, volunteer-type advocacy like the ones the have for the whales in Arkansas ..yes, they don’t exist, and that’s my point: save the whales in Arkansas before the demons who wants to kill them at first glance.

    The world saw what happened to Nick Berg & his murder is preserved forever in cyberspace..

    We’re not afraid of vulgarities ..and continue to pursue sights and haunt links that show us the edge of our mortality.

    Americans know that terrorists = death and have mentally discredited so-called “torture” because 1. whoever totured McCain didn’t want to murder him the way these jihadists do and 2. ppl have known since his first month as prez when he surrounded himself with liars, lobbyists and tax-cheats that he’s full of empty rhetoric, a liar and the last person to look to for moral direction ..esp when his leftist, radical (you mean he went to THAT church??) leanings are so atypical of mainstream America.

    In short, I think these 54/41 pols are rigged or not truly representative b/c they’re really meant to show the rest of the world we’re not really …jerks. The world wants us to stop sticking a stick into the antpile and thinks taking our sticks away from us will make these sadists crawl back under their rocks.

    Bama is officially worthless in “repairing” our rep, the msm knows this, so they pull this..

    Don’t be disheartened.

    Most of us have daydreamed the scenario where we kill with our bare hands (for those of us who don’t carry) before we let those killers harm us or someone we love.

    Everyone wants a hero, and wants to be one.. How many of us are going to experience that pang of guilt b/c we couldn’t get what our kid wanted or that really nice gift for the hubby or wife (gf/bf)..tho we’d also prob blame bama & WS..

    So forget this “adverse to torture” bit.

    We know it’s political & for “appearances.” We just don’t like to appear the savage .. just think of the things we like to do in private and behind closed doors.

    We’re Americans.

  • Veronica Estrada

    I apologize about the readability of this post — not good at texting.