CIA Water Boarding is Morally Permissible
Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2017 6:58 pm
CIA Water Boarding has returned as an issue (thank goodness) now that President Trump has voiced an openness to reinstating this practice. He said he would listen to his Secretary of Defense and others in his cabinet, so it's not a settled matter yet, but it's one that will likely rear its convoluted head again. So I would like to argue, pace the braying horde, that CIA water boarding is morally permissible. I think it's one of the easiest moral arguments anyone could defend successfully. It's also one of the easiest ones to completely misunderstand, misstate, and misrepresent, so I'll try to anticipate the lies, er, the mistakes in this post. I will keep things brief; otherwise, this might look like real philosophy and then I'd lose 90% of you. And, yes, the snark is real.
Let's be super clear from the start. We're talking about the water boarding method implemented by the CIA after the 9/11 attacks. We're not talking about water boarding done by the Khmer Rouge or even the CIA prior to the 9/11 attacks. While many different methods go by the name of "water boarding," they are irrelevant to our debate. Keep that in mind and we'll eliminate half your thoughts.
I think one way to approach the debate is to first eliminate the most popular and most erroneous argument against CIA Water Boarding, and that is that CIA water boarding is torture. I know, I know, it's something you take for granted and something you think goes without argument, but nothing goes without argument when you're a rigorous thinker (like I am). So, I state: CIA water boarding (hence, just 'water boarding') is not torture. For water boarding to be torture, it would have to satisfy the definition of torture, which includes the intent to harm. Now, 'harm' doesn't mean every kind of "pain" or discomfort, as my playing loud music might discomfort you and in some sense cause you "pain", but being subjected to my loud country music doesn't imply that I am torturing you. That would be absurd to think, let alone try to defend. Now, if I play loud music long enough, maybe I can make you crazy to the point where it causes lasting psychological damage, maybe permanent damage, and so then you could reasonably say that you were tortured, provided of course that I restrained you this entire time such that you couldn't simply plug your ears or walk away from the noise. So, by 'harm' is meant some lasting effect -- like I cut off a body part, I used Chinese water torture to drive you insane, I sodomized you with a rusty pipe, etc. Water boarding has never been shown -- not by the Senate Committee, not by anyone -- to involve the intent to harm. So, water boarding has never been shown to be torture. So while some people or agencies have "determined" that water boarding is torture, they have never given a satisfactory argument for their determination. They've simply given their biased and uninformed opinions (in the truest sense) that water boarding is torture. But we're not mindless sheeple. We know this is a moral question, so we need a moral argument. There has never been a cogent moral argument for the view that water boarding is torture, and I've explained the major reason why not: water boarding doesn't involve intent to harm. And the major reason why no one can show or even reasonably infer that there is intent to harm is because THERE IS NO HARM. Wow. Amazing, right? Not one of the three terrorists captured and water boarded after the 9/11 attacks -- I'm talking about Khalid Sheik Muhammed and two others -- suffered any lasting injury; hence, no harm. So if none of them suffered harm, you can see why nobody has been able to argue that the CIA had an intent to harm them. If they did, they are very incompetent at their jobs. So, CIA water boarding not only involves no harm (which, again, must be a lasting effect) but it involves no intent to harm (at least none that you can reasonably infer from the evidence).
So, there are several ways opponents of water boarding mischaracterize and muddle the debate. And they muddle it because they lose the debate when they're clear. One is to simply assume that water boarding is torture. That's right, they simply skip over the most important premise in their argument -- saying "it's obvious" or other inane things -- and go from there. Once you concede that water boarding is torture, you'll have a relatively easy time convincing most people that water boarding is morally impermissible. Frankly, I don't think that follows at all, but I definitely see how most people would concede that conclusion. The second way they muddle this debate is by insisting that CIA water boarding causes "harm". Of course what they mean by harm isn't the definition we require in this debate. If I accidentally hit your thumb as we're hammering something, I haven't tortured you, have I? No. That's ridiculous. But I have harmed you. If I do it intentionally, I still haven't tortured you although I have harmed you. So, they equivocate on the word "harm" to muddle the issue. Being doused with water, as in the CIA water boarding, is extremely uncomfortable and maybe cause you some garden-variety harm (not the lasting harm we need), but you are not being drowned, your lungs are not filling up with water, there's no danger of you drowning, and you are not being harmed (in the way we required for this debate). This is why not one terrorist suffered any lasting effect. The CIA has ingeniously created a way to cause someone a lot of discomfort without causing any long-lasting harm or doing any long-term or permanent psychological damage. So, would you want to be water boarded? No, it's very uncomfortable. Would you suffer any harm if you did get water boarded? No. So, water boarding is not torture. Case closed. You cannot get around this argument, which is why opponents of water boarding, which are mostly Liberals but some Conservatives too, usually skip this annoying step and simply assume that water boarding is torture.
Okay, I think that's all I should say now. I could write a book on this topic, but who would read it, amirite?
Let's be super clear from the start. We're talking about the water boarding method implemented by the CIA after the 9/11 attacks. We're not talking about water boarding done by the Khmer Rouge or even the CIA prior to the 9/11 attacks. While many different methods go by the name of "water boarding," they are irrelevant to our debate. Keep that in mind and we'll eliminate half your thoughts.
I think one way to approach the debate is to first eliminate the most popular and most erroneous argument against CIA Water Boarding, and that is that CIA water boarding is torture. I know, I know, it's something you take for granted and something you think goes without argument, but nothing goes without argument when you're a rigorous thinker (like I am). So, I state: CIA water boarding (hence, just 'water boarding') is not torture. For water boarding to be torture, it would have to satisfy the definition of torture, which includes the intent to harm. Now, 'harm' doesn't mean every kind of "pain" or discomfort, as my playing loud music might discomfort you and in some sense cause you "pain", but being subjected to my loud country music doesn't imply that I am torturing you. That would be absurd to think, let alone try to defend. Now, if I play loud music long enough, maybe I can make you crazy to the point where it causes lasting psychological damage, maybe permanent damage, and so then you could reasonably say that you were tortured, provided of course that I restrained you this entire time such that you couldn't simply plug your ears or walk away from the noise. So, by 'harm' is meant some lasting effect -- like I cut off a body part, I used Chinese water torture to drive you insane, I sodomized you with a rusty pipe, etc. Water boarding has never been shown -- not by the Senate Committee, not by anyone -- to involve the intent to harm. So, water boarding has never been shown to be torture. So while some people or agencies have "determined" that water boarding is torture, they have never given a satisfactory argument for their determination. They've simply given their biased and uninformed opinions (in the truest sense) that water boarding is torture. But we're not mindless sheeple. We know this is a moral question, so we need a moral argument. There has never been a cogent moral argument for the view that water boarding is torture, and I've explained the major reason why not: water boarding doesn't involve intent to harm. And the major reason why no one can show or even reasonably infer that there is intent to harm is because THERE IS NO HARM. Wow. Amazing, right? Not one of the three terrorists captured and water boarded after the 9/11 attacks -- I'm talking about Khalid Sheik Muhammed and two others -- suffered any lasting injury; hence, no harm. So if none of them suffered harm, you can see why nobody has been able to argue that the CIA had an intent to harm them. If they did, they are very incompetent at their jobs. So, CIA water boarding not only involves no harm (which, again, must be a lasting effect) but it involves no intent to harm (at least none that you can reasonably infer from the evidence).
So, there are several ways opponents of water boarding mischaracterize and muddle the debate. And they muddle it because they lose the debate when they're clear. One is to simply assume that water boarding is torture. That's right, they simply skip over the most important premise in their argument -- saying "it's obvious" or other inane things -- and go from there. Once you concede that water boarding is torture, you'll have a relatively easy time convincing most people that water boarding is morally impermissible. Frankly, I don't think that follows at all, but I definitely see how most people would concede that conclusion. The second way they muddle this debate is by insisting that CIA water boarding causes "harm". Of course what they mean by harm isn't the definition we require in this debate. If I accidentally hit your thumb as we're hammering something, I haven't tortured you, have I? No. That's ridiculous. But I have harmed you. If I do it intentionally, I still haven't tortured you although I have harmed you. So, they equivocate on the word "harm" to muddle the issue. Being doused with water, as in the CIA water boarding, is extremely uncomfortable and maybe cause you some garden-variety harm (not the lasting harm we need), but you are not being drowned, your lungs are not filling up with water, there's no danger of you drowning, and you are not being harmed (in the way we required for this debate). This is why not one terrorist suffered any lasting effect. The CIA has ingeniously created a way to cause someone a lot of discomfort without causing any long-lasting harm or doing any long-term or permanent psychological damage. So, would you want to be water boarded? No, it's very uncomfortable. Would you suffer any harm if you did get water boarded? No. So, water boarding is not torture. Case closed. You cannot get around this argument, which is why opponents of water boarding, which are mostly Liberals but some Conservatives too, usually skip this annoying step and simply assume that water boarding is torture.
Okay, I think that's all I should say now. I could write a book on this topic, but who would read it, amirite?
You could spend a lifetime 'studying' it, it's not going to turn you into a deep thinker. That you either have or you don't. There's no point in studying music if you have no talent for it.