The National Review, on the most transparently consequentialist grounds, endorses torture, while pretending not to. This is what they have to say about waterboarding:
“Waterboarding is an extremely rough interrogation tactic in which a detainee is tied down and made to fear imminent drowning. It treads close to the legal line of torture. It does not, however, appear to cross that line — at least not clearly. “Torture” is a special legal designation, reserved for especially sadistic forms of abuse, practices so heinous they stand apart, even from other cruelties, as meriting extraordinary condemnation. Though highly unpleasant, it is doubtful that waterboarding involves the type of severe, prolonged anguish required before a tactic meets the legal threshold of torture.”
This denial may help them sleep a little better at night (I’m sure the Gestapo said the same things about their “Verschärfte Vernehmung“, loosely translated as “enhanced interrogation techniques”) but it doesn’t make what is going on any less evil. I linked recently to a post by Malcolm Nance, a former SERE master instructor and chief of training. Nance dispels any lingering doubt whatsoever over whether or not waterboarding is torture. It is not simulated drowning; it is real drowning simulating death (as Judge Evan Wallach puts it). And of course, this ancient form of abuse has always been categorized as torture, at least until the ascent of the Bush administration. As noted by a recent Commonweal editorial, retired Rear Admiral John D. Huston stated that:
“Other than perhaps the rack and thumbscrews, waterboarding is the most iconic example of torture in history. It has been repudiated for centuries.”
As noted by NPR, waterboarding was first documented in the 14th century, and was designed explicitly to extract confessions (how little has changed). What made waterboarding so attractive was that it left no marks, as it was not permitted to injure the body or bring about death during the “interrogation”. No marks, no torture, right? It seems that the National Review has been similarly deceived in the modern day. Waterboarding was perfected by Dutch traders in the 17th century, but was increasingly seen as morally repugnant during the 18th century. But it never went away, turning up among the Japanese in World War II, U.S. troops in the Philippines, the French in Algeria, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and the military dictatorships in Chile and Argentina.
There is no doubt that the US has long regarded waterboarding as torture. In the words of Judge Evan Wallach, the US government “has not only condemned the use of water torture but has severely punished those who applied it.” The NPR article points out that US soldiers serving in Vietnam were court-martialed for using the water torture; this was also true during the 1898 Spanish-American war. It documents the case of Yukio Asano, a Japanese officer sentenced to 15 years hard labor for employing this practice. More generally, as Judge Wallach notes:
“After Japan surrendered, the United States organized and participated in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, generally called the TokyoWar Crimes Trials. Leading members of Japan’s military and government elite were charged, among their many other crimes, with torturing Allied military personnel and civilians. The principal proof upon which their torture convictions were based was conduct that we would now call waterboarding.”
Let’s get back to the National Review. As noted, their defense is purely consequentialist:
“Since 9/11, the CIA has operated a special interrogation program for high-value enemy detainees such as Khalid Sheik Mohammed, mastermind of the suicide-hijackings that killed nearly 3,000 Americans and took the nation to war. For these most hardened terrorists, interrogation techniques have reportedly included waterboarding. The yield, according to the Bush administration, has been singularly valuable intelligence, enabling the government to thwart other plots and save a great many lives.”
This is not the first time the National Review has endorsed torture. Last year, it declared the Supreme Court ruling in Hamden v. Rumsfeld— which applied Geneva Convention protections to Al Qaeda suspects– to be “execrable” (because it threatened to put the CIA interrogation program “out of business” ) and supported a deal to preserve the “life-saving CIA-interrogation program.” Waterboarding was then seen as a “controversial but highly effective technique”. It ends this first editorial with boundless cynicism:
“The whole world has now seen the administration supposedly bow to McCain’s desire to ‘preserve’ our Geneva obligations, but the CIA program will continue anyway. That’s not such a bad outcome.”
Let’s get this straight. The National Review is supporting an action that the Church deems intrinsically evil. Does that mean Catholics should simply throw the magazine in the trash? Many publications and pundits defend intrinsically evil actions (most notably abortion) and yet can offer credible commentary on other topics. But these other groups do not claim to have a Catholic influence, as is the case with the National Review. While not an explicitly Catholic outfit, it has a tendency of playing up its Catholicity. I’ve even seen Catholic blogs linking to it! We must make it clear, once and for all, that the National Review is simply not a Catholic publication. When William F. Buckley rebuked Catholic social teaching on economics, while pretty odious, at least this was not a case of dissenting from a non-negotiable teaching. That has changed with his successors.
I know there are some on the editorial board (Ponnuru, for example) who seem to take their duties as Catholics seriously. What do they think of these editorials? Let me be blunt: the National Review is about as Catholic as Catholics for a Free Choice or Phyllis Schlafly– all have embraced non-negotiables (torture, abortion, and the use of nuclear weapons on non-combatants, respectively). I, for one, would like this magazine to “cease and desist” using Catholic labels to sell its product.
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