What Obama Is Missing On Torture

At this week's news conference, Barack Obama said: "I think waterboarding is torture." "I think" is not a definitive statement. It's an opinion. There is a reason for Obama's conditioning of this declaration because not everyone in the world believes that waterboarding is a pure form of torture. Certainly, not in the strictest sense. Beyond that, Obama also discounted the results of waterboarding by stating that he isn't sure that the information that was obtained through waterboarding couldn't have been obtained by some other, non-torturous means.

When Obama talks about "other means," I think he's referring to the civilian law enforcement interrogation technique of using "plea bargaining" to extract valuable information or a confession. Simply speaking, plea bargaining involves trading either jail time or something of value in exchange for information. But, plea bargaining only works with people that have "something to live for." Most terrorist beliefs are the antithesis of that concept. They generally have "something to die for" and, that something is their fanatical religious beliefs and their willingness to die while adhering to them. They feel that dying is the ultimate goal in their journey to the afterlife. So, rewarding them with lesser punishment or saving their lives by avoiding capital punishment is as silly as offering meat as a reward to a vegan.

I don't think that Obama and most liberals understand this new kind of enemy and their type of warfare and their belief system. This is not your father's World War II or Vietnam-like enemy. The traditional "war" mindsets are not going to work. These people are not beholding to any given country. They are the standard bearers of their god and not of any particular country. The traditional forms of "spying" become totally useless.

Unlike spying on state-sponsored military buildups, you just can't use satellite images to see weapons buildups and troop movements. These terrorists live and hide within the general populations of many countries; including our own. That's why the Bush Administration put so much emphasis on eavesdropping and internet "chatter" because it was the only way to "hear" what this enemy was up to. But the liberals balked at eavesdropping on the basis that it violated privacy rights. Now, too, they are balking at enhanced interrogation techniques.

Even the Clinton Administration clearly understood that this enemy was a different kind of enemy. To avoid claims of torturing captured terrorists and suspected terrorists, the Clinton Administration practiced "rendition" by sending those who were captured and suspected of terrorism to other countries that had no qualms about torturing people to get information. In those countries, there were no limits as to the methods of torture. There were no paper trails created by a bunch of justice department attorneys giving legal opinions on what is or isn't torture and the extent to which those methods could be applied. There were no doctors in attendance to insure that no permanent physical or mental damage was being inflicted. But, in the world of the liberal mindset, Bush and his people should be tried for war crimes and Clinton people who ruthlessly practiced rendition should get a pass.

Furthermore, Obama was dead wrong on Churchill and torture. While Churchill may have, in public, detested torture, it sure went on out of the sight of any public scrutiny (See Full Story). It probably goes on to this very day as noted in this news article: Revealed: Torture Centre Linked to MI5. Here's another article on the same subject that was just written in March of 2009: MI5 'torture' probe launched.

The problem with torture is that in open societies, like ours, the NGO's like Amnesty International have open access and are able to easily uncover these practices. However, in closed societies, like Cuba or Iran or North Korea, these practices remain hidden. Amnesty International has, in the past, stated that they think 91 countries practice torture. However, that estimate is based on those countries that they have been able to gain access to. The number is probably greater if closed societies were placed under scrutiny.

Obama is playing games with the facts to suit his ideological beliefs on torture and to satisfy the left's hatred of George W. Bush. He quotes Churchill and assumes that the general dummies within our population won't contest what he says. Most people will do anything to protect themselves and to ensure survival. But, Obama, in trying to be judgmental for ideological reasons, just doesn't understand that.

Many on the left detest Harry Truman's dropping of the two atomic bombs. But, that is a revisionist viewpoint; much like today with 9/11 and torture. To end World War II, Harry Truman weighed the estimated time it would take to bring the war in the Pacific to an end by conventional means and how many American and ally's lives would be lost in the process. His decision to use the bomb was based on the continued loss of thousands of American soldiers and the additional loss of thousands of Japanese civilians by the conventional bombing raids. But, even with that in mind, Truman ordered days of leaflet dropping over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the hopes that the Japanese would heed the plea for surrender. However, even after Hiroshima, the Japanese monarchy ignored this reality and allowed the Nagasaki bombing to happen.

The problem with most of the politically-correct left of our generation is the practice of revisionist history. Conveniently, they ignore Clinton's rendition activities. They condemn Christopher Columbus for his brutality when he existed at a time in world history where the concept of human rights was barely embryonic. Slavery is another example. Many of our founding fathers practiced it. Should we now remove their names from our history books? Now, they want to remove the realities surrounding 9/11 and what the Bush Administration felt they had to do to keep this country safe.

All acts in history have to be put into the context of the time that they took place. The practices of "in hindsight" and "in retrospect" are judgmental actions done by people who seem to think they are morally superior to the people of a different time, place, and circumstance. Generally speaking, not one of those moral critics has ever had to protect or save a life or has been in mortal fear of an enemy that would kill them. I would ask these "pseudo gods" to step down from their soap boxes and try, for once, to step into the actual shoes of the ones they are criticizing.