By Abhinav Parameshwar, Contributing Writer
This is another one we overlooked in the primary week ruckus.
The debate surrounding torture and waterboarding in particular was once again reignited following the success of the recent capture and killing of Osama Bin Laden. This success is being attributed by some folk to the enhanced interrogation techniques that were employed on detainees such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Guantanamo Bay. As such, Senator John McCain, himself a prisoner of war in Vietnam, reasserted his position in a column for The Washington Post last week that the US should seize to engage in torture. McCain opined that the death of the terrorist should not be justification for the use of torture to retract information from terror suspects.
Former US Senator Rick Santorum caused a media storm last week when he said Tuesday that Senator John McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, “doesn’t understand how enhanced interrogation works.” Speaking on Hugh Hewitt’s Radio show, Santorum, a possible presidential candidate in 2012, spoke highly of the value of enhanced interrogation for US counterinsurgency operations. “Everything I’ve read shows that we would not have gotten this information as to who this man was if it had not been gotten information from people who were subject to enhanced interrogation,” said Santorum.
McCain, a Vietnam veteran, was shot down while on a bombing mission in Hanoi in 1967. The North Vietnamese held him captive until 1973. In his memoir, “Faith of My Fathers,” McCain wrote about how his captors hung him from his arms from rafters. Public sympathy for McCain’s wartime experiences has led to a strong negative reaction in the media and blogosphere over the past couple days towards Santorum’s comments.
The comments drew sharp criticism from McCain’s daughter, Meghan, who tweeted, “Rick Santorum telling my father doesn’t know about torture is like Carrot Top telling Lebron James he doesn’t know about basketball.” She followed this up the next day with another simile. “Rick Santorum lecturing my father about torture is like JWOWW lecturing Malcom Gladwell about writing.”
McCain’s wife, Cindy, who is also on twitter, was also indisbelief over Santorum’s column. “Imagine pres candidate Santorum saying my husband doesn’t understand torture,” she tweeted. “Really?!?!”
Mark Salter, a McCain aide, chose to express his distaste towards Santorum’s remarks in a rather brazen manner on Facebook. “For pure, blind stupidity, nobody beats Santorum. In my 20 years \[working\] in the Senate, I never met a dumber member, which he reminded me of today,” he wrote.
Television host and political commentator Rachel Maddow was another who took exception to the comments and insisted that Santorum apologize to McCain for his “stupid” comments. “I do not usually say things like must or even should on this show. But in this case, clearly Rick Santorum must apologize. It is unimaginable that he will not apologize for this,” Maddow said on her MSNBC show.
Santorum tried to clarify the specific nature of his comments following the bad press he has been receiving. “I disagree with Senator McCain’s view that the enhanced interrogation techniques used on a select few high-value terrorist detainees were unsuccessful nor do I believe they amounted to torture,” he re-iterated. “For anyone to infer my disagreement with Senator McCain’s policy position lessens my respect for his service to our country and all he had to endure is outrageous and unfortunate.”
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6 Responses
Some things I think about when I read Mr. Santorum’s comments about torture are some of the things I was taught in school as a child, e.g., “the end doesn’t justify the means”, and “might doesn’t make right”,and these simple platitudes have stuck with me, and with many others through out the years- I’m 64 years old. When we were taught these things it was in the contex of what people in free societies value, as opposed to what leaders of more authoritarian countries espouse and practice. To even begin to rationalize why torture is a good thing, is counter intuitive to me, and frankly, I believe, un-American.
Some of the things I think about in connection with Mr. Santorum’s remarks on why torture is a good thing, when I remember what I witnessed as a former U.S. Army intelligence interrogator and translator during the Viet Nam War, is that torture as a practice ends up defeating the image we want to project, e.g.”win the minds and hearts of the people”, and ends up driving those tortured(and their family members, neighbors, friends) to the other side. Torture just doesn’t work! Torture is a bad thing!
When I think of Mr. Santorum’s remarks about why torture is a good thing, as someone with an advanced degree in International Relations, I think about young men in some countries who are unemployed, unmarried, whose anger can be aroused and manipulated by their lesders to wage a terrorist battle against us. Using torture plays into the hands and intentions of these leaders, and doesn’t help us. Not only does torture fly in the face of our strategies, but is also contrary to what we stand for.
Mr. Santorum, and those who see the world as he does would have us believe that our values have changed, and therefore what we stand for has changed, and therefore torture is more than just fine, but necessary. People have gone to war over issues such as having their dignity undermined and devalued; torture is the epitome of devaluing an individual, a people, a nation and even a whole culture, so why use something that harms people and turns them against us?
Mr. Santorum seems to think that the end justifies the means. In the end, what is “the end”, Mr. Santorum?
John McCain, like the other heroic American POWs during the Vietnamese War, was not tortured primarily for interrogation, but in order to force him to make anti-U.S. statements for propaganda purposes, whereas the terrorists were interrogated in order to save the lives of innocent civilians. Moreover, the enhanced terrogation of terrorists did not include the infliction of serioius pain, denial of medical care, starvation or other human rights abuses, such as the American POWs endured. Even if we granted that enhanced interrogation is torture, there would still be no legal or moral equivalence between the torture of soldiers, who are covered under the Geneva Convention and thereby protected not only from torture, but from any interrogation beyond name, rank and serial number, and of terrorists who are war criminals because they target innocent civilians.
@David – Not disagreeing with you; but it has been interesting to me that when the MSM does talk about Santorum, it’s usually a story like this. By contrast, look at almost any story about the Republican Presidential candidates – yesterday in the Inky, for example – and they mention almost everyone but Santorum (including Palin and Bachman). Must make Rick (even more?) nuts!
“Cease”?
Obviously according to Santorum’s description of torture, it wouldn’t take him long to confess everything or anything. Like say the grassy knoll. Perhaps he ought to be waterboarded so he can whine like the idiot he is.
Why does any legitimate news organization bother covering Santorum? He’s not a viable candidate and he’s dumber than a tree stump.