Waterboarding and Our Country

The soldiers in the picture have smirks, almost smiles, on their faces while toturing this man

In an episode of Law and Order SVU, ADA (Assistant District Attorney) Novak becomes upset when the FBI refuses to give details on a suspect’s alibi. She says the police questioning these “people of interest” to verify the alibi would jeopardize an ongoing investigation. Novak becomes upset by the FBI’s self-appointed superiority and questions the hierarchy of the parties involved: “So your work trumps putting murders and rapists behind bars because there is a terrorist around every corner?” The FBI representative later says to ADA Novak that “there is a terrorist around every corner… you just don’t know about it”.

When sending troops to Iraq, the public was told that it was because of weapons of mass destruction. This was never proven, and it is questioned as to if it was a fabricated statement giving the government an excuse to deploy troops. They went in without the public having real knowledge and tried to justify the government’s actions by saying that we needed to go there because of information relating to national safety. Recently information about water boarding has been shown publicly, and the Obama administration has described it as illegal torture. Obama ordered that memos on these actions should be released to the public, hopefully in an attempt to change Bush’s secrecy that has caused many Americans to lose trust in the government.

It can be nearly impossible to draw a line in war, but one must be drawn. The War on Terror is debatable as is, but with torturous methods being used, Americans can lose faith in the war and the government as a whole. Still, the question remains: do the ends justify the means? This question can be applied to numerous topics, but in war it can be even more debatable. If the public cannot be sure about the justifications of a war, how can we be able to agree with these techniques? It can neither be confirmed nor denied on if this has even helped, because the public doesn’t know everything about what’s going on overseas, but as a general statement, torture is many times not a good thing. Not only do we hold the risk of putting innocent people trough a terrible ordeal, but torturing people in countries we are at war with only gives them motivation to do the same to our soldiers. A line can be hard to draw in war, but if one is not drawn, who knows what the consequential actions, to our country and from our country, could be.

An article talks about some of the details on waterboarding.