water_boardingThere’s a controversy brewing over waterboarding.

Did Democratic leaders in Congress know about the technique and its use in enhanced interrogation? It seems almost certain. Was the technique effective? Dick Cheney believes so, but his appeal to have certain documents that testify to its effectiveness released to the public have been rebuffed.

This argument will never be settled because there is a profound difference in philosophy at work here. Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, I was openly calling for a genocidal pogrom against the religious group that perpetrated the massacre. I’m not terribly proud of this moment in my life, but the anger and the hate that it induced was fierce.

After a while, I managed to calm down and recant this stance, mostly through the aid of a professor of mine in graduate school (a muslim, a pacifist, and an all-around great guy). He faced the issue head-on with students who were having trouble placing the events of 9/11 into perspective and gave us hope for eventual peace and co-existence. 

I began to be influenced by the media. My resolve to see our country pursue the men responsible for such an act weakened over the years. When the Abu Gharib story broke, I found myself wondering if we had become something other than America by allowing our soldiers to commit such acts. Further, when the rumors gained momentum about the secret CIA prisons and the “enhanced interrogatio techniques” being practiced at Gitmo, I was further disturbed. I felt we had lost our way as a nation, and were becoming what we most detested in order to achieve victory.

At the culmination of this metamorphosis of thought, I happened to read Marcus Luttrell’s wonderful account of Operation Redwing in his book Lone Survivor.  My rage was rekindled. I was ashamed that I had allowed myself to be insidiously influenced by the tide of public opinion. You see, while there is hope for peaceful co-existence with Islam, it lies in the moderate states where people are not ground under the boot heel of religious tyranny. I have come full circle; I believe it is absolutely necessary to win the war on terror at any cost, including temporarily sacrificing some of our identity to do so. The very future of our nation and our way of life depend on it.

With that foundation in mind, you already assume that I’m okay with waterboarding as an interrogation technique. You’d be right. In fact, I believe that suspects should be questioned under drugs, with biometric equipment (polygraph, cerebral blood flow scans, etc.). If they’re  not, in fact, working with a known terrorist organization, let them go. If they are, continue questioning them until we have wrung them dry, even if we’re left with a vegetable at the end. Use practical counter-intelligence techinques. Implant a few of them with a GPS device or an RFID chip and go “fishing” for other cells. 

These people are this generation’s barbarians at the gate. They have no couth, no code of honor, and no restraint. Given the right materials, they would unleash armageddon on the West in a heartbeat. If we fight them using conventional rules, we will eventually lose. They will use our codes against us, they will crucify us in the court of liberal public opinion, and they will shout their message of imperialist aggression to every U.S.-opposed media outlet in the world. No method of interrogation is too harsh, no military tactic is too ruthless. We must win. My child’s future depends on it. If I must bear the terrible sins so that he may breathe freely, not concerned about the possiblity of a terrorist attack on U.S. soil, then so be it. It’s a price I’m willing to pay, and further, it’s a price I’m willing to spend my franchise on.

If I could offer advice to the CIA, I would say: “Keep waterboarding. Better yet, use sodium pentothal.”