Death Penalty

I'll admit, and I know this will get me into trouble: I am having the hardest time with waterboarding. I know the answer I want is the one aligned with the people I most respect, the sensitive peacemakers and humanitarians that can see it is so morally wrong. But I admit, I am plagued by ignorance, I have a fear and isolation from the world of the military and penal justice and because of that all my judgments are shallow and incomplete. I am haunted by the fact that I don't naturally see waterboarding as a moral wrong. I ask myself, what if it worked? What if it gave information we could use to protect our society, and I realize that then the moral weight I might balance with a different view, although the hardliners I respect, the Ghandi's, the Churchill's, the people I strongly value can see through this false gold and realize it would still be wrong.

For me, it is a punishment, however terrible that people have inflicted upon themselves, and though they would never ask to have it happen again and afterwards strongly sympathize with the captured parties and recognize it as the most intense form of torture, it still seems to me that in such a response it has performed its exact designed function --To elicit a non-deforming punishment so horrid it would induce captives to look for any alternative to its repetition. In real life we are fortunate to know that the alternative is often simply lying, and because it doesnt work, again, it is easy for me to denounce the activity. However, it is hard to believe that I in such a situation would continue to lie and so it is hard for me to believe it will always be revealed as unsuccessful. So long as the facts say it is no more useful than other kinder forms of information gathering, I am content, but I fear my moral certitude if evidence were to emerge that it did in fact work. Also because it is such a unique form of torture (how many people would saw off their leg as an experiment to see if it might induce them to "crack" compared to how many are willing to undergo waterboarding-at least that first time) it is so hard to relate to and I fear I don't have the creativity to imagine how horrendous it is or that non-deforming torture can be equally bad and even as some have suggested exceedingly worse then the conventional (movie horror flick) forms.

Luckily I feel this is why I am not yet ready to be a policy maker. If I am ever to be one, such immature and under informed sentiments would be unacceptable. What is interesting is my belief that most of my opinions on the potential usefulness of the torture (which i do conceed to be torture- but in a more digestible form) are purely philosophical and stem from me believing I must play a role in the security of my nation. On a personal level, I wonder if I could really follow through. Perhaps I compare it to an obscure parallel to give me doubt, for I am of the weak condition of one of those who has thus far been willing to eat meat but not to kill it.

It has taken all this mental discourse just to get toward the title of this essay/blog/diary which is what seems strangest of all. We deny waterboarding because it creates a sensation of drowing so real that it is mentally equated with the act itself, a horrendous physical experience with loss of all control and who knows what else. Yet, as a nation we still have the death penalty! What is the cost of giving a person an actual set day for their murder. Whereas waterboarding carries out a close-to-reality event at some time but doesn't actually follow through, the death penalty does. Sure one is the full physical sensation, and the other supposedly painless, but this mental torture to a person as retribution, not even due to a "ticking time bomb" senario where information procurement is seen as necessary for the sustained survival of the innocent seems absolutely ludicrous in light of this whole torture discussion. With the death penalty there is nothing to gain from the murder, no new information to glean and moreover, there is not just a perceived threat of killing, but the actual thing! I know states' rights have been a vestige of our nation since the foundation, but how can we discuss these two issues as if they had a right to be disconnected. My logic and imagination are already strained in contemplating captives, waterboarding and torture, I don't have the creativity left to reconcile our national views on the death penalty as well.