I thought the President and former Vice President were both very convincing in their speeches yesterday.  Notwithstanding Dick Cheney’s somewhat classless mocking of the President to start his speech, the substance of his position certainly has merit.  We can’t delude ourselves into thinking an argument is categorically incorrect just because Dick Cheney is its champion.  The fact that some approach the issue in this way is plain.

Others, of course, are sincere and nonpartisan in their position on national security.  They are truly against waterboarding, military commissions, and the housing of detainees anywhere other than federal prisons.  In the face of this, the President has outlined a very moderate and pragmatic approach to dealing with detainees.  But for all of the President’s criticisms of the Bush administration’s detainee policy, the new policy doesn’t seem to differ all that much from the old.  For instance, President Obama effectively articulated a silo system that provides each detainee with unique legal treatment depending on that detainee’s classification.  Yet, both military commissions and prolonged detention without access to any court whatsoever are still explicitly on the table.  Of course, the military commissions will have to be consistent with Supreme Court opinions in recent years after the Bush military commissions were rejected as unconstitutional.  But the point is that the President recognizes that no access to the federal courts in some cases, or no access to any court in others, are appropriate options when dealing with terrorists.

The starkest difference between the two is obviously waterboarding – a technique that is “torture” to Obama and “enhanced interrogation” to Cheney.  Whatever you call it, the big issue for me is how limited its use was even under the Bush administration.  My understanding is that it wasn’t used at all after 2003, was limited to high-level al-Quaeda operatives at a time the administration knew little about al-Quaeda, and could only be used upon order from the top.  The fact that the administration didn’t use it at any other time nor on any other person demonstrates how targeted this technique was.   Nobody is saying that the military or the CIA should be given carte blanche to use waterboarding at will.  The debate is whether the President should reserve to himself the power to permit waterboarding in extraordinary circumstances.

Putting aside the question of its frequency, reasonable minds can differ on whether waterboarding should be considered torture.  I, for one, would much rather be waterboarded than have my toenails removed, my genitals electrocuted, or beaten repeatedly.  The latter three are clearly torture.  Waterboarding is a much closer call.  And the fact that reporters have been willing to sit through a waterboarding session speaks volumes – I don’t think any reporter would be up for sitting through any other torture technique mentioned above.

So, at the very least, we shouldn’t put waterboarding on par with much clearer examples of torture.  Taking the context in whole, I would feel much more secure knowing that President Obama had this option in his pocket for use in extraordinary circumstances.  The fact that he has categorically refused to allow it leaves me a little more skeptical of the government’s ability to stop attacks before they happen.  And if it’s truly and strictly limited in this way, I don’t see it as compromising our values because I cannot confidently place it under the umbrella of “torture.”

One final note.  Geno, another author on this blog, said an interesting thing to me the other day.  If these detainees were sent to a federal prison, they would be exposed to what we all know goes on inside America’s jails.  I won’t elaborate further, but that, my friends, is torture.

Maybe Guantanamo isn’t all that bad after all…

In response, Dick Cheney had this to say in a television interview:

One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure (approved by Obama) is they put out the legal memos, the memos that the CIA got from the Office of Legal Counsel, but they didn’t put out the memos that showed the success of the effort. And there are reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity. They have not been declassified. I formally asked that they be declassified now. I haven’t announced this up until now, I haven’t talked about it, but I know specifically of reports that I read, that I saw that lay out what we learned through the interrogation process and what the consequences were for the country.

A few points about this.  First, all the memos should be released in order for the public to truly understand and appreciate the decisions that were made.  Regardless of where one stands, we certainly have an interest in seeing the whole picture.  Second, waterboarding does seem less problematic if it in fact worked; that is, if it prevented something concrete.  It seems that many fair-minded Americans would agree that if waterboarding three senior al-Qaeda operatives prevented an attack on American civilians, so be it.  Of course, reasonable minds can differ on this issue.

However, this leads to my third point.  Whether such policies were actually successful in preventing another attack misses the argument that many of those that are against waterbroading preach.  That argument was summed up yesterday by President Obama at C.I.A. headquarters:

What makes the United States special and what makes [the C.I.A.] special is precisely the fact that we are willing to uphold our values and our ideals even when it’s hard, not just when it’s easy, even when we are afraid and under threat, not just when its expedient to do so.  So yes, you’ve got a harder job and so do I, and that’s okay.

To me, this quote demonstrates that even President Obama himself believes that these procedures work.  He recognizes that not having them in the C.I.A.’s arsenal will make America’s job of preventing another attack harder.  Yet, this is the precise bargain that the President is willing to make.  To him, the issue is not whether these procedures work, but rather whether we should be implementing these tactics even though they work.

While I appreciate this argument, I have trouble conceiving a value more important for an administration than protecting its people from attacks.  This is the fundamental responsibility of government.  In fact, it’s the reason we enter into organized society via the social compact and leave behind our brutish natural state.  If government fails in this objective, it loses much of its legitimacy.

Another oft-cited argument is that evidence of waterboarding by the United States is a recruitment tool for terrorists.  The more the United States engages in this sort of thing, the more terrorists it creates, or so the argument goes.  It might be true that evidence of torture causes an influx in those willing to take up arms against the US.  But I can’t imagine it being that significant of an influx.  If evidence of waterboarding makes someone a terrorist, chances are they were pretty much there already.  After all, the tactic was used on three people and not administered at-will to every inmate at Guantanamo Bay.  This was a targeted campaign directed at those with the most information – three senior al-Quaeda operatives – for the purpose of preventing attacks on American civilians.  One of them was the self-confessed decapitator of Daniel Pearl, Khalid Sheik Mohammed.  One might disagree with waterboarding, but, considering all of this, I can’t imagine it being so shocking and so infuriating as to turn a house-wife into a suicide bomber.

I don’t know.  All I can say is that if I were president of the United States and I had serious reason to believe that one of three senior al-Quaeda operatives had information that could lead to stopping an attack on, say, the Brooklyn Bridge, I just might have the guy waterboarded.