{"id":13525,"date":"2007-11-08T14:17:20","date_gmt":"2007-11-08T19:17:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13525.html"},"modified":"2007-11-08T14:17:20","modified_gmt":"2007-11-08T19:17:20","slug":"national-review-writer-thinks-americans-should-be-proud-of-waterboarding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/national-review-writer-thinks-americans-should-be-proud-of-waterboarding\/","title":{"rendered":"National Review writer thinks Americans ‘should be proud’ of waterboarding"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s been a discouraging autumn when it comes to the right and torture. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page argued<\/a> that waterboarding doesn’t necessarily constitute “cruel, inhuman or degrading” treatment of U.S. detainees. The National Review’s Rich Lowry suggested<\/a>, in Matt Yglesias’ words<\/a>, that torture is “a defining value of the American conservative movement.” Republican “strategist” Rachel Marsden said on CNN<\/a>, “One man’s torture is another man’s CIA-sponsored swim lesson.”<\/p>\n

But to show just how depraved some segments of the right have become, consider the latest piece<\/a> from Deroy Murdock, a contributing editor to the National Review. While some conservatives have defended torture by waterboarding as a necessary evil in a ticking-time-bomb scenario, Murdock went much further, arguing, “Waterboarding is something of which every American should be proud.”<\/p>\n

Though clearly uncomfortable, waterboarding loosens lips without causing permanent physical injuries (and unlikely even temporary ones). If terrorists suffer long-term nightmares about waterboarding, better that than more Americans crying themselves to sleep after their loved ones have been shredded by bombs or baked in skyscrapers.<\/p>\n

In short, there is nothing “repugnant” about waterboarding.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Remember, this isn’t some random crazy person ranting on a street corner; this is a published column in one of the nation’s biggest conservative political magazines.<\/p>\n

For what it’s worth, Media Matters did some fact-checking<\/a>, and found that Murdock — surprise, surprise — doesn’t know what he’s talking about: “[A]ccording to medical experts on the effect of torture, waterboarding results in both short and long-term negative consequences for mental and physical health, including possible risk of death”<\/p>\n

But stepping back and considering the big picture, one question emerges: what is wrong with these people<\/i>? How, exactly, did we get to a point in which conservatives brag<\/i> about their support for medieval torture techniques?
\n
\nRosa Brooks makes a compelling argument<\/a> that so many conservatives have become so twisted that support for torture has replaced opposition to abortion as a litmus-test issue.<\/p>\n

Today, though, the GOP’s interest in abortion appears greatly diminished. When President Bush nominated Michael B. Mukasey as attorney general, no one seemed clear about Mukasey’s views on abortion \u2014 and no one in the GOP seemed to care very much either.<\/p>\n

These days, you can forget that old-style GOP rhetoric about “values,” “human dignity” and the “culture of life.” Because the GOP has a new litmus test for its nominees: Will you or will you not protect U.S. officials who order the torture of prisoners?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Kevin Drum wonders<\/a> how conservatives went so wrong, so quickly.<\/p>\n

The trajectory of this debate has been depressing beyond words. As recently as a year or two ago, conservatives seemed at least occasionally defensive about the whole thing, mostly limiting their defense of torture to ticking time bomb scenarios and the like. It wasn’t pretty, but it was at least a tacit admission that torture was shameful enough to be considered only in extremis<\/i>.<\/p>\n

But no more. The party that used to take Darkness at Noon as practically an ur-text about the evils of communism is now home to a snarling pack of presidential candidates who fall all over themselves to defend torture and abusive interrogation as a routine practice. How did we get here?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Andrew Sullivan notes a similar trajectory<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Have you noticed that the pro-torture right has gone from saying that torture is abhorrent to saying that torture isn’t occurring to saying that torture is not torture to now saying that torture is “something of which every American should be proud”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That is the state of our discourse, and it’s getting worse. The arc is simply horrifying: We don’t torture … we did torture, but those were a few bad apples … we do torture, but only in life-threatening crises … torture is morally sound, so quit your bellyaching.<\/p>\n

We’re dealing with a conservative movement that has largely given up on morals, standards, the rule of law, and even self-interest. One wonders what it will take to bring them back, and how long that might take.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been a discouraging autumn when it comes to the right and torture. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page argued that waterboarding doesn’t necessarily constitute “cruel, inhuman or degrading” treatment of U.S. detainees. The National Review’s Rich Lowry suggested, in Matt Yglesias’ words, that torture is “a defining value of the American conservative movement.” Republican […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13525\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}