Stone Pigs

Posted By Alan Partis on April 26, 2009

There’s an old joke that goes something like this:

A man walks into a bar and sits down next to a very attractive classy lady. In due course of conversation he asks her, “So tell me, if I was as rich as Bill Gates, would you marry me?”

The woman laughs and replies, “Sure.”

“OK,” the man follows up, “will you sleep with me tonight for $20?”

Angrily, the woman shoots back, “20 bucks? What kind of woman do you take me for?”

“Well madam, we’ve already established what kind of woman you are, now we’re just haggling over price!”

I was reminded of this story while listening to all the chatter this past week about the so-called CIA “torture memos” that the Obama Administration released.

I think it is safe to say that everyone agrees that we need to interrogate all prisoners we capture in our effort to cleanse our fair planet of terrorists, especially those who may be connected with plots to attack our country and kill our fellow citizens. It’s just that we’re haggling over the price.

Here are my observations of this mess:

• While waterboarding is indeed a controversial technique, and for some is tantamount to torture, there are clearly vastly more torturous techniques that we could employ. For example, instead of simply simulating drowning (which is what waterboarding is) we could subject our prisoners to actual drowning. We could employ “the rack” or any of a host of diabolical deeds employed at various times throughout the history of man.
• As a nation, we dislike the idea of torturing our prisoners as a means to extract information. As such, we don’t employ what we perceive to be the most heinous of techniques. Waterboarding (and some other similarly controversial enhanced interrogation techniques) represents the highest price that some folks in this country are willing to pay.
• For some folks, waterboarding represents a price higher than they are willing to pay to extract actionable intelligence from our captured enemies.
• Some folks, who are most vocal, will object to whatever is the current high price in interrogation techniques.

All that will really come of this public application of political correctness is the proof that our government, and our society in general, can be blackmailed into reducing our interrogation prices. This will result in future attempts to erode our defensive abilities even further, either from within our own ranks, or from our weaker alleged allies and friends around the world.

This is not how you build a strong and stable society. That is how you weaken a society and move it more toward anarchy or tyranny and away from liberty.

Category: Leadership, Observations
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