The GOP’s Primal Affection For Waterboarding

As if the cheers that followed Rick Perry’s pro-death penalty stance weren’t alarming enough, the recent GOP debate on foreign policy provided even more reasons to believe that today’s Republican candidates may have a lot in common with the Spanish Inquisition tribunal. When asked their stance on waterboarding, it was only candidates Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman who agreed that it is in fact torture and should not be used under any circumstances. Suffice it to say that the proceeding yee-haws were very few. It wasn’t until Michele Bachmann made the rather specious claim that as President she would implement waterboarding for its “effectiveness” in gaining critical security information that the rather torpid audience burst into uproarious applause.

With Herman Cain’s recent statement that he “isn’t supposed to know about foreign policy” and Bachmann’s absurd claim that the ACLU runs the CIA, it is wholly unsurprising that the majority of GOP candidates, none of whom have much foreign policy experience (save for Jon Huntsman, the apparent candidate non grata) displayed such arrant ignorance throughout the debate.

Regardless, what Cain may not understand about Obama’s intervention in Libya or what Mitt Romney may misinterpret regarding United States relations with China pales in comparison to their unnerving endorsements of waterboarding. The fact that a “serious” presidential candidate would vocalize his or her support for waterboarding in hopes of strutting his or her bellicose conservative swagger is much more indicative of our own immorality and lawlessness than an alleged enemy’s.

Catholic Barbarism And The Modern GOP

Despite its many headlines in the past decade, waterboarding is not a novel concept nor is it an ever-innovative American method of gaining intelligence from supposed enemies. Rather, its origins can be found in 15th century Spain as a torture method utilized by some rather combative Catholic monarchs during the Spanish Inquisition. Formerly known as la toca, the hapless victim’s mouth was stuffed with a cloth and eventually filled with water as it spilled from a jar to simulate drowning. While the Spaniards claimed that la toca had religious significance, they also conceded that it was torture. After all, that was why they did it. Yet some 500 years later, many foolhardy American leaders still do not come to the same conclusion.

As such, what the United States relationship with waterboarding lacks in consistency it gains in hypocrisy. In 1852, many American dignitaries deemed it “hydropathic torture” yet the US Army utilized it in the 1898 Spanish-American War in the Philippines. In the 20th century, American court tribunals tried and hanged several Japanese commanders that used water torture against Americans during World War II on the grounds that it was a “war crime.”

Waterboarding: The Damage Springs Eternal

While the United States’ stance on waterboarding is mercurial at best, its effects are not. Physiologically speaking, the potential damages are numerous and severe. Many have cited brain and lung damage due to oxygen deprivation and in some cases death.

According to Allen Keller, Director of the Bellevue/New York University School of Medicine Program for Survivors of Torture, waterboarding is “an utterly terrifying event that […] can result in significant long-term post traumatic stress, anxiety, and depression.”

To the chagrin of the conservative pro-waterboarding base, Keller cannot be written off as some psychoanalytic sap: he has treated the victims himself. One of his patients who underwent waterboarding now suffers from constant flashbacks where “every time he [showers], he panics.” Another panics any time he is short of breath—even if only exercising. The experience, Keller says, is often ineradicable.