Word Watch: Waterboarding

by Azfar and Tiffany (B5)

Step 1 (Real-life situation)

Waterboarding is a form of torture/interrogation technique in which water is poured over the face of a captive, whereby creating a sensation of drowning. In the interview on the site On the Media, Bob Garfield and Brooke Goldstone tackle the issue of defining waterboarding. Waterboarding, as a definition, is an undecided matter for both the American government and the media. Journalists and talk show syndicates are traditionally expected by the people to tackle this issue easily, defining unclear political terms as accurately as possible as well as choosing their words with care. However, it is a strange fact that they have not come to terms with the definition of waterboarding. Why is this so? One side views waterboarding as torture, while another views it as ‘enhanced interrogation.’ What follows in the interview is a series of semantic arguments between journalists, government and military officials, along with a discussion as to why the American government refuses to acknowledge waterboarding as a type of torturing, since they are the perpetrators of the action in question.

Step 2 (Knowledge issue identified)

The argument on defining waterboarding mainly revolves around the areas of Language and Ethics, however; since it is about the media’s role in representing facts it is also a knowledge issue that deals with Sense Perception. To define torture, the government and the media adopt the “ends justifies the means” argument, while the dissenting opinions adopt the opposite. A military officer states that waterboarding is a form of torture since he uses the technique to train soldiers to withstand torture. The former vice-president, John McCain who served in the Vietnam War (and was a prisoner of war) concurred with the military officer, arguing from an ethical perspective: “It isn't about an interrogation technique...If we engage in a practice that was invented in the Spanish Inquisition, was used by Pol Pot in Cambodia in that great genocide, is now being used on Buddhist monks in Burma, how do we keep the moral high ground in the world?” Thus the recurrent question is: who decides if waterboarding is torture? How do we differentiate between the two? As a government represents authority and execution of the law to the letter, we must ask: where do they draw the line between torture and interrogation?

Step 3 (Knowledge issue developed)

In retrospect, the issue of definition definitely points back to an essential limitation that we as a species often overlook: how accurate do words represent reality as we perceive it? We often associate words to physical representation of that specific word (when we say ice cream, the first thing that comes to mind would be the iced, round cream balls) but are words valid representation of object? Not only that, sometimes we even associate our emotions when defining words, thus even raising further the validity of our definitions. We have always relied on words to define words that attempts to explain our perception of reality, whether it is in the world we live in or the emotions we feel inside. Can “happiness” or “sadness” fully explain how we feel? Does “euphoria” really explain what “happiness” is? Do these words truly map the territory, or should we accept that they are ultimately the map, not the territory? Evidently, language at times, limits us from expressing what we think, however; while language is clearly flawed and limited, we are also dependent on it because it is irreplaceable and it is our only means of communicating with one another. We have no choice but to rely on an incomplete approach, because what other choice do we have? Words are ‘good enough’ to make sense of the incoherent, complex nature of this world.

Step 4 (Application in other real-life situations)

The issue of defining waterboarding can be applied to other real-life situations. One of them is the issue of translations, whether it is translating a few sentences from English to Mandarin, or translating Molière Tartuffe. These translations are more than often, not word-to-word, rather; translators would take the holistic approach, preferring to emphasize on meaning and coherence (as is the purpose of translations). The question is, how much is lost in translation? Can the poetical beauty of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream be truly expressed in another language, and vice versa? This could be extended to the matter of religious texts, and their subsequent translation. Is the English rendition of the Bible or the Torah equivalent to their original Hebrew versions? Can words be easily mapped from one language to another and still retain its fluidity and meaning, when the constructs of languages differ from one to another? Can these “maps” truly map other “maps” that attempt to map the territory? Do we not risk confusing between the map and the territory, when we overindulge in interpretations? Another issue that runs more parallel with waterboarding is the ‘terrorist vs. freedom fighter’ argument. To Americans, Osama bin Laden and the 19 hijackers who bombed the World Trade Center represent people who impinged upon the sanctity of America’s most upheld value: freedom. However, to then-ruling Taliban in Afghanistan and others who were sympathetic to their cause, these people were ‘martyrs’ and were fighting against postmodern American imperialism in Muslim countries. Who then, is the terrorist, and who is the freedom fighter? Do ends justify the means, and if so, whose argument is more valid? Moreover, where do we draw the line to distinguish between a freedom fighter and a terrorist? Who fights for ‘freedom’? Is ‘freedom’ inevitably a Platonic ideal, or is it merely an ideal on a horizontal plane of voluminous interpretations? Hitherto, is there such a thing as ‘freedom’, then if there are so many versions of it?

References:

Garfield, Bob, and Brooke Goldstone, auth. "Word Watch: Waterboarding." On the Media. Web. 5 Sep 2011. http://www.onthemedia.org/2007/nov/09/word-watch-waterboarding/.