It’s almost baffling that the Left is so loudly and repeatedly invoking the opinion of a radio DJ in this national discussion of EIT and waterboarding. I say almost because there’s still the possibility that the common sense used by Vice President Cheney this week will continue to form the framework of the debate. But over at Memeorandum, which is a somewhat useful gauge of the daily zeitgeist, the fever swamp is afire with self righteous indignation because a radio personailty has declared waterboarding torure.
The “torture” debate has worked its way into all levels of our national discourse. My 6th grade son asked me about it last week (lunch room chatter is the elementary school form of what we used to call water cooler talk) and, drawing on the example I learned from my parents, I suggested he try to get a true historical perspective of the issue to inform his inchoate opinions on the matter. So we went to the local bookstore the other day and, along with some books on D Day (which is his new non fiction interest), he also picked, after some hesitation on my part, a copy of Flyboys and Ghost Soldiers.
While neither book is a treatise on the subject of torture they both address the subject in real and historically honest terms that, frankly, make the OLC memos (selectively redacted and released by President Obama) appear benignly clinical and abstract. They are, however, real histories that address real torture, the many victims of which never had a radio microphone to return to when the experience was over.
On this Memorial Day weekend it is my hope that all Americans take a moment to actually remember what our country has experienced and accomplished to preserve not only our freedom but that of many others around this world.
