Michele Bachmann Likens Waterboarding To Truman’s WWII Decision To Nuke Japan
Saturday night’s CBS News-hosted GOP Debate focused on U.S. foreign policy, so it should come as no surprise that the issue of waterboarding enemy combatants, and its definition as torture, has been reintroduced as a topical subject for debate on opinion news programs in the days that have followed. Rep. Michele Bachmann called in to America’s Newsroom on Fox News and was asked to respond to President Obama‘s dismissal of waterboarding as a useful and appropriate technique. Bachmann defended waterboarding by comparing it to President Truman‘s decision to drop nuclear weapons on Japan in World War II. Huh.
After airing a clip of President Obama calling waterboarding “torture,” and something “contrary to America’s traditions,” Rep. Bachmann said this:
I think the president is clearly wrong. I would go back to president Harry Truman who had to make the horrific decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan to end World War II. He said if he had to kill Japanese in order to save one American life he would. If as president of the United States I believed that we would be able to save 3,000 American lives and stop jet aircraft from flying into the twin towers, I would utilize waterboarding if it would save American lives. Sometimes decisions have to be made. It is important for people to know no one died from the use of waterboarding. Is it uncomfortable? yes, it is uncomfortable but our worries should not be the about the comfort level of a terrorist.
There is a lot to break down in Bachmann’s casual comparison to a nuclear bomb attack, which resulted in the deaths of an estimated 100,000 individuals, with waterboarding of suspected terrorists. But her real point was about the tough decisions that a commander in chief must make to defend the United States. Ironically, criticism of Obama’s public comments about the treatment of enemy combatants comes on the same day that left-of-center columnist Thomas Friedman gives the president back-handed praise for his perfect execution of George W. Bush‘s foreign policy. Dude can’t win.
What’s left out of this conversation is that, even if President Obama privately believed in waterboarding, or a devil-may-care approach to seeking intelligence from suspected terrorists, the last thing that he, or any other sitting president, should do is publicly amplify that position. The United States doesn’t torture, full stop. But what happens in CIA-sponsored interrogation locations in Poland, Egypt and elsewhere…well that’s not something any elected official should ever discuss.
Watch the clip below, courtesy of Fox News:
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
