58% Favor Waterboarding of Plane Terrorist (Catholic Apologetics)

From Instapundit

YEAH, BUT WITHOUT ANDREW SULLIVAN’S ANTI-TORTURE BLOGGING IT WOULD HAVE BEEN 56%: 58% Favor Waterboarding of Plane Terrorist To Get Information.
UPDATE: “My conclusion: the debate is over, and Dick Cheney won it.”

Reader Michael Gebert blames Andrew: “If fighting terrorists creates terrorists, surely being an endless hypocritical scold about water boarding creates Dick Cheneys.” Yeah, I actually agree with Andrew on torture, but the more I read his stuff, the weaker my sentiments on the subject get . . . .
Posted at 1:14 pm by Glenn Reynolds

Ok first let me say I don't want to get into a debate in this post if water boarding is torture or not. Or if it is torture is ok according to Catholic principles to water board in this scenario.

Lets look further into this. I saw this posted elsewhere.


A 2007 CNN/Opinion Research poll found that 69 percent of Americans considered waterboarding to be a form of torture. And at that time, 58 percent of them said waterboarding should not be used on terror suspects.

In April of this year, however, Gallup found that 55 percent of U.S. residents believed the technique and others like it were justified on those suspected of potential terrorist activity. The discrepancy in the numbers may simply be a matter of the way one polling organization asks its questions versus another. Or it could be a consequence of ever-evolving attitudes. All three surveys make it clear, however, that a significant portion of the country has no problem with torturing those people identified as possible terrorists, regardless if they have given any sort of legal proceeding.


Ouch so after a lot of public debate people that are against water boarding made no ground or perhaps maybe losing som ground to to say the least. IMAGINE IF THE PLANE HAD BLOWN UP.

Let me look at this from a Catholic viewpoint as to effect winning "hearts and minds". Basically the anti water boarding folks have got a huge ole fat F as a grade.

I could see this coming. There were many Catholics and Catholic blogs that felt strongly that water boarding was wrong. They were quite vocal on it. But this is the problem. Nine times out of ten they came off as looking like an ass and a jerk.

I saw this a million times. It ran the gambit from conservatives Catholics against water boarding to Progressive Catholics against water boarding. See the reader's thoughts again that Instapundit put up. I think that is what has been going on.

In Catholic apologetics when dealing with a Protestant ones's main and overriding goal is not really to"win" the argument. You can "win" the argument but make the person you are trying to convince that the Catholic Church is even more evil than he thought. The goal is conversion and that often is a long term process.

I am against gay marriage. I was not shocked that in progressive Maine gay marriage went down. The advocates of gay marriage looked like a bomb hit them. I suspect what went on was people that were troubled or had legitimate questions got tired of being called evil and bigots. They learned not to talk about their concerns and thus the shock at the voting booth for many.

Same thing here. I and others had serious questions and thoughts on the subject. Yet in com boxes any hint we thought it might be acceptable was met with all sort of accusations. YOU ARE NOT A TRUE CATHOLIC YOU ARE JUST A GOP SELLOUT etc etc. It got tiresome.

We saw this from Vox Nova to Crunchy Con.

Catholic Apologist Mark Shea , who should know better, was often the worst offender. I have no doubt of his sincere opinion on the subject and the importance too him. In fact it is a very important subject. But again look above as to the readers comments. Instead of Andrew Sullivan insert Mark Shea's name or many many others. The com boxes at the anti torture and and anti waterboarding blogs became tiresome affairs. If you treat people like garbage expect to get garbage in return or in this case nothing. I don't think this was somes intent but somehow we forget some basic lessons in arguing a point. That occurs in spades on the internet.

Progressive and liberal Catholics can and should learn a lesson from this. More conservative GOP leaning Pro-life Catholics are lectured non stop on our tactics as to the abortion issue. We are accused of just playing political hardball and missing the love and helping angle. That we cannot "demonize" our opponents. I think this cartoon version of GOP pro-lifers is nonsense.

Regardless it seems some are not practicing what they are preaching and for them it appears not to be working.

What about the Health Care bill? Look at the public Opinion polls on that!! It has been largely the same thing.

I was for immigration reform another emotional issue that was very very hot. I learned the hard way that my emotions would make me very much want to demonize the other side. Think that all their true motives were impure and UN Catholic. When the issue came around again in 2008 I somewhat learned my lesson. I got results occasionally. In fact if we look at opinion polls there was a lot public agreement with parts of the plan. We lost but it was progress. We see nothing like that as to the above issues.

So I suspect there will be a lot of angry posts by the anti water boarding Catholics the next few days as to the above poll. How folks are not truly Catholic and just sell outs etc etc etc.

Well that will not be productive to say the least.