Why waterboarding is Un-American

In the long and glorious history of the United States military there have been traditions that have withstood the test of time. Codes of conduct that go back as far as the birth of our nation and have long served to represent what we stand for as a country. One of the traditional behaviors that has seemingly fallen by the way side is the long standing tenent that forbade the military of this country from engaging in the use of torture as a legitimate tactic in the conduct of warfare. Most notably the use of a banned torture tactic known as waterboarding and the controversy over whether it has any real useful purpose for gathering useable intelligence.
In order to understand why it should not be practiced one must first understand what it is. Waterboarding simply put is what some people have refered to as a simulated drowning. The victim or "subject" of the act is first placed flat on their back onto a wooden board. Their head is then lowered to a level where the persons head is now lower than their feet on the board. A small towel or rag is then stuffed or placed over the mouth. A Bucket of water is then poured onto the persons face in a slow, deliberate and continual motion. The person soon feels the sensations of drowning because the water being poured onto their face enters the mouth and the nasal cavity and denies them the ability to breathe.
The practice dates back to the 1500's in Europe. It is believed it may have first been put to use during the Spanish Inquisition. Over the years it has been used by many of America's wartime enemies against our captured soldiers. Most notably it was used by the Nazi's during World war 2 and the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam war. It is a practice that has been banned by the codes of the Geneva Convention which is a document to which the U.S. is a co signer.
In History the thing that has distinguished the United States from it's enemies the most is it's behavior. The fact that we as a nation were not only honor bound by our own self imposed code of conduct but that we had no interest in ever engaging in the barbarism that our enemies displayed to us. It was what seperated "us" from "them" and it showed the world clearly who the good guys were and who the bad guys were. What was supposed to make us different from Al Queda and the Nazi's and the Vietcong was that we didnt do the disgusting things that they did in war. This gave us a "moral authority" And a respect and good standing in the international community that was beyond reproach and plain for all to see. When we begin to engage in the same unspeakable practices as our enemies we then lose that authority and it becomes difficult for other countries in the world to distinguish us from our enemies in our practices. For anyone to say that the United States has to engage in torture to fight the war on terror is nonsense. Its like saying that a police officer has to break the law in order to enforce the law. It is a nonsense argument. The job of a police officer is to uphold the law. If he violates the law he becomes by definition a criminal or a law breaker and thereby violates the very code he has sworn to uphold. A police officer is honor bound to live by a standard that a common criminal perhaps would not even understand. Let Al Queda be what it is. We all know that they are barbarians. They prove it everyday by their behavior. What we should have done is simply fight against them without becoming the barbarians that they are. We should not have become the cop who breaks the law. We should have let their evil stand on its own and not have stooped to engaging in it too and thereby violate all of our own tenents of acceptable behavior. We have stained our own toga. Even in the eyes of our allies it is going to take us years to recover our reputation as a nation if in fact we ever do at all.