unCommon Sense: Torture Abuse?
With the release of the CIA interview today claiming water boarding saved American lives, and Obama suggesting he might prosecute such actions, we all have a fresh new hypothetical moral dilemma to mentally chew on. I think most people can agree that there is some point at which everyone supports the use of aggression as a peace keeping tool. Where each of your friends, coworkers, and family draw that line depends on their past experience and worldview, and no one will ever unanimously agree on where that point is. Maybe for some it is when a cop is forced to shoot a criminal who is attacking a defenseless citizen. It might even be when a strong country is obligated to help a defenseless country resist an aggressive and hostile neighbor. Maybe for some that line is never drawn until they are personally attacked in some manner.
For me, whenever I hear one of these moral dilemmas that people love to use to put you on the spot, I generally approach the question by looking at the worst case scenario. In this particular case I would say that the potential loss of even one single innocent American citizen’s life trumps a *proven radical jihadist getting some water up his nose. But does that make torture ok, even a form of torture that is (slightly) more civilized than its gory predecessors? The answer is: I don’t know and neither do you, because like every hypothetical dilemma you’ve ever heard, it can only be realistically addressed in the “moment of truth” by whoever is in the position of authority. This decision maker must carefully consider the big picture and the small picture, weigh all the pros and cons, and make a really tough call.
Take torture and aggression completely off the table and Americans face a potentially devastating and possibly avoidable worst case scenario. Make torture and aggression something only used in the most extreme and dangerous situations, requiring approval from the president himself, and we enable our highest elected office to make the tough decisions that come with the job of protecting the free world.
*Proven meaning authentic evidence of crimes against the United States.
UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has a nice summary of the entire torture circus, and evidence that the public is more in tune with Dick Cheney’s stance than the current administration’s stance. HotAir also uncovered a compelling article - buried by WaPo - that suggests the torture memos were released in response to Cheney’s original criticisms that Obama was endangering the US with lax security policies. Talk about your all-time biggest backfire…
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I view this question as very much like the use of the nuclear warhead in WWII. It was awful. It was horrifying. And so was the ground war in the Pacific theater. I agree that we can’t know til we are in it what we’ll do. The one thing that scares me slightly is that the philosophy the media are falling all over themselves to praise (pragmatism) basically states there is not over arching “truth” - just what works is true. If it works, it’s “true enough.” You’d think that this would be interpreted as “if torture works, it’s true enough” but in reality I think the interpretation is “if politicizing this issue works to keep us in power, it’s true enough” might be more accurate. Either way, it’s easy to lose your compass in these philosophies without absolutes that transcend any given situation