My Gut Tells Me We're Better Off Without Torture
Damon Linker writes:
In the end, the statesman needs to rely on his judgment — on what Aristotle called practical wisdom (phronesis) and President Bush (and Stephen Colbert) called his “gut” — in making the decision about whether and when and for how long and in what ways to deviate from what is normally right in order to “preserve the mere existence or independence of society” against its mortal enemies.
We all know what President Bush and his advisers decided. In the wake of 9/11, they (along with writers such as Charles Krauthammer) judged militant Islam to be an existential threat to the United States. And an existential threat is perhaps the clearest example of a case in which normal justice has to give way to the preservation of the common good at all costs.
Perhaps the term “existential threat” obscures more than it clarifies. I’d have said, immediately after the September 11 attacks, that radical Islam posed an existential threat to America, though I never thought that Islamic terrorists possessed a nuclear weapon, or that an Islamic state commanded an Army capable of invading the United States, or that radical Islam threatened America more than the Cold War era Soviet Union.
So what did I mean when I used the term?
Technological advancement is enabling ever smaller groups of people to possess weapons that can kill ever larger numbers of their fellow human beings. I worry less about suitcase nukes than I do about a virus that can be cooked up on a terrorist’s budget, and that decimates the world population upon its release. Insofar as radical Islamic terrorists are willing to die for their cause, possessed of impressive resources, and growing in number, I think that time is on their side — that eventually they’ll be able to get their hands on a weapon so destructive that it’ll destroy whatever society it is turned against, and that they’ll be willing to use that weapon. Therefore, I reasoned, they are an existential threat — though not, I believed, an immediate or “imminent” one.
Why does the distinction matter? Well, for one thing, any threat but the most immediate and unexpected is best governed by laws agreed to by a polity beforehand, or else that they debate and determine through their elected representatives as a conflict unfolds. America’s laws against torture, for example, were enacted by legislators who deliberately prohibited the practice not only in times of peace, but specifically for times of war — that is to say, the only time torture would likely be pondered.
And the distinction matters for another reason too.
Linker writes:
If we were truly confronting an existential threat — a perpetual undetected ticking time bomb — then it would have been immoral for those responsible for defending the common good of the United States not to torture a high-ranking al-Qaeda operative such as Abu Zubaydah in order to extract every last bit of information from him. (Even if torture rarely works, the fact that it sometimes does would be quite enough to justify its use in a genuinely dire situation.)
Perhaps torture is the surest way to save innocent lives in certain “existentially threatening,” genuinely dire circumstances, though I hasten to add that those circumstances are so extreme and unlikely that I find it hard to believe they’ll ever happen. A perpetual undetected ticking time bomb? It sounds like the invention of a hack Hollywood writer devising a villainous plot capable of being thwarted by a Jack Bauer-like hero. In fact, if radical Islam is an existential threat, it is far more plausible that it’s the kind of medium to long term threat that I fear. And that makes all the difference in the world, doesn’t it?
Using torture against that kind of existential threat — even if it worked rarely — might well produce so many false leads when it didn’t work as to make Americans less safe. It might well cause upstanding intelligence professionals in the CIA to resign, and others in the FBI to remove themselves from interrogations, thereby hurting our capacity to gather good intelligence. It might push more Muslims into the radical camp, aid terrorist recruiting efforts, undermine support for the War on Terror among significant numbers of Americans, and cause allied countries to cooperate less with American counterterrorism efforts. It might bleed into military prisons, undermining our mission in a critical military theater and leading to the rightful imprisonment of American soldiers.
In fact, all those setbacks did happen because we tortured detainees, and unlike the supposed benefits of torture, those drawbacks were knowable, predictable, and verifiable. And, of course, the Bush Administration’s torture wasn’t restricted to high-ranking al-Qaeda operatives. We tortured bad guys who weren’t part of Al Qaeda. We tortured innocent men turned over to us by crooked foreign police forces given bounties for every body they handed over. And the fact that these people were tortured is largely due to the Bush Administration’s failure to put adequate mechanisms in place to distinguish high-ranking Al Qaeda operatives from dime a dozen insurgents and innocent Muslims.
Given all that, it seems obviously incorrect to argue, as Linker does, that “judging the justice of the Bush administration’s policies on torture thus requires answering a single (extremely difficult) question: Was the administration right to believe that militant Islam posed (and perhaps still poses) an existential threat to the United States?” Other questions seem relevant to judging the Bush Administration’s torture policies, questions like, “Did they torture innocent men? Was the hypothetical threat imminent? Did their efforts hurt our security more than it helped it? How much did it undermine the rule of law? How harmful will that be in years to come?”
A final question is whether the Bush Administration itself ever feared that the United States was imminently and existentially threatened. It certainly claimed credit for preventing “another 9/11,” but did it ever even argue about the possibility an attack so drastic as to destroy the nation itself? Some would argue that preventing another 9/11 is sufficient justification for torture, but that is different than the “existential threat” argument.
One more thing, too: Al Qaeda posed less of a threat than the Soviet Union, possessed of its doomsday arsenal, did at the height of the Cold War. Was torture morally permissible for the duration of that conflict? Would we have been better off with the Bush Administration’s torture policy back then, or did our pre-9/11 approach prove itself superior? Why does Israel, which seems to be in far greater danger of suffering an existentially threatening attack, find it prudent to prohibit torture? Should Great Britain have tortured German prisoners during WWII when it faced an existential threat to its survival? Should George Washington have tortured British prisoners? I don’t mean to suggest that these questions have easy or obvious answers, but it does seem clear that the Bush Administration thought torture more justified than numerous leaders who faced threats far more imminent and extreme.
That seems like corroborating evidence that their approach was flawed.
Linker is right about this: I cannot say with certainty that Bush Administration torture didn’t save us from a catastrophic attack. (Nor can I say that President Obama’s cessation of torture won’t save us from the same fate.) And it is possible — though not likely — that future torture might prevent the very destruction of the United States. But so what? Imagine all the horrors that might save the United States from destruction. Perhaps a President so powerful as to be a dictator is needed to ward off the grave threat we face. Maybe we’ll be under the thumb of radical Islamists unless we nuke the whole Middle East in the next five years; or seize by force all the nuclear weapons in Europe; or immediately prohibit all future research into biotechnology and murder all the scientists in other countries; or round Muslim Americans up in WWII style camps; or launch a guerrilla marketing campaign to increase the incidence of abortion in the most radicalized regions of hostile countries.
All these abhorrent practices, which might save the United States given certain circumstances, are nevertheless unthinkable for good reasons — it isn’t just that they are morally wrong and unlikely to be of utilitarian use, it is the fact that the likely damage done by implementing those policies is so great, and the likelihood that they’d be implemented only in the right circumstances so low, that we’re far safer as a society prohibiting them in all cases. It is possible to imagine a scenario where that safest bet is nevertheless the wrong one, just as one can imagine a car crash in which the driver would’ve been better off without his seat belt. In formulating such judgments, I’d much rather rely on wisdom accrued by civilized countries over many decades, and the established laws of the nation, than the gut of George W. Bush or Barack Obama or any other president. There are systems of government that empower one man to do whatever it is his gut tells him is necessary. Ours is not one of them.
This is too long and not well-directed. The more honest and young and intelligent on the right have this “problem” – the right’s moral underpinnings have been totally blasted away, and you guys go on and on hemming and hawing. We all know where this is going: Bush and Cheney committed grave crimes, if “crime” and “law” have any useful meaning. The right can’t get its feet back under itself with half-measures and muddying the water and negotiation with oneself.
You guys need to just fast-forward a few years, imagine all this playing out, and go ahead and puke up Bush and Cheney and come to terms with the fact that everything you thought was right – because of the threat, because you needed to show who had bigger balls after 9/11, you know, the Daddy party and all that – was actually deeply wrong. Oh, and not effective! Army parked in Iraq, our ideals nearly hollowed-out by torture and abuse of power. Might want to get a head start and start reconsidering your national security worldview now.
— Steve C · Apr 21, 07:23 AM · #
Steve C.,
Though it may be overlong and poorly organized, the blog post I’ve just written is also a clear repudiation of Bush Administration torture policy — one that takes aim at a liberal writer’s qualified defense of those policies, I might add.
To what do you refer when you talk about hemming and hawing? I’m so perplexed by your comment.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Apr 21, 09:27 AM · #
Methinks Steve C had his response written before he read the post.
— Nick · Apr 21, 06:39 PM · #
Finely weighing the pros and cons of torturing. Like if the benefits outweigh the costs by 1%, Conor might go for it. This is what the more intellectually honest on the right engage in these days.
But flash back ten years and the same people’s moral sense was activated to level 11 on the dial over a stained blue dress, and it was a principled enough position that you all backed impeaching a president.
It’s kind of mind-blowing that you feel the need to go through this big analytical process. In terms of the rule of law, would you do the same thing if, say, Colin Powell was found selling state secrets to North Korea? Would you be carefully weighing the costs and benefits of selling state secrets (after all, the case can be made that it’s entrepreneurial activity!). No, it’s insane to go through all that.
Torturing the f*** out of taxi drivers is worse. When you sit here taking it seriously, to many of us it just seems batshit insane.
And moreover, it makes me wonder: are conservatives fundamentally dupes? If a Republican president is in office in 15 years, and wants to start an idiotic war of choice and brazenly claim power he clearly doesn’t have and violate the law in the most fundamental ways possible, and only offers up some thin national security justification for all of it, will older Conor go along willingly, and 5 years AFTER all the damage is done, still be wondering whether it was good or bad?
— Steve C · Apr 21, 11:14 PM · #
To pose a more general question, I wonder these days why conservatives aren’t fundamentally open to manipulation along these lines: (this is Himmler at Nuremburg):
“Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.
That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked,
and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the
country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
What does conservative resistance to a president (esp a Republican president) who claims powers he doesn’t have, and starts stupid wars that park our Army in the wrong place for 15 years, engages in morally outrageous activity – what does that look like? Are there examples? Is all opposition in these situations ceded to the left and becomes, inevitably in the minds of those who want to show they have big balls – a bunch of hippies who want to whine?
— Steve C · Apr 21, 11:32 PM · #
“But flash back ten years and the same people’s moral sense was activated to level 11 on the dial over a stained blue dress, and it was a principled enough position that you all backed impeaching a president.”
If I’ve followed the breadcrumbs to the right gingerbread house, ten years ago Conor was in high school fingerbanging his girlfriend in the back of his daddy’s Buick.
News flash Steve. The guy we voted for is in power now, and members of his party control both houses of Congress. If it makes you feel good to come on here and berate Conor about Monica Lewinski, well have at it; follow your bliss!
But if you want to actually do something that might help restore this nations honor, write your president, write your representative, and write your senators. Demand that those responsible be held accountable to the fullest extent possible under our nation’s laws and treaty obligations. I’m sure Conor’s already done that, right Conor?
— Tony Comstock · Apr 21, 11:40 PM · #
Steve C,
You’ve got no ground to stand on here.
I’m weighing the pros and cons of torture because that is what’s required to refute a specific argument, offered by a non-conservative in a left-of-center magazine, that the Bush Administration’s interrogation policies might have been justified. Perhaps if everyone in the world believed exactly as you do, and found the positions you advance obviously true, these conversations wouldn’t be necessary. But that isn’t the world in which we live. In reality, some of us are actively engaging the argument about torture on the side of NOT doing it, whereas others of us (you) are touting the superiority of sitting on the sidelines because the position you hold, but lots of others don’t, is so obviously right. The most polite thing I can say is that yours is an approach of questionable effectiveness.
Would I be making arguments against Colin Powell if he were caught selling state secrets? Well yes I would, if a substantial percentage of Americans didn’t think his actions were wrong. If Holocaust denial comes into vogue I’ll write lengthy, well-reasoned posts pointing out its errors too, because that is what you do when other members of your polity are making incorrect arguments — you refute them.
The parts of your comment I’ve yet to address are, alas, the most poorly reasoned of all. In one paragraph, you’re making the obviously spurious assumption that “you all backed impeaching a president” — those six words manage to contain 2 mistakes, since as an 18 year old I hadn’t any opinion about the Clinton impeachment or anything else political, and because the people who post on this site — not to mention conservatives generally — are sufficiently heterodox that there isn’t anything coherent “you all” could refer to. Beyond that, even if I had supported impeachment for Bill Clinton, that would be a pretty weird reason to refrain from criticizing the Bush Administration’s torture policies.
Finally, you assert that the fact I take the time to post against torture today makes you wonder if 15 years from now I will back a foolish war of choice launched by a Republican president. Were there anything resembling a line of reason connecting those two points, I’d show you where it went astray, but the fact is that what I hesitate to call your reasoning is too convoluted even for that.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Apr 21, 11:53 PM · #
“What does conservative resistance to a president (esp a Republican president) who claims powers he doesn’t have, and starts stupid wars that park our Army in the wrong place for 15 years, engages in morally outrageous activity – what does that look like?”
Um, I think it looks like certain articles and blog posts at Culture11, and Gene Healy, and Reason Magazine, and The American Conservative, and Rod Dreher, and John Schwenkler, and George Will, and Andrew Sullivan, and many others, myself included.
It looks, for example, like a blog post against Bush’s torture policy, written in an attempt to convince a liberal writer that even his qualified defense of it is incorrect.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Apr 22, 12:01 AM · #
Which, naturally, completely erases every single thing that happened before January 20th.
That’s pretty convenient. Who knew law, morality, and justice simply had a “reset” button?
Conservatives “generally” are “heterodox”? Bwa ha ha ha ha!
— Chet · Apr 22, 03:28 AM · #
“But that isn’t the world in which we live. In reality, some of us are actively engaging the argument about torture on the side of NOT doing it, whereas others of us (you) are touting the superiority of sitting on the sidelines because the position you hold, but lots of others don’t, is so obviously right. The most polite thing I can say is that yours is an approach of questionable effectiveness.”
Sigh. Conor thinks torture – pro and con – needs a good hearing here in 2009. This stuff happened five years ago and if you’re still in the reasonable-people-disagreeing or lets-wait-until-we-have-all-the-facts stage – you and the people you’re trying to convince are the problem.
What laws need to be broken for you to be outraged, and to stop treating people who are responsible for clear, grave crimes as one legitimate side of an argument – how much evidence do you need? What does “law” mean to you?
This is way too delayed a reaction. Conservatives debating this now just show everyone what a weak and manipulable political culture the right is. All I have to do is say “national security” or “terrorism” and I can make you all do backflips and turn into little Jack Bauers.
Also you might want to inform the Reason magazine editors of where they sit on the political spectrum.
— Steve C · Apr 22, 07:21 AM · #
Conor and other people who call themselves conservatives:
It’s obvious that there’s a pretty basic disconnect on morality here – this is a close call for you, a debate in which reasonable people can disagree, and for me it’s nothing of the sort. So if you’re willing, here are a few calibrating questions that might help determine whether we’re all anywhere in the same ballpark:
- let’s say we attack Iran, and an American soldier is captured. The Iranians beat his legs so badly over the course of a few weeks that his legs are effectively pulpified, and he dies. Is this wrong because the person is American, or because the person is a person (generally. i.e. they’re human)?
- if it turned out that killing the children of a terrorist one by one until the terrorist talked was extremely effective – we’re talking about getting real reliable intelligence, saving many American lives, the whole conservative 24 dream scenario – should we do such a thing?
- and finally, let’s say I have an arsenal of suitcase bombs and I can only be stopped by doing away with the system of government we recognize as “American”, and going to more of a Chinese-style system (to crack down sufficiently). How many Americans must be under threat before you decide the change is worth it (this is a number between 0 and 300 million)?
— Steve C · Apr 22, 07:58 AM · #
_“Which, naturally, completely erases every single thing that happened before January 20th.”
I said no such thing.
I opposed George Bush in the 2000 election. I believe the Supreme erred in it’s decssion to appoint George Bush. Not only do I think their legal reasoning was flawed, I think they did vast damage to their credibity as an institution.
I opposed the invasion of Irag.
In 2004 after 20 years of being an independant I registiered as a democrat as a way of casting a symbolic “extra vote” against George Bush and the Republican party.
Two years ago I wrote You think it’s hard talking to your kids about sex? Try to talking to them about torture.
— Tony Comstock · Apr 22, 11:12 AM · #
Button spaz. Perhaps an admin can delete the above, incomplete comment.
“Which, naturally, completely erases every single thing that happened before January 20th.”
I said no such thing.
I opposed George Bush in the 2000 election. I believe the Supreme erred in it’s decssion to appoint George Bush. Not only do I think their legal reasoning was flawed, I think they did vast damage to their credibity as an institution.
I opposed the invasion of Irag.
In 2004 after 20 years of being an independant I registiered as a democrat as a way of casting a symbolic “extra vote” against George Bush and the Republican party.
Two years ago I wrote You think it’s hard talking to your kids about sex? Try to talking to them about torture. , one of my most read and widely circulated essays of the year.
In 2008 I voted for the democratic candidate in the hopes that that would lead to a full investigation and prosecution of Bush adminstration officials, up to and including the former president.
Morality most certainly did not “reset” on January 20th when Barrack Obama took office. If it had, Bush, Chaney, and their lawyer would, at the very least, be under house arrest, if not in leg irons.
As a whole, I believe conservative and republicans are a long long way from having performed sufficient acts of contrition for having supported a criminal regime that has stained the honor of this country; more over I believe this nation as a whole is a long way away from having performed sufficient acts of contrition for having supported a criminal regime that stained this nation’s honor.
The last time I travelled abroad was in 2003, to areas where US interests were discordant with local interests. None the less, I found that people were overwhelmingly supportive of the United States and genuinely believed that as a nation and as a people we represented something good and profoundly different in the world; and that are reckless blunder into Iraq was a regrettable but understandable (over)reaction to 9/11.
In 2003 is was able to hold my head high and answer “My country has never had anything like this happen to us before, so we’re still sorting things out. But yes, I do think there is something different and good about the United States.” What would I say to them now? At least we don’t cut people’s heads off?
Chet, have you written your representatives, senators, and president? Have you made it clear that you expect the Obama administration to pursue justice, even if it means the horrifying prospect of a former president of the United States standing trial for war crimes?
— Tony Comstock · Apr 22, 11:31 AM · #
Yes. Unfortunately, I live in Nebraska, and as a result I don’t expect my missives will do all that much. Most folks out here don’t distinguish between “Muslim” and “terrorist.”
— Chet · Apr 22, 05:46 PM · #
Tony says:
“As a whole, I believe conservative and republicans are a long long way from having performed sufficient acts of contrition for having supported a criminal regime that has stained the honor of this country; more over I believe this nation as a whole is a long way away from having performed sufficient acts of contrition for having supported a criminal regime that stained this nation’s honor.”
This is roughly where Conor and friends need to end up in order to start re-establishing conservatism as something that ought to be taken seriously. Until that day there’s just too much hypocrisy involved in an unrepentant or willfully ignorant conservative debating what ought to be done (re: any issue remotely connected to law or morality, which is to say most issues).
Conor and friends expect everyone to be patient and take them seriously as they make their way to inevitable conclusions. It’s nice that you’ve taken your hands off your ears and stopped shouting la-la-la – but why should anyone care about the remedial education of the Rubber Hose Right?
— Steve C · Apr 22, 09:00 PM · #
To Steve C:
I’m really not seeing where Conor thinks torture is “a close call, a debate in which reasonable people can disagree.” It’s true that he’s offering a carefully reasoned argument against torture (as opposed to yelling that it’s wrong), but nowhere does his argument suggest that, even if the pro-torture hypotheticals were real scenarios, that torture would be justified. Indeed he points out that although there are imaginable circumstances in which torture would save this country, that IT IS NEVERTHELESS UNTHINKABLE.
In other words, he’s a strongly opposed to torture as anyone else posting here, but unlike you is trying to explain why to those who are not opposed to torture.
— Alex Stone-Tharp · Apr 22, 09:07 PM · #
I’ve been rather tone-deaf in this thread. I apologize.
— Steve C · Apr 23, 06:12 AM · #
Words matter.
Mr. open-minded Friedersdorf, who has the decency not to call the Bush regime a “criminal regime,” the decency to try to engage conservative opponents, nonetheless loads the whole discussion. Why? The post is not titled, My Gut Tells Me We’re Better Off Without Coercive Interrogation, but rather, the word which is the offical label for this whole discussion, “torture.”
I reject that label. I’ve read about what the Cheka/KGB did, about what the French did in Algeria in the 50s and 60s, and I’m reading the same as the rest of you the immense efforts in the torture memos to closely define and limit what techniques could be utilized. THESE THINGS ARE NOT THE SAME. The most important comparison is with the French case—we have taken immense precautions not to to drawn into the practices they were at the officially endorsed level, and we have taken immense precautions not to allow a culture of “do-what-you-gotta-do” unofficial torture from developing within our forces and agencies.
But if what y’all insist is TORTURE, really is so, then some things follow:
1) No interrogations are any longer acceptable, whether in military, intelligence, or ordinary criminal situations, in which the one being question is ANY WAY DECEIVED about the consequences of not sharing information in a manner that causes him a) to fear for his life, or b) otherwise suffer pyschological trauma. No prosecutor can ever again pretend that he will be able to win a death-penalty sentence when in fact he probably cannot, because this is essentially the same as the water-boarding scenario: the victim is deceived into thinking he might die if he don’t cooperate, although he is otherwise not harmed.
2) The Bush regime must either be regretted as a grave moral evil (no anemic “oh, we’re BETTER OFF without doing what it did” statments would suffice), that we unfortunately cannot make adequate amends for, or it must be regarded as criminal.
Now, if you go the second route, a whole lot also follows.
a) For a regime to be criminal, we must assume that there is an international standard of what is criminal, and a legitimate (for us—democratically accepted) agency to enforce this standard.
b) A leader who does not deliver all the Bush officials and underlings implicated in the criminal behavior to this international agency, or mete out an equivalent punishment (after a trial, of course) is an obstructor of international justice. Therefore, if President Obama refuses to do either of these things, by this thinking he regrettably must be charged with this lesser, but still very serious, charge. Of course there are at present no police forces sufficient to perform the entirely necessary of arrest of President Obama (or even the leader of the most podunk nations on the earth) should he prove to be an Obstructor of International Justice, but once consistently just opinion becomes dominant in the world community, that will change.
The truth is that our present conceptions of international justice are insane and unworkable. Taken seriously, they push us toward world government. Philosopher Chantal Delsol shows this decisively in her work Unjust Justice.
But as they are usually presented, particularly in the U.S., charges of international criminality are little more than political theatre, a sort of rhetorical explanation point—“AND it is criminal according to…!”
Those who wish to prove me wrong about this last point…be consistent. Demand President Obama conduct U.S. trials and/or surrender the suspects of the past administration over to international courts; and if Obama refuses to do this, bring charges against him in U.S. and international law.
Or, drop the bullshit “criminal” rhetoric.
P.S. How many social conservatives are calling for international trials of U.S. officials for the ongoing everyday slaughter that is legalized abortion?
— Carl Scott · Apr 23, 02:47 PM · #
Carl – I don’t understand how we can prosecute the use of certain techniques by people in other nations and wars as “torture”, and the people who committed and ordered those acts as “war criminals”, and then turn around, do the exact same thing, and call it “not torture.”
Maybe you think, perhaps, that waterboarding is not torture. Regardless of whether it is or not, how can we as a nation call it “not torture” after a century of prosecuting waterboarders as torturing war criminals?
Should those people go free? Go un-executed? (Because that’s what we did with them, execution.) Were we wrong to prosecute them then, or is waterboarding only not torture when Americans do it?
— Chet · Apr 23, 04:48 PM · #
Chet—do provide reliable evidence that we executed or otherwise punished foreigners who ONLY water-boarded. Today on NRO we learned that the Japanese we so punished did MUCH MORE than that, and that they took none of the precautions and installed none of the limitations we did with that technique.
But even if I were to grant you that waterboarding should never be used, my worry is that the way we are now defining torture is going to logically apply to almost any non-comfortable and distressful interrogation procedure.
Worse, the distinct smell of irrationality and witch-hunt suffuses this entire “debate.” The conclusion our future leaders and intelligence and military personal will draw is obvious: do not do the slightest thing that can be in anyway construed as coercive or deceptive interrogation. Or you will face a politically motivated after-the-fact prosecution, perhaps even one conducted by foreign agencies.
What’s more, we are going to spell out in black and white all our techniques, all our legal limit-points, because we now must clear the name of (or prosecute) all these agents and administrators that the denouncers have so gratuitously dragged in the mud. People who simply were trying to prevent another 9/11 and do so in a way that didn’t betray our traditions, or who were following orders, doing their jobs to explain the various scenarios and legal ramifications, are to be persecuted as a backwash of the whole tar-Bush syndrome. Persecuted so that a morally bankrupt (b/c inherently relativistic) left that has yet to atone for its communism-enabling sins can have a moral high-horse. A society in which basic trust breaks down between citizens soon is unable to perform basic operations. We are in the process of losing the effectiveness of most of our interrogation procedures, thanks to boundless distrust of our government, mostly from leftist precincts and for tawdry political gain.
And P.S., why do we tolerate the excruciating pain that comes from the bullet wounds our soldiers regularly inflict? Why shouldn’t we demand that we fight wars in ways that guarantee the very least amount of suffering? i.e., either a total kill, or no trigger pull. We surely have the technology to demand this.
And P.P.S., why do we tolerate life-imprisonment?
You see, this game of upping the humanitarian ante for the purposes of calumnying your opponent is limitless.
— Carl Scott · Apr 23, 09:49 PM · #