... I opposed waterboarding, but the Obama administration, in its showboating denunciations of past practices, will soon encounter further dilemmas as it broadcasts that the largely unchanged war on terror is now a more enlightened criminal-justice matter. Euphemism and creating new names for existing policies alone won’t cut it.
At some point, Obama must answer why waterboarding mass-murderers and beheaders like Khalid Sheik Mohammed is wrong, while executing by missile attack (no writs, habeas corpus, Miranda rights, etc.) suspected terrorists and anyone caught in their general vicinity in Waziristan — or pirates negotiating extortion — is legitimate. (Remember, there is no longer a "war on terrorism," so in these "overseas contingency operations" we are now judge, jury, and executioner — or are we resurrecting the Phoenix program for the Hindu Kush?) ...
So, Hanson is off the hook with you, but I am not, regretfully so, because as I told you on some occasions I follow your posts on money matters for my education and I hope I learned something from you.
About torture. The argument you use (and please correct me if I am wrong, I don't want to put words into your mouth) that torture is morally reprehensible and makes us to be no better than them, is very much similar to the argument that opponents of capital punishment use: that killing a man (defenseless at this point) is simply wrong.
As the saying goes: extreme cases make bad law. I am for both killing a *defenseless man* as a capital punishment for his crimes and for *torturing a defenseless man* in some extreme situations. It cannot be a *matter of fact casual procedure*. But there are some situations when there is no other choice. In expression often used by Hanson it's a *tragic choice*.
It can not be divorced from the circumstances of the case. Similar to deliberations on the murder case when circumstances can show it to be a manslaughter, or negligence or a cold blooded premeditated murder - and the perpetrator will be punished accordingly. In the case of torture, the context is the key as well. An enormous popularity of Jack Bauer and 24 is that people emphasize with him and his moral struggles (agony is a better word) when circumstances leave him with no other choice than torture a man in the race against time to save lives. Its a ticking bomb situation: an attack is imminent unless we gain some information to stop it. I don't agree that civilization sells its soul if it agonizingly allows torture in some extreme cases in order to save lives.
The same as capital punishment triggers special scrutiny, torture should as well. BTW, when the society executes a murderer, he is often weak and remorseful, but its done anyway.
Don't remember whose quote it is, but it goes this way: an American or British top leader was asked in what case he can see a nuclear weapon to be used. The answer was: "If I tell you, it removes the deterrence factor, doesn't it?"
Same as using nukes against Japan. Lots of civilians died so the war ended sooner saving countless Japanese and American lives. Many people to this day say it was not justified. I think it was. There is no doubt in my mind that it saved at least one magnitude more than it killed.
But I would not want to be the one to make that decision. As Hanson says: it's a Tragic choice.
If your honor can and will be used against you to kill you and yours - it means that barbarians will survive at expense of your civilization.
You are pounding straw men not arguing with the man in front of you for much of the rest. I have never said a single word against capital punishment, it is a red herring. In fact I support it as necessary in some circumstances and therefore oppose all attempts to undermine it, especially with unsound and unoriginalist constitutional arguments. The state must be able to defend itself. It is a matter of indifference or practicality for routine murderers, compared to life imprisonment. It is not a matter of indifference when it is Hitler and Ludendorf storming city hall in Munich, or dealing with Saddam Hussein. There you have and use it or the state is destroyed. The state must be able to defend itself.
But for your statement that you are in favor of torturing in extreme circumstances, it renders you morally unfit for any position of trust and objectively damnable. It also shows you have no idea what honor is. The statement that there is no other choice is utter hogwash on its face. No great mysterious force is grabbing your hands and forcing you to apply electrodes to another man's genitals. Claiming you are forced to it is a pathetic and transparent lie.
Citing 24 is laughable - it was written by leftist hacks intent on smearing the Bush administration. The actual context is the Algerian war, not a television show. Read Paul Johnson and Alstair Horne on the subject. The party of torture is the party of Jacques Massu and Le Pen. Did they win the battle of Algiers? Yes, and they promptly lost the battle of France and with it the war. The people of France would rather let the colons die and be damned, than maintain them as racist overlords in Algeria through systematic Gestapo torture. And they were right - the same paras willing to torture in Algiers were willing to stage coups in Paris; they lost all allegiance to anything that would count as civilization.
At bottom, the error of the torture party is to think the group they are a member of and seek to protect through torture, is an objective transpolitical category, and will remain operative whatever they choose to do. But this is emphatically not the case. No one who tortures does so for me or to defend me or as my representative or in my service. He can't decide to, I decide that he doesn't. If he electrocutes privates all day, he still isn't doing it on my behalf, but against me. I'd rather have him fry my balls than stand with him on anything.
Free political allegiance given on moral principle is the underlying true division, not national identity or (as the colons thought) race, nor (as the terrorists think) religion. The torturer represents only the torture party, and he can only defend and advance the torture party. He can't defend innocents; there are no innocents in a torture party. The moral circumstances he tries to cite to justify his outrages therefore fall to the ground. He is torturing for himself, for his own interests as he sees them. He is, at bottom, torturing out of his own craven fear and his own lust for power and domination.
And no, my honor can't be used to kill me. I am not a weakling. As a fact, the torturers and all their would be empires of necessity and expediency are dust and ashes, or cesspools of poverty and despair and weakness. As a fact, only chivalry and honor have ever built anything; even the edifices of unworthy rulers were built for them only by better men.
"But maybe frying this guy's balls will prevent an attack someplace". So? Are you such a coward you can't run the risks our men run every day on the streets of Iraq, even in the safety of Los Angeles? Why are you so scared of a few pipsqueak terrorists? I sure as hell am not. They can't touch us. And we can murder them all day as long as they care to try, without breaking a sweat.
No one can make themselves immortal by torturing anyone, in any circumstances. All your ruthlessness and imaginary "practicality" will not reduce by one second the length of time you will be dead. But you can burn in hellfire. Or not. That bit is up to you.