In case you need convincing

One of my conservative friends recently spoke out in defense of torture.  This shouldn't even be a subject of conversation among civilized people and the fact that talking heads on Fox News think this is up for discussion just shows how much they've lost touch.  But in case you need convincing, here's my argument.

First of all, there's no magical spectrum of "anything unpleasant could be considered torture."  We could argue about the finer details, like playing loud music (which was actually sleep deprivation, which is generally considered torture).  But waterboarding is unquestionably torture.  They weren't giving him a speeding ticket or fixing his teeth.  They were causing his body to undergo the physical manifestations of drowning, and inflicting severe psychological harm.  That is torture and there's no way to weasel out of it.

And no, torture isn't justified.  This "it's an awful thing but we're the good guys and it was justified" argument has always been used by the bad guys to justify torture and even worse.  It was used by the Communists to execute political prisoners by dipping them in acid baths.  It was used by the Nazis to justify torture of Jews in the name of medical science (much of what we know about hypothermia came from Nazis freezing Jews to death in medical "experiments").  And no, Goodwin's Law does not apply here.  The Nazis belong in this conversation.

Micheal Walzer wrote that we're the good guys only so long as we act like the good guys.  It's a little tautological but true.  Good guys don't invade sovereign nations without due cause, against the will of the international community.  Good guys don't violate the privacy rights of their own citizens.  And good guys do not torture.

This is why the world hates us; under Bush, we stopped acting like the good guys.  The outpouring of goodwill toward Obama is a recognition that America is better than Bush, and that we are once again rising as a symbol of what is right.

Of course, you could argue that international opinion doesn't matter.  My friend I'm sure will be eager to quote Rudyard Kipling: "Trust yourself when all men doubt you."  The answer, of course, is "make allowance for their doubting too."  International opinion is why we won the Cold War.  It's why every free country that had a choice flocked to us and away from the Communists who were legitimately evil.  (Need convincing on that point?  Ask my wife what Communist Russia was like.)  It's why since the end of the Cold War, the Second World has slowly melted as those countries have eagerly embraced us (eg. Poland and Georgia).  It's why the First Gulf War was such an amazing success; because we had 70 countries and a UN resolution; a true "coalition of the willing."  Finally, international opinion matters because other civilized countries are less willing to extradite terrorists to us because they don't trust us to treat them ethically.  Thus, Bush's defiance of international opinion actually hurt our war on terror in a very real, very direct way.

Moreover . . . even the Bush administration finally admitted that torture was wrong and bad and officially stopped doing it, even waterboarding, several years before Bush left office.  They're just trying to posthumously defend it now because they're afraid that heads will roll.

Bottom line: if we want to be the good guys we can't do that kind of thing.

J<