“Keep it up! You’ve got to keep giving it back to the Taranto’s of the world. Morally, the defense of torture is a form of relativism. Usually, defenses of moral relativism give pragmatic reasons. But these guys are so wrong pragmatically! It seems like they lack confidence in Western liberalism. I don’t mean just the ideological attractiveness of being free, at the level Bush is always talking about, but liberalism’s advantages for the long-term generation of state power.
Why is this relevant? OK, it’s well established that torture doesn’t work. All those “ticking bomb scenarios” assume a) that you’ve got the right guy and b) that he’s not just telling you what you want to hear until the bomb goes off. So, knowing that torture doesn’t work, a liberal pragmatist tries to find out what does: language skills, a detailed knowledge of individual weaknesses, the painstaking study of political conditions, strong alliances and cooperation among security forces, the cultivation of international moral prestige, and even the humane treatment of prisoners. The chauvinist rejects this pragmatism as a lack of moral clarity. But which approach defends us better?
These guys remind me of the people in the late forties and early fifties who thought that liberalism would never be able to remain true to itself and still defeat the USSR. Even on the economy, there were plenty of respectable forecasts showing the USSR passing the West in per capita income. They posed as the West’s staunchest defenders, yet at bottom they’d lost confidence in it. They didn’t believe Hayek when he concluded that central planning gives you not only serfdom, but economic decline. But they were wrong, and containment worked. That’s why it’s so important to fight this battle. Hayek in the realm of ideas is a marketplace of free, sincere criticism. The torture-defenders are already showing us the alternative: a descent into ineffective mendacity and, when the failure and lying become obvious, desperate chauvinism.”
All great points, in my book. Torture and abuse haven’t made us safer. Sending too few troops to Iraq hasn’t made us safer. Israeli interrogators do not kick the Koran or pee on it or throw it to the ground. They learn it word for word. They quote it back to their prisoners. They win their confidence and infiltrate their networks. They gain good intelligence by eschewing the goon-like antics of the Gitmo clowns. Fake menstrual blood? If it weren’t so disgusting, it would be risible. But it’s true. Remember that, whatever the Tarantos of this world want to deflect the conversation to. It’s true. It happened. In the end, reality will count.
The Dish 