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(See my previous related post here.)

Victor Davis Hanson, whom I greatly respect and seldom disagree with, has blown it for once. He's written a fine short piece explaining why foreswearing the use of torture offers no net advantage to the U.S., concluding with:

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So we might as well admit that by foreswearing the use of torture, we will probably be at a disadvantage in obtaining key information and perhaps endanger American lives here at home. (And, ironically, those who now allege that we are too rough will no doubt decry "faulty intelligence" and "incompetence" should there be another terrorist attack on an American city.) Our restraint will not ensure any better treatment for our own captured soldiers. Nor will our allies or the United Nations appreciate American forbearance. The terrorists themselves will probably treat our magnanimity with disdain, as if we were weak rather than good.

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Unfortunately, he then concludes his column by writing:

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But all that is precisely the risk we must take in supporting the McCain amendment — because it is a public reaffirmation of our country's ideals.

The United States can win this global war without employing torture. That we will not resort to what comes so naturally to Islamic terrorists also defines the nobility of our cause, reminding us that we need not and will not become anything like our enemies.

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Wrong. The end of the war against Islamic terror will come when the Islamists finally decide that we're bigger, stronger, tougher than they are and there's nothing to be gained by continuing the fight. One facet of that is that they should know we will use torture, up to and including a slow painful death under appropriate circumstances. The definition of "appropriate circumstances" can be debated (more on that in a moment) but it needs to be common knowledge that under those circumstances our people will do what they need to do.

Tom Bevan at The RCP Blog thinks Hanson is being intellectually dishonest, just as McCain is. Dafydd ab Hugh carries the argument forward and goes into more detail here. 

As far as I'm concerned, the only discussion we need to have about torture is to come up with a clear definition of "appropriate circumstances." I think everyone who's been paying attention knows we would (do?) use torture in the "ticking time bomb" situation. Maybe we need to define that more clearly. The classic example is knowing there's an atomic weapon set to detonate in a major American city and capturing a jihadi who knows where it is. Even Senator McCain accepts the fact we'd do whatever it took to get information in that case, he just wants to make it illegal anyway. But what if we aren't talking something on that scale? What if our troops in Iraq capture a jihadi on his way home from planting an IED, or one who knows the location of a major bomb factory? I think we all know how the Israelis or the Iraqi defense forces would handle that, but is there really any reason to ask our troops to handle it differently? Thunder6 posted recently about a situation in which, in order to get an Iraqi policeman to show our guys where to catch up with an IED-planting jihadi, our guys had to agree to let the Iraqi police have custody of him after the snatch. Do we really believe the appropriate steps weren't taken to find out the locations of the IEDs he'd planted recently? If it's OK for the Israelis and the Iraqis (and don't even ask about the ROKs), why should it not be OK for our troops? How many lives need to be at stake before it's acceptable? Do they have to be American lives or do Iraqi women and children count? Do we have to be talking about bombs or does a hostage-rescue situation qualify? Are we so "noble" that we'd let our own people continue to be tortured rather than use torture ourselves to gain information to free them? There's room for discussion, but any meaningful discussion needs to start with the stipulation that there are times when we're going to do what we have to.

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Linking to Mudville's latest Open Post.

Posted by Bill Faith on December 3, 2005 at 12:58 AM | Permalink

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