The Moral Questions of Torture Answered

Me at Q&O where Dale Franks is properly agonizing over ‘torture’:

Do we really want the government to do “unpleasant, unsavory and sometimes awful things” in the defense of our freedom?

I am amazed that a veteran of our military would question thus. The answer is, “Of course we do, else our military wouldn’t exist. Is dropping a Bunker Buster on a AQ safe house in Mosel to be considered “pleasant”?

If you take the argument to it’s logical conclusion in the opposite direction, you could argue that slippery slope was already started down the moment we came up with a military in any form. I’m sure the anti-war types would agree with that statement as far as it goes.

In reality what we’re arguing about is not absolutes, but matters of degree. Where the disagreements, in the room for argument comes in, is who gets to label what is unpleasant and unfair. The anti-War types will argue that any killing or aggressive action in the name of freedom is unacceptable. But the bottom line, here it is…

“We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.” -Attributed to Eric Blair

McQ: (Speaking of Dresden, Nagasaki , and Hiroshima )

And of course, not having done either of them wouldn’t have changed the eventual outcome of the war, would it?

Interesting.

I agree…Psychological warfare is certainly harder to pin down as to its ultimate result, so I think the case can be argued either way, as to whether not avoiding those actions would have resulted in our defeat. I do think it would not have…Though most certainly it would have created hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of additional Allied casualties.

And there’s the central point, here.  Seems to me that the very point of bringing up those two incidents was one of priority.  In other words, if those incidents by their taking place save American lives?  I think ultimately, the answer is yes.

If that’s the yardstick by which such actions are justified, then isn’t torture the same question scaled down from millions of people, to a paltry handful?

Our current situation is very similar to then… allowing for the scale in each. As then, there’s no way that our current enemy can defeat us militarily. Yet the question arises again as it did in the case of Dresden and in the case of Nagasaki and Hiroshima whether or not the length of the war could be shortened, and thus Allied lives saved, by those actions.

I say that both the actions in Dresden and in Japan, were more than justified.

And so the KSM Interrogation comes along, and with it the understanding that his information as supplied saved American lives. I’d have to say that such actions there were justified, as well.

As for the rest, let’s not be fooled here. The largest part of the screaming these days is coming from a group of people who is looking desperately for something / anything to hang on the current administration so as to gain political power. The people who were screaming the loudest about this business, don’t give a damn about our morality. They are only interested in political power.

All that said, I do not suggest that such actions shouldn’t be questioned. Even the pilots of the plane that dropped the first a bomb on Japan as they were flying away and questions. “My God, what have we done?” Such questions are a self-check mechanism.

However, even given that self-questioning process, in each of the cases cited, the purposes were that lives were saved. American lives. These were not acts of aggression, but rather acts of defense… and thus defensible.