You Decide

…that if we are willing to stoop to the level of our enemies, they win?

The conviction that all men are created equal and in possession of an “unalienable” right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is a bedrock principle of the United States. Unlike the governments that preceded it, the legitimacy of the U.S. government does not rest on any notion of the divine right of kings or the hard-fisted power of tyrants.

Rather, the legitimacy of a democratic government comes from the people—yes, through democratic elections, but also through its oath to honor the country’s laws. We are, as the saying goes, a nation of laws, and if the government, pleading extraordinary circumstances, chooses to override an inconvenient law or two, it does so at its own peril. After all, the legitimacy of a democratic government rests on its own adherence to the nation’s laws: Flout those, and it loses its right to govern.

Abstract notions of governmental legitimacy aside, there’s a more fundamental objection many have to torture: It’s un-American. This is the country, after all, that helped liberate Europe from the Nazis; the country that reacts in horror to the notion of political prisoners—and what they likely endure—in China and to accounts of Saddam Hussein’s chemical attacks on Kurdish civilians. It is the country that ensures the freedom of speech and assembly. It is also the country where—and this is critical to the torture debate—one is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

It is not a country that condones secret detention centers and water boarding of suspected terrorists. Such actions compromise our democratic ideals. To torture is to immediately forfeit that which we are supposed to be fighting for.

…that the only way to effectively deter terrorists is by stopping an attack before it happens, and that means aggressive intelligence gathering?

Weapons of mass destruction may have upped the stakes, but the tit-for-tat game of mutual deterrence has been around since the days of Homer.

Terrorists, however, changed all that. They do not have a specific country. They both prey on and hide among innocent civilian populations. And unlike traditional nation-states, terrorist cells do not have an infrastructure—all of which renders impotent the age-old threat of retaliation. In a word, terrorism upends the strategies of fighting back that are as old as war itself.

If retaliation is not an effective means of prevention, then good, actionable intelligence that allows us to apprehend or kill terrorists before they execute their plans becomes the name of the game.

And if intelligence is the most effective weapon in fighting terrorism, isn't a democracy justified in acquiring that weapon?

This is not to say that U.S. operatives would torture every terrorist they apprehend. It’s not even to say that U.S. forces would torture every captured terrorist known to possess information about an imminent attack.

Each case is different, but one can easily imagine a scenario in which U.S. forces apprehend a terrorist in the days before an attack. In this scenario, time is of the essence. Shouldn't U.S. forces be entitled to avail themselves of the best weapons for the fight?

Of course they should: To allow anything less would be the equivalent of fighting with one arm tied behind our back.