I intended to do something today on the demise of the D.C. Voucher program, but after reading a post entitled "Revisiting Torture" on "The Old Jarhead" I decided to post a comment on that blog. I hope it speaks for itself. Here's the comment:
I have demurred from entering the so-called debate on so-called torture for a number of reasons. The so-called debate is taking place on two fronts: moral and legal. The best legal minds in government, in my opinion, have clearly won the day on the legal front when they prepared the top-secret legal memoranda recently made public by a feckless and reckless administration. To debate the issue on moral grounds seems to me to be engaging a little in moral relativism, and one should never engage, even “a little,” in moral relativism, but here goes. We must never forget (or let anyone else forget) that we are the good guys; they are the bad guys. Our interrogation techniques, especially the so-called enhanced kind, are used for only one reason: to save innocent lives. Their “interrogation techniques” (which would probably include, in the eyes of Janet Napolitano, beheading) are also used for only one reason: to destroy innocent lives. So, on moral grounds there is no debate: We’re right; they’re wrong. What’s debatable about that? The good guys might not always win in the movies, but in real life they do – eventually. One might call that simplistic, but I think Ronald Reagan and Harry Truman’s mother had it exactly right. Reagan: “Here’s my strategy on the Cold War: We win, they lose.” Harry’s Mom: “Harry, you know right from wrong. You do right and you do the best you can, and that’s all there is to it.”
