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Hiding Behind Hypotheticals, Ctd
ByA reader writes:
Conservatives like Stephens, Dick Cheney, Charles Krauthammer, Marc Theissen, Michael Goldfarb, John Yoo, and numerous others make their argument on the explicit basis that only they are strong enough, have the "stomach" (a favorite neocon word), to defend America, that only they love America enough to terrible things to defend it when terrible things supposedly must be done. But let us make the ticking time bomb hypothetical a little uncomfortable for these conservative supermen, if no more outlandish. Suppose a Khalid Sheik Mohammed, or some other high-value target, had calmly informed his interrogators that he would gladly tell them everything they needed to know, including the exposure of a plot in the works, if only they would summon their own children to his holding cell, and blow their brains out in front of him?
If not, why not? Their central claim to moral and political superiority is that they would defend America at all costs? No? Are they going soft? Would they complain that the game is rigged when, all of a sudden, the hypotheticals become uncomfortable for them to debate?
No doubt they would cry foul and claim that such hypotheticals are grossly unfair and completely unimaginable. But is there any hypothetical more patently ridiculous than the ticking time bomb scenario routinely on display in "24" and other torture porn? Such a scenario relies on a series of connected moving parts (perfect intelligence, perfect detainee knowledge, perfect military and/or police direct action, perfect arraying of all assets at the most precise locations) so complicated that the odds of it being recreated in real life probably a billion to one.
No matter how loudly, viciously, and mendaciously the advocates of torture among us scream, the central fact of what they demand will remain remain as insuperable as the sun rising in the east: There is no proverbial "slippery slope" when it comes to torture - there is only a bright dividing line separating civilization from barbarism.
