chicagotribune | This was not a single, forgivable instance of terrible action under
duress. It was an elaborate and ongoing system. In thinking through the
rights and wrongs, that matters. There's a difference between ordinary
mass killing and building a concentration camp.
Knowing only as
much as this — that torture is disgusting, that it didn't work, and that
the standard line of justification doesn't apply — you could accept
that torture might be allowable in certain imaginable circumstances and
still deplore the CIA program. To reach that conclusion, you don't need
to consider the further, indirect costs of what was done. Let's consider
them anyway.
The program was shameful and therefore had to be
hidden. Congress was lied to. This undermined the rule of law — a matter
on which the U.S. prides itself and likes to lecture the world. Notions
of constitutional accountability were trashed by plausible deniability
and outright lies. The CIA acted as a law unto itself, partly because it
was allowed to, even asked to. (Just do what it takes. Spare us the
details.) The program, in other words, was an assault on the American
idea of lawful government.
Above all, it eroded, and continues to
erode, America's moral standing. I'm less concerned about the effects
this has on U.S. soft power and allies' willingness to cooperate, real
as those may be, than I am with the effect on how Americans see
themselves. To prevail in the struggle against enemies such as Islamic
State, we need to know we are better than they are. It's important, when
we feel revulsion at the video-taped beheadings of innocent people,
that we don't also need to wonder if we aren't as cruel or as capable of
evil.
Moral advantage makes you stronger. More than that, if we aren't better than they are, how much would it matter if they won?
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