Is It Ever Okay To Torture?

November 11, 2005

 

There seems to be a common theme pulsating through the editorials of the left these days. With the leak of the so-called “black sites,” these supposed CIA jails abroad, the liberals have had an absolute conniption fit. These are jails where purportedly “evil things” take place, far from the eyes of the American public. This is just the kind of red meat the liberals were looking for. Their contention that George Bush cooked the books with false CIA intelligence just so he could go to war to help Big Oil didn't stick. The two-year investigation into who leaked Valerie Plame's identity only yielded an indictment for somebody we had never heard of named Scooter. And he wasn't even indicted for leaking her name. He was indicted for the stupidity of lying to a grand jury over something that, apparently, wasn't a crime to start with.

 

To really stoke the conspiratorial fires, Dick Cheney reportedly took the opportunity of a closed-door meeting to dress down Republican senators opposed the torture of terror suspects under any circumstances. “See! See!” the left screamed. “They are torturing people!”

 

Perhaps they are.

 

Like the vice-president, I don't advocate torture. However, there certainly are times when it might be necessary. Let me give you one such scenario. Let's say we've captured a terrorist and he has papers on him describing a horrific terror attack on America. Let's say it's a nuclear weapon that will be discharged somewhere in the United States in the next 24 hours. The trouble is, we don't know where . . . but he does. He refuses to talk. Are the liberals actually telling me that they would not torture this terrorist to get at the truth if it would save hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lives?

 

That's what we're up against. This is not a conventional war with civil rules of engagement against men in uniform. These terrorists are ruthless and have absolutely no concern about who they kill. They will kill anyone any time at any place if it furthers their goal to annihilate the infidels. They spit at the Geneva Convention. They laugh at accepted standards of decency. They certainly haven't shown any civility towards the prisoners they've taken. After beating them senseless, they mock them then cut off their heads while chanting “Allah is great!”

 

The bigger question is who leaked the information about these CIA detention centers. Such a leak does far more to damage national security than the outing of some low-level CIA social climber yet the mainstream press has shown no appetite for the story. Instead, they act as an echo chamber for the hysterical left.

 

Molly Ivins, the vitriolic, professional Bush-basher from Texas, wrote recently that our treatment of terrorists is exactly like the Soviets' treatment of anyone who dared speak out against the communist regime. She referred to the CIA's detention centers as “a gulag of secret prisons,” asking, “Why did we bother to beat the Soviet Union if we were just going to become it?”

 

This is what's especially infuriating about the left. They cannot distinguish right from wrong, good from bad. In their minds, a terrorist who kills innocent men, women, and children is exactly the same as a Soviet dissident who dared utter an unkind word about the communist regime. In their minds, we are the terrorists of the world and the real terrorists who kill by the thousands are, in the words of Cindy Sheehan, “freedom fighters.” And they want to wrest the reins of power away from the conservatives. God help us all if they do.