They can't be serious
LGF
Andrew McCarthy at NRO demonstrates the fundamental lack of seriousness of the three witnesses trotted out by the Democrats on Friday to oppose the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales. None of the three -- not Douglas Johnson (a torture victims advocate), John Hutson (Judge Advocate General during the Clinton administration), or Harold Koh (dean of the Yale Law School) -- was willing to take on in a serious way the question of whether torture is permissible in the following situation: a bomb is about to be detonated in a major metropolitan area, and the military has as a captive a known terrorist who, we have reason to believe, has knowledge which would allow us to save hundreds of thousands of lives if we could get him to provide it.
Like the Democratic Senator who invited them to appear, these experts wish only to make high-minded pronounements and, more likely than not, to embarrass the president -- they have no desire to think about the tough issues inherent in the debate over interrogation techniques. As McCarthy puts it:
A number of us have tried to grapple with the hard stuff about the war against terrorists — the intersection between abiding respect for human dignity and the imperative of pressing for intelligence that might save human life. We don't pretend that this is easy, that it's black-and-white, or that expressly licensing coercive interrogation — even a minimal form of torture — in the most dire situations would not potentially open the door to human-rights abuses that should be universally condemned. It would. That's why it needs to be thought through with sensitivity.
But the critics should do us all a favor: If you're going to talk the talk of righteous indignation, be ready to walk the walk. Be ready to tell Americans exactly what protections you want to give to the terrorists. Be ready to tell Americans that you would prohibit coercive interrogation even if it were the only way of saving a hundred thousand of them.
If you're not ready to do that — because you full well understand that your position is not one even you can defend when the questions get hard — then don't waste our time. Get out of the way of serious people like Judge Gonzales. People who don't pretend to be perfect, who don't claim to have all the answers, and who are not so smug that they think they can afford to take life-and-death options off the table — even as they pray they will never have to use them. |
