War and Peace

Glenn Reynolds (and Mohammed) and TM Lutas are both right: the USA has lost momentum in the war AND the USA is doing the best it can. There is no contradiction. The problem is not military but political. The Bush administration lacks sufficient domestic support to prosecute the war at the pace favored by those of us who think Syria and Iran should be next (and should have been next a long time ago). We lack the resources to do much more than we are doing.

There is plenty of blame to go around for this situation. Bush and his staff must be faulted for their chronic ineptitude at explaining his program to the American people, and for not doing much to compensate for the President’s known rhetorical weakness. He means well but he could have done much more to get the message out. The Democratic leadership must be faulted for its cynicism and intellectual corruption in lying about the war, and about its own previously held positions, in order to divide Americans and enhance its own political leverage at a time of national crisis. Congressional Republicans must be faulted for spending recklessly on all kinds of frivolous junk instead of concentrating on winning the war. (Why not cut some of that pork and instead allocate the funds to increased troop levels and more armored vehicles — so that we won’t have to ignore Iran because we’re already maxed out in Iraq? Those are the kinds of earmarks many of us could support.) And a plurality of American voters must be faulted for insisting on business as usual from our elected representatives instead of demanding bipartisan support to win the war. Too many of us have deluded ourselves into believing that our national problem with Islamic extremism will go away if we hunker down and stop poking the hornets’ nest. It won’t: the Islamists always interpret any hunkering down by us or our allies as weakness.

Time is not on our side. How many Pearl Harbors will it take for us to become serious about winning this war? The sooner we retake the initiative, the better.

Imagine, if you will, that there is a paranoid recluse living on your block. Sullen and unpleasant, he spends most of his time inside his house and actively avoids anything approaching civilized discourse with his neighbors.

Then, one bright and sunny day, he murders someone innocently strolling down the sidewalk. He barricades himself inside of his home before the police can arrive.

There would be an attempt at negotiation, of course. It is well worth the effort if you can get the perp to give up without having to risk more lives. But if that doesn’t happen, if he decides to commit suicide-by-police, eventually the forced entry team is going to have to suit up and do what has to be done to protect everyone who lives in that neighborhood.

But, as the body armor is being strapped on and the equipment is being checked, what would happen if the SWAT guys were told that they had to back off just as soon as one of their members was killed? An innocent person died, so they have to give up and leave when another life is lost. That way there is some sort of cosmic balance, you see?

They would look at you like you were some kind of freakin’ idiot because, let us face it, you would be a freakin’ idiot to suggest such a thing.

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Mitch’s old post on the McCain Amendment just received a thoughtful comment, almost one year later, from a commenter who points out some of the unpleasant realities of the practice known as “waterboarding.” It really does sound bad. Is the commenter’s characterization accurate? I don’t know but it seems plausible.

Let’s stipulate that waterboarding is torture. I think it is but I could be mistaken. It’s clearly a lot less damaging to suspects than are many traditional tortures. If, as the commenter claims, few people can last more than 14 seconds then so much the better. They can reveal what they know and go on to live their lives, though perhaps imprisoned, at least in one piece physically.

The real question is what to do instead of waterboarding people whom we think have valuable information. Currently we tacitly allow torture by other countries to which we and our allies send suspects for interrogation. The recent UK bomb plot was stopped based on information gained from such a suspect who was sent to Pakistan and tortured. We are going to have more such ticking-bomb situations in the future. Should we observe all of the niceties and accept a higher rate of successful attacks by terrorists? Should we waterboard some suspects ourselves? Should we extradite them to places such as Pakistan and Jordan and look the other way when they are tortured (really tortured)? These are the only options. Choose one. There is no free lunch.

I agree with Wretchard and other commentators (and, I think, President Bush) who argue that public officials who oppose torture of terror suspects should explain why as-yet-theoretical risks of civil-rights violations of suspects outweigh demonstrated risks of mass-death from terror attacks. I am not saying that people who oppose torture have no case, only that they should make one. So far they have mainly asserted that torture is bad without comparing it to the alternatives and weighing the costs and benefits. That’s an evasion. We should have a debate.

Or perhaps, by their silence on the cost/benefit issue, torture opponents have already conceded the argument. I hope that’s not the case. I think the country would be better off to debate this and other important issues openly.