Torture and Pacifism

Here is Marc Thiessen, doing us the service of clearly articulating a position many Americans seem to hold these days:

As I explain in Courting Disaster, the evidence is overwhelming that waterboarding helped stop a number of terrorist attacks. Which means if you oppose waterboarding in all circumstances, it means you are willing to accept as the price another terrorist attack. . . . Those who argue that we should not used enhanced techniques even on the KSM’s of the world are effectively arguing from a position of radical pacifism. They are opposed to coercion no matter what the cost in innocent lives. We should respect their opinion, they way we respect the right of conscientious objectors to abstain from military service. But that does not mean we put pacifists in charge of decisions on war and peace. Same should go for decisions when it comes to interrogation.

First, I should point out that there is no good evidence that the waterboarding of Khalid Sheik Muhammad stopped any terrorist attacks. It has become an article of faith in some circles but it remains unclear what he said and when, and whether the intelligence he gave up was ever put to any use.

But, anyway, consider the connection made here between opposition to torture and pacifism. Only namby-pamby wussies, it seems, oppose torturing captives. This attitude makes me want to explode. The American softies who opposed the torture of captives in all circumstances includes George Washington and all of the architects of our independence, Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, and William Tecumseh Sherman -- yes, the "butcher" of the Virginia campaign and the terror of Confederacy both opposed torture -- our whole crew of major World War II leaders, including the crypto-Fascist Douglas MacArthur and the war-loving George Patton, and Ronald Reagan, who signed the International Convention Against Torture. The notion that Dick Cheney, David Addington, and the younger Bush are somehow tougher or more patriotic than U.S. Grant or George Patton is simply laughable.

Here Andrew Sullivan explains the theological distinction between war and torture:

Let me explain some basic just war principles to Thiessen. Force and violence can be defended morally in war as the least worst option in a world where evil exists, and where the enemy is at large and fully capable of killing you. But when you have captured the enemy, when he is utterly under your control, tied naked to chair by shackles in a cell, the morality of the use of force shifts dramatically. When you unleash violence against him when he cannot defend himself, you have crossed a core moral line.

Everyone can appreciate the distinction between inflicting violence on an enemy who can inflict violence back and inflicting violence on someone who is already captured, restrained and under your control. Opposing the latter is not pacifist, let alone radically pacifist. It is simply moral, and reflects a moral distinction that I'd wager comes as close to natural law as we are ever going to get (and as close to a core Christian principle if ever there is one).

The Christian distinction Thiessen and Cheney reject - and the core of the heresy they embrace - is that between self-defense and cruelty. Because they believe that the US is inherently good and its enemies inherently evil, they cannot conceive that they themselves are just as capable of evil as al Qaeda. But you are, Dick, you are. Yes: calm, old, unruffled old Cheney - just as prone to absolute evil as Osama bin Laden or me or anyone mortal. It is not conservative to believe that human nature has changed just because you now have power. It is not conservative to believe that the threat you are grappling with is somehow uniquely different from every other threat ever made against a free people and therefore merits the secret but irrevocable trashing of ancient norms of morality and central pillars of a just war.