That’s what we ought to call the men and women who interrogated the worst of the worst. For those most committed to the ridiculous crusade for terrorist rights, “enhanced interrogation” is not only immoral and illegal, it’s ineffective. That argument, like Khalid Sheik Mohamed, doesn’t hold water. Obviously it works sometimes, and there are plenty of senior officials, including both the current and former DNI, who have said as much. More responsible critics are satisfied to argue that the technique is illegal. Maybe they’re right, but there are plenty of lawyers, and at least one Supreme Court Justice, who will argue the other side of that. It’s not clear the United States government can prosecute a lawyer for holding a minority view, let alone convict an American hero for dunking a terrorist responsible for the murder of thousands. If they want any chance at getting twelve guilty votes, they’ll have to hold the trial in Berkeley, which will at least make things easier on Professor Yoo. As to the morality of the methods used, I don’t see anything immoral about smacking around a terrorist or making him sit in the cold or dunking him in the water, but you can argue it either way. Still, I wonder why the same people squealing about the alleged moral indignity to which these monsters were subjected are the same people who want the government to keep morality out of their bedrooms and doctors’ offices. Why should the government be forbidden from making a moral judgment about gay marriage or abortion but compelled to make a moral judgment about the treatment of terrorists plotting to murder Americans citizens? The left will probably get their show-trial out of all this, and not because the Obama administration has any deep conviction on this issue. They seem to have bungled the thing so badly as to have completely lost control. Now the American people will get to see what national security means to the Obama administration: the prosecution of Bush administration officials who kept this country safe, and the release of detainees who tried to destroy our way of life. It’s terrible for the country. I can already see the political ads questioning these decisions three years from now, but then again I’ve been told Obama’s election means the end of the old way of politics that had partisans question the decency and patriotism of their opponents. So maybe those ads will never see the light of day — much like the American heroes whom the left would lock up simply for asking what they could do for their country.
