Actually, the Catholic Church, on a whole host of positions, beginning with the death penalty and including illegal immigration, is not aligned with conservatives at all. The Church is a very divided institution, and it really depends who wrote the defense and why. The Catholic Church is not necessarily a conservative institution.
Also, the FBI is a mixed bag; there are many lawyers and policy wonks in the FBI, and the US military who I vehemently disagree with; just because you wear a badge or have a rank, doesn’t mean that your opinion is sacrosanct, or that it isn’t “progressive” drivel. People who work at the FBI and the Pentagon read “The Nation” as well.
Torture, depending on how it is applied and to whom, does work. It can be clumsy and pointless in the hands of a sadistic idiot, or it can be diabolically subtle, and effective in the direction of a master psychologist. I think people know this, but don’t quite want to have that discussion for the record, so they cede the field to their opponents.
The problem with “studies” about the effectiveness of torture, is you can’t easily find an egghead who will openly even consider the possibility of advocating torture as an effective interrogation option; polite society has unfounded opinions about torture, and a thousand pithy sayings about morality, and if you come right out and defend torture, you will not be tolerated long in that society. It’s about akin to advancing the idea that there might be inherent, hard-wired intelligence differences between the races, or how we might want to reconsider how we view sexual offenders.
Now, when you compare the recent US interrogation techniques with what went on in Japan during the Second World War, and in Cambodia, then I cannot believe you are serious (any more than I took dimwit John McCain seriously in his various pronouncements over the years; no-one said as many half-baked opinions over the years as McCain, except perhaps for Joe Biden). To make such a preposterous assertion either displays a profound ignorance of the crimes committed by the aforementioned, or you are being facetious. It is like comparing a 90 mph ride at an amusement park carousel with a petrol-laden semi truck careening down the Grapevine with no brakes at 90 mph. There is no relation between the real practice of torture that the Imperial Japanese and Pol Pot practiced, and the pale shadow of torture that went on at both Guantanamo and Iraq. What’s next, American prisons in Alaska are akin to the Gulag Archipelago because each is equally cold?
But I know that you know, really, that the two have no analogy. This is an exercise in public, moral grandstanding about “sinking to their level” and pretending to voice patriotic dissent at US policy and all the usual posturing and posing about what an honorable man you are to be standing up to our own hypocrisy; oh, how brave you are to be telling your poor countrymen the truth about themselves. That is one of my ongoing problems with taking anyone of the Left seriously, when they pretend to be fighting some great evil that turns out to be nothing at all; if real evil ever came around, all the brave leftists would be the first to crawl under the bed. Besides, leftist don’t believe in “evil,” that’s a hangover from a dying theological paradigm.
As to the breathless talk of treaties and treaties and international law. First, there is no such thing as international law. I know that contradicts what the fine fellows at Boalt Law say, but it is true; international law is an indulgence of advanced nations, and exists as long as the international system is willing to continue to go along with it. All it takes is a good war to throw all the lawyerly horses*%# out the window and it’s every nation for itself. Peace=rules and laws and restraints, the lawyers and academics hold sway. War=Just win, baby; the lawyers and hand-wringers had better get out of the way of they’re going to get got.
All treaties are contingent, and all of them reflect a place and time; and all treaties wear out their welcome and efficacy. Treaties are never unilateral, and are based on mutually agreed needs between nation states or regimes. Treaties are broken all the time, thousands have been signed and thousands have been discarded when it was appropriate. If the other side chooses to ignore a treaty, the treaty in not enforceable and may as well not exist; treaties are not some great moral law hanging in the sky; they are written by career diplomats to gain advantage or reach a practical accommodation. Clinging to a treaty like some kind of secular 11th commandment (“thou shalt not waterboard because it’s not nice”) is simply folly, and I never cease to be amazed at what men will believe about the world around them.
Here is a simple thought exercise: Let’s say the Germans overran the Soviets, and Midway went the other way, and the war was going very badly; not an impossible premise. Well, is there anything you wouldn’t do to make sure the US would win that war, without question an existential war for liberal democracy?
I can answer that unequivocally: no, there is nothing I wouldn’t do to win. Killing children? Women? Lopping off fingers? Yes to all. Losing that war, or the Cold War, for that matter, is unthinkable, and there is nothing I wouldn’t do. Jacques Maritain be damned, I’m not going to fight with one hand tied behind my back against the Huns, or the Muslim lunatics either, because some secular, Christian sissy is concerned that it will damage my soul. I’ll worry about “becoming like our enemy” or “sinking to their level” down the road, when the successive generations root around in the evidence and parade around like self-righteous twits, chattering about how vile and immoral their grandparents were. By then, the facts on the ground will be settled, and the next generation will be well on their way to imagining a new set of inviolate rules that will bind nations.
I do not think the War on Terror is an existential war at this time, so I’m willing to play nice for a while, and go along with the thin veneer of behavior spelled out by academic elites behind desks and Yale men about what constitutes good sportsmanship. But I do not take them seriously, and I know that those rules aren’t real; they were made up by men who had to make decisions for their time and place, and, depending how the Jihadists continue to act (in complete defiance of every western “rule” of war so far), I’ll act accordingly.
