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May 08, 2004

The Constitution is not a suicide pact

The always interesting Donald Sensing -- retired career army officer, member of the clergy -- has a post about the Iraqi prisoners abused by their U.S. captors. While I agree heartily that the idiots responsible need to be treated harshly, I'm afraid Sensing has gone off the tracks with his categorical denunciation of torture and rejection of its appropriateness in the ticking timebomb scenario.

I posted the following as a comment on his site.

Donald, I'm afraid you've lost me on this one. To dismiss the ticking time bomb scenario so easily is . . . shocking.

Life forces us to make choices. One of them is that some things are worth fighting and dying for. Things like our friends, our families, our nation, liberty and freedom, and defeating despots.

And as a result of there being things worth fighting and dying for, it follows that there are things worth killing for.

Why is it acceptable, moral, ethical and necessary to kill an enemy on the battle field, where he is trying to kill you -- on the micro level -- and trying to kill your nation -- on the macro?

We *are* agreed, aren't we, that such killing is appropriate?

Well then.

If the same man, who could legitimately suffer death at your hands for trying to kill *you* was instead trying to kill not just you, but your platoon, your company, your friends and family, and everyone living within a 2-mile radius from ground zero, how then can you say that it is never, ever, justified to use torture to prevent the bomb from being detonated?

Pierre's point is valid, don't you think? If we had Atta in custody on September 9, and we knew his organization intended to carry out an attack within 48 hours that would kill as many as 100,000 people (assuming the WTC were at capacity), by what calculus do you say that the moral choice is to allow the attack to proceed while Atta remains in a state of physical grace?

If you are not a pacifist, then the question is when are you going to use a level of force appropriate for the threat you are facing?

It doesn't need to be a nuke. What about a man who has buried a child alive? Who sits across the table from you in interrogation room three, smiles, and says, "I'll tell you where she is *after* her air runs out."

What if you learned of a plan to release Sarin and VX gas at a high school graduation, but didn't know at which school? Or what about the recently-foiled plot to detonate multiple bombs at a soccer match in England, in a stadium with 60,000 fans?

The Atlantic Monthly ran an article last fall dealing with this subject. There was an incident involving a bomb planted -- I think in or near a bus station -- set to go off at rush hour in a third-world nation. The police had two hardened terrorists in custody, who refused to talk. The interrogator explained that the station would be filled with civilians, men, women and children, who were innocent. He could understand attacking the government, soldiers, police, but surely they understood that these victims did not deserve to die.

The terrorists were unmoved. The policeman drew his pistol, and told them that he couldn't allow this attack to proceed, and that unless they told him where the bombs were, he was going to kill them.

The terrorists refused to speak, secure in the knowledge that the cop would never fight by their rules.

The policeman raised his weapon and fired, and one terrorist fell over backward, dead. His compatriot, spattered with the blood and brains of his former conspirator, promptly told where the bombs were located, and they were disarmed.

How *awful* that the cop didn't allow the bombs to detonate. A shame that he sacrificed his moral purity, really. Hundreds of dead civilians would be a small price to pay for his being able to say to the families, "But at least we didn't sink to their level."

You say there are no "buts." I've read you long enough to hope that you are being flip.

I'm always stunned when I see stuff like this. Abraham Lincoln said, "the Constitution is not a suicide pact." Sensing is, in effect, saying, "Yes, it is."

Posted by Mike Lief at May 8, 2004 11:37 PM | TrackBack