Waterboarding And Hiroshima

Bret Stephens writes an opinion in the Wall Street Journal about how we should view waterboarding and other controversial interrogation methods. His analogy is with bombing during WWII, both conventional and nuclear. The article is very interesting, so go read it for all the details of his argument, but here are the money excerpts:

[T]he question here isn't about the intrinsic morality of the bombing. It's about whether the good that flowed from the bombing outweighed the unmistakable evil of the act itself.

Whatever side one takes here, the important point is that the debate fundamentally is about results. Note the difference with the current debate over waterboarding, where opponents argue that the technique is unconscionable and inadmissible under any circumstances, even in hypothetical cases where the alternative to waterboarding is terrorist attacks resulting in mass casualties among innocent civilians. According to this view, it is possible to wage war yet avoid the classic "choice of evils" dilemmas that confronted past statesmen such as Churchill and Roosevelt. Or, to put the argument more precisely, it is possible to avoid this choice if one is also prepared to pay for it in blood--if not in one's own, than in that of kith and kin and whoever else's life must be sacrificed to keep our consciences clear.

I have to say that I agree with what Stephens appears to be saying. While I disagree totally with torture, I am also willing to accept certain actions if they lead to the preservation of mass humanity and property. I'd gladly allow the torture of one known terrorist leader to stop a nuclear weapon from detonating on American soil. Would you? Sadly, this is a question we need to have an answer for. I think that we as Americans deserve an answer from each of the presidential candidates on exactly that question before we go to the polls next year. It could make a big difference in who we elect, and in the War on Terror.

There's my two cents.