When America Tortures, the Terrorists Win

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It looks like Dick "Shooter" Cheney has hit the talk show ­circuit, defending his administration's use of torture -- oh, sorry, "enhanced interrogation." This, after steadfastly denying that the Bushistas used ­torture and insisting that any attempt to obtain documentation about it would imperil national security.
Now he wants CIA memos released -- because, he says, they show that torture works (an assertion which Sen. Russ Feingold, who has seen the memos, disputes). But it's not really torture. And we didn't really do it. Sorry, it's hard to keep all these different stories straight.
But you know, I remember reading once about a country where enemy bombs were exploding all night, every night, all over the country, for weeks. The country's very existence was threatened.
In that country, there was a prison that held dedicated and fanatical enemy operatives. The worst of the worst. People who had information that could help save lives and even save the country.
They did not, however, use torture to get that information. In fact, an interrogator who did nothing worse than get frustrated and smack a prisoner on the back of the head was immediately sacked.
And they got good intelligence. On at least one occasion, they even managed to "turn" an enemy operative and use him to send false information to the enemy.
There was another country whose enemy threatened them with nuclear weapons and repeatedly promised to wipe their way of life from the face of the earth. That country didn't torture people, either. In fact, one of that country's best-loved leaders pushed for and signed a treaty forbidding torture.
I'm sure you've figured out who those countries were. The first was Great Britain during the Blitz. As described in a recent column by Christopher Hitchens, a prison known as Latchmere House just outside of London held what would now be called "high-value targets."
The commander of that prison was no touchy-feely liberal; he was a feared martinet known behind his back as "old Tin-Eye." But he firmly believed (as did Prime Minister Winston Churchill) that "Violence is taboo, for not only does it produce answers to please, but it lowers the standard of information." His methods were based on gaining prisoners' trust. They worked. And Britain survived and prevailed.
The second country, of course, was the United States during the Cold War. Even under the grave threat of nuclear annihilation, a succession of American presidents refused to make torture official policy, even for people caught spying for Russia. And we won the Cold War. Because we didn't lose sight of who we were: We were the good guys.
One way you could tell the good guys from the bad is that the good guys didn't torture people and didn't use weasel words to make torture sound like something else. In fact, conservative icon Ronald Reagan signed an international treaty against torture "and other inhumane practices" which he called "abhorrent."
So were Churchill and Reagan wimps? Did they want to "offer the enemy understanding and therapy?"
No. They were leaders who realized that the contest they were in, like the one we're in now, was for civilization itself. And they chose not to fight barbarism by becoming barbaric.
As I've said before, the central front in the War on Terror is not Iraq or Afghanistan. The central front in the War on Terror in the American mind. The goal of the terrorists is to scare us into forgetting who we are. They want to make us act in a way that will allow them to say to the world, "Look! We were right! America is brutal and barbaric!" And the eight years of Bush/Cheney were one long retreat in that war.
Torture is a squalid and cowardly act ordered by people who have let fear master them. When anyone says "we have to torture because the ­terrorists do," they're surrendering to the terrorists. And yes, that includes any Democrats who signed off on it.
Because torture is wrong. It is un-American. It is not who we are.
Bonus: from the Pilot's letters column today: an answer for those who say "what we did isn't torture": Really, [defining torture is] the easy part. If we would prosecute anyone who did it to our sons or daughters for war crimes, then it's torture.

Thank you, Kevin Smith of Aberdeen NC for that.