Quote Originally Posted by J Wolfsberger View Post
At the time, there was reason to believe additional attacks were immanent, and that we had custody of people with sufficient knowledge of them that we would be able to thwart them. There were two moral principles in conflict: a. Torture is morally wrong. b. The President is responsible for protecting the citizens against attacks.

When confronted with conflicting moral principles, the first step of moral behavior is determining which violation is the greater evil. Moral courage consists of acting to prevent that evil, knowing that one is committing a lesser evil, and accepting the consequences of that act. To take an example from another era, Dr. M. L. King chose a course of action that would highlight the denial of civil rights to a large group of citizens. He did so in the knowledge that he would be violating the prevailing laws, spent time in jail for that violation, and, to my knowledge, never complained about it.

Mr. Bush chose to authorize harsh interrogations, knowing that some would characterize the methods as torture, in the belief it was necessary to prevent the murder of civilians in the US and abroad. He choses the lesser evil, and responsibility for it, in order to prevent the greater evil. That is moral courage.

Before you respond, place yourself in his position and consider the alternative: "Yes, they murdered a lot of people, and we could have forced this guy to give up the information to stop that, but at least we didn't make anyone uncomfortable."

You are confusing moral relativism with courage.

Moral courage is doing what it right, even when there is a cost, to you personally. MLK put his own liberty at risk, accepted that his actions were going to be found illegal in many cases, and took the consequences. That is not what Bush did, not at all. The expedient solution is never moral courage. The ends do not justify the means. The road to hell and all that...

Moral courage on Bush's part would have been to stand before the American people and say, "I will not sacrifice our principles, the values that this country stands for, to achieve an easy solution. We may face danger, but we will remain the country we were meant to be. If that means I will not be re-elected, I will accept that consequence." That's courage. And that would have been a message heard round the world and would have done more to protect the public than any harsh interrogation technique.

And by the way, none of your argument takes into account the fact that all good evidence is on the side of torture and harsh interrogations being the worst possible way to get good intelligence from captives. No, sorry, there was nothing courageous in a bunch of overprivileged executives playing cowboy -- I'm thinking Rumsfeld's contemptuous commentary regarding the difficulty in being forced to stand for hours at a time because, after all, he stood at his Churchill desk in his office.

Jill