As I’m watching an entire country try to come out of a financial crisis I’m also watching it getting ready to step into another crisis:  that of retroactive examination of acts in a time of war that were sanctioned by the highest level as permissible and now are about ready to subject the participants to criminal and perhaps civil liability.  We need to spend time on this like we need to be writing an anthology of the Disco Movement as a country.   It’s an act of misdirection by the Obama administration and an insult to the military and civilian people who were trying to elicit information to make sure we are not living in caves going forward.  More importantly, it is a deterrent and creates a chilling effect on those who would serve their country in the military or clandestine services, knowing years later they could be second guessed and imprisoned for their actions.

The fact of the matter is that we have citizens being ejected from their homes, living in tent cities, and shooting their families because they do not have jobs nor futures.  To spend time trying to understand whether we crossed the line with some leopard print towel head who wants to shoot those same citizens is simply beyond my comprehension.  If the truth were known, I want Israel to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age (a short walk for them) and I want the interrogators to start with fingernails and end with collar bones if that’s what it takes to find out where the next attack is coming from.

Why don’t we stop pretending that we are something we are not and just admit that sometimes it’s necessary to take off a few fingers to get the hand pointed in the right direction. While the ACLU and nearly everyone in California thinks we should take long walks and hold hands while getting suspected terrorists to “share” their thoughts and information,  the reality is that 5 minutes of pulling fingernails gets more information than 2 hours around a meditation pool.

War is dirty business.  Just ask anyone who’s fought in one.  People kill each other, maim each other, and for the most part try to drive each other individually and collectively as a society back to some point where they are less threatening to the other.  World Peace is not a realistic goal.  World standstill is much more realistic.   The goal here is to create enough tension that we fear launching an attack and dread having one launched on us.  Think of the forces in the world as two Rottweilers separated by a see through fence.

The prevailing stream of thought is that the United States is above the level of torture. .Maybe in the latest Disney film, but not on the streets where we all live.  Personally, if there were someone in my neighborhood who was plotting the destruction of my city and my family and my friends, it wouldn’t matter to me whether we used trick questions or torture to prevent that.  I suspect that on that day, it wouldn’t matter to anyone else either.

Torture is both a strategy and a tactic.  One would hope that the threat of having a German Shepherd gnaw one’s genitals off would be an incentive to share information if you had it.  But, alas and alack, some folks need more direct contact to be  persuaded.  War has always been a means to an end type of business.  Just ask Harry Truman.

I like Jack Bauer’s “We can do this easy or we can do it hard” approach.  There’s some flexibility in that.  If what you believe is important enough to lose your finger nails, toes, and eyes, then good for you.  I like conviction in a person.  However, if you can see that the information is going to be garnered another way, then what’s the point in the acute manicure process. 

Here’s what Jack has that many people don’t:  A deep and abiding conviction that what he is doing is preserving a way of life and a civilization that needs to be continued.  It is flawed, far from perfect, and brutal and savage from a 10,000 foot ivory tower viewpoint.  But you don’t treat gangrene with lilac water and you don’t prevent terrorist attacks from the bad guys by having them write essays.

Leave the Bush administration and their past acts alone.  Focus on stopping the next group of morons from destroying our power grids, computer grids, and food supplies.  If you have to pull a few fingernails, then so be it.  Better someone else’s fingernail disappears than my neighborhood.