Liberals and their child-like view of “torture.”

Here’s a late-breaking story about, from the Washington Post, New Rules Worry CIA Officials. Yeah, no kidding, battered by recriminations. This is the Washington Post. “Battered by recriminations over waterboarding and other harsh techniques sanctioned by the Bush administration, the CIA is girding itself for more public scrutiny, and is questioning whether Agency personnel can conduct interrogations effectively under rules set out for the U.S. military, according to senior intelligence officials. Harsh interrogations are only one part of its clandestine activities against al Qaeda and other enemies, and Agency members are worried that other operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan will come under review, the official said. The Agency’s defensiveness in part reflects a conviction that it is being forced to take the blame for actions approved by elected officials. Former CIA director Michael Hayden said in an interview that CIA managers and operations officers have again been put in a horrible position. Hayden recalled an officer asking, ‘will I be in trouble five years from now for what I agree to do today?’” 

Well, folks, let me tell you something. You see, this is, I told you, one of the problematic characteristics of the left is what Tom Sowell has called stage one thinking, and that is you don’t ask a question what price paid, what price paid. That’s why it’s a childlike world, the left, in my opinion, not that there, everybody in it is childlike. But the thinking is childlike, in that the question what price paid is never asked. Change the definition of marriage. Do they ever ask what price paid? No, because it seems right and compassionate at the moment, so then you do it. What price paid for having bilingual education for immigrants’ children? They don’t ask what price paid. They just say it seems right, because it feels good for the kid at that moment. Feeling good at that moment is a childlike response to matters.

And likewise here. What price is paid for not waterboarding? And I’m conflicted, too. I would love America to say we don’t torture. But even the question of what is torture now becomes a question, because when you know what torture is, when you’ve studied and immersed yourself in as much evil as I have, the study of evil as I have, I assure you that this is not what you think of when you think of the definition of the word torture, when you think of examples of it. What price paid? I’ll tell you the price. The price paid for not getting information from these people, and maybe we shouldn’t, but at least I want people who are opposed to doing any of these things like sleep depravation, or waterboarding, which was done to three people by the way, three, and I would like them at least acknowledge there may be a horrible price paid in the torture of vast numbers of innocents, that maybe when you don’t waterboard the terrorist, you may end up with the torture of non-terrorists.

When I think about the life that people permanently injured in a terrorist bombing live, for example, what a torturous existence, or I think of the acid that I just mentioned to you, if you found, you’ve got a Taliban fighter and they were planning an acid attack on girls’ faces in Afghanistan? What would you do them? I’d like to know. What would you do to him, hmm? I know you wouldn’t offer a cigarette, because that’s secondhand smoke. But what would you do? I just read to you, I just read to you exactly what happens in Afghanistan. They throw acid in teachers and girl students’ faces, because they don’t believe that girls should have an education, these sickos of the Taliban. What would you do? And if, let’s say, you could have found out when the next attack of acid in the faces of these girls would take place, and you didn’t stop it because of that, would you feel completely comfortable morally? I don’t feel completely comfortable morally about waterboarding. But I ask those of you opposed to it to get out of your sanctimonious comfort, because understand that what you are doing is bequeathing acid in faces of girls and blown up human beings, okay? There are prices paid on both sides. Mature people, not people who want to feel good about themselves, but who actually want to increase good on Earth, ask the question what is the bigger price paid. That’s if you’re interested in doing good as opposed to feeling good about yourself. It’s easy to feel good about yourself. It’s much harder to do good on Earth.