Moral Quicksand

I see that right is fulminating about the Democrats’ objection to torture as an American value. Yeah, it’s tough, isn’t it?

The WSJ said today:

The White House appears to be dreading today’s confirmation hearings for Alberto Gonzales now that Democrats seem ready to blame the Attorney General nominee for Abu Ghraib and other detainee mistreatment. But this is actually a great chance for the Administration to do itself, and the cause of fighting terror, some good by forcefully repudiating all the glib and dangerous abuse of the word “torture.”

For what’s at stake in this controversy is nothing less than the ability of U.S. forces to interrogate enemies who want to murder innocent civilians. And the Democratic position, Mr. Gonzales shouldn’t be afraid to say, amounts to a form of unilateral disarmament that is likely to do far more harm to civil liberties than anything even imagined so far.

Gonzales certainly wasn’t afraid to use the word torture. In fact, he personally asked for a definition and a legal finding as to whether the president had the authority in wartime to ignore the laws against it, both American and international. Why the squeamishness about the word now?

Perhaps because they have waded into quicksand on this issue and they know the only thing that will save them is if the Democrats throw them a lifeline by refusing to expose the shallow prurience of their “values.” We should not do it. We should turn the spotlight back on those who made a fetish of morals and show them for what they are.

The right is going to accuse us of not caring about winning the GWOT but we should stand tough and not flinch when we say that torture is immoral. They are now caught in the bind of having to defend it (indeed, some relish defending it) and it is indefensible on both moral and practical grounds. We should not be afraid of their bluster. It is the sign of their weakness. Let them bellow.

The American people know that torture is wrong. They know. That does not mean, of course, that some don’t think we should use it. Even so they know it’s wrong . And because the modern Republican party has sold themselves as the party of values this discussion leaves them uncomfortable, squirming and impatient. Their smugness has turned to waspishness. They want desperately to change the subject.

This is the dawning of a new values debate and one which is far more defining for a great nation than tendentious posturing about personal sexual morality. This goes to the very core of what we, as Americans, really are. It’s time for us to take that fight to those who constantly use their cramped definition of morality to bludgeon us into a corner.