The left, the intellectual elite, and the MSM never miss a beat berating the Administration for it’s decision to use forceful methods of interrogation. Jason Kuznicki at Postive Liberty in fact sites this as one his reasons for (at best) not being enthusiastic over a US victory over the insurgency in Iraq (note the rebuttal from Timothy Sandefur at the same site). But I think that same cadre of non-supporters of the war is also in a large part responsible for those methods being employed in the first place.
The groups above (MSM, intellectual elite, et al) have partially if not largely framed the terms on which we have been waging this war. With
- repeated and dismayed re-iteration of the list of those killed in action to,
- repeated references to the cost in dollars, and
- repeated calls for “timeline” and a “exit strategy”.
One wonders if these groups think that there are no consequences for framing the debate in this way. For what pressure is then put on those administering the conflict. There is pressure to reduce casualty rates to end it quicker and cheaper. In war, as in any endeavor there are choices and those choices involve tradeoffs. One such tradeoff might be the treatement and questioning of prisoners in return for hoped-for quicker results in chasing down of the enemy at a lower cost to your own personel. Those, who in their seemingly total ignorance of casualty rates in any prior conflict, calling for even lower casualty rates than the historically unprecedented low rates which are presently being encountered put pressure for those engaging in the conflict to find new ways to cut losses even lower.
I want to make myself clear, I am not condoning torture or misuse of prisoners. What I am saying is that the decision to use such techniques may very well be a consequence of the pressure to reduce the cost in time, men, and materiel of the war. This war could be won without such techniques. But such strong pressure from the homefront/left to our costs at any measure meant that those engaging in this conflict did just that. This is not to absolve those who made the decision to use these methods, but to point out that condemnation is shared by those who pushed for unreasonable limits on our costs. If the left/MSM et al, had in their reporting and noting events of the war been the least bit even handed or even pro-US in their coverage, by for example pointing out US heroism, US assistance to Iraqi non-combatants, reporting US sucesses in combat et al, or even (gasp!) not acting as a direct propoganda arm for the terrorists then perhaps those methods would not have been called for or required.
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