Hey, someone had to be #2.

Jonah Goldberg has a very interesting discussion here about the use of torture.

I haven’t worked out all the answers for myself, but it seems to me that a great clarifier in this area is to substitute “torture” with “deadly force.” Surely, there’s nothing wrong with shooting a terrorist in the head before he can push the button that blows up New York. Surely, there’s everything wrong with shooting an innocent person for no reason whatsoever. The only way it’s different for torture is if you believe torture is worse than killing. We should greet assertions along these lines cautiously.

More back and forth between Goldberg and Ramesh here and here.

Neither Andy McCarthy nor, I take it, you would countenance the torture of an innocent person under any circumstances, even if that means New York has to go. If that’s not an absurd conclusion–and it isn’t–then why is it absurd to conclude that while there are a great many things we can do to a terrorist who is withholding life-saving information, and we can do more to that terrorist than to an innocent party, there are nevertheless some things we cannot do, even at the cost of New York? And if that’s the case, what’s left of the usefulness of invoking the ticking time-bomb?

And here.

Aerial bombing by its very nature inevitably results in the killing and maiming of innocents and combatants. For some unknowable number of people this means a lifetime of pain, psychological and/or physical. And yet, advocates of an absolute torture ban (or at least the ones who are not complete pacifists) do not argue for a total ban on aerial bombing in all circumstances.

Similarly, I’ve never heard a thorough and succint explanation as to why executing a captured soldier on the battlefield is immoral, but blowing him up in his sleep isn’t. But we can discuss this in the morning.