Our Own Worst Enemy

As soon as Congress gets done torturing Michael Mukasey over waterboarding, perhaps they should turn their energies to the question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin."

Here's an idea for the ivory-tower philosophers in Congress: As soon as they get done torturing Michael Mukasey over waterboarding, perhaps they should turn their energies to the question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Or maybe they can figure out what happened to Judge Crater or who shot Liberty Valance. Solving any of those cases would be more entertaining and less harmful to national security.
Though late last week, key Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein announced their support for Mukasey, his confirmation is still uncertain — because he won't say clearly that waterboarding is both torture and illegal under American and international law. He should stick to his guns because his reasons are sound — he doesn't know exactly what techniques the classified interrogation programs use, and there may be legal jeopardy questions involved.
But there's an even better reason he shouldn't give the answer much of the Senate wants. The demand is nonsense of the highest order; one that can only undermine the national effort in a time of war. Why should we spell out for our enemies, on TV no less, exactly how far interrogators can go? Sometimes less is more, and this is one of those times. Leaving something to the imagination can be an effective tool in fighting a war in which the rules of civilization don't neatly apply.
Either that, or let's send a brigade of nitpicking lawyers to Iraq and Afghanistan and let them fight the terrorists with their legal briefs.
The seriousness of the attack on Mukasey reveals an utter lack of seriousness about the reality of the war. And it comes from the same place as the earlier attempts to set arbitrary deadlines for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and to de-fund the military. All are borne out of a childlike frustration at the inability to muster the votes to get Bush to change course. But with the surge working, levels of violence in Baghdad falling and our casualties declining, a new Democratic punching bag had to be found.
With Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales gone, it's Mukasey's turn. And so we have the threats to scuttle a perfectly fine candidate to replace Gonzales and put the Justice Department back on track. Bush met his critics more than halfway by naming someone Schumer suggested. For his efforts, he gets only obstruction. And for his efforts to serve his country in a time of need, Mukasey gets humiliated, his impeccable credentials trashed in another proxy fight over the war.
In a perfect world, the questions being put to Mukasey are reasonable. But in the real world of fighting Al Qaeda and other Islamic extremists that routinely target civilians, the questions are not only unreasonable, they are the wrong questions entirely.
The ultimate issue for America is not whether we should use waterboarding on terror suspects. The issue is whether we should be publicly debating and explaining every jot and tittle of our interrogation tactics when the results could be the difference between life and death for thousands of Americans.
Osama Bin Laden must be laughing in his cave at us as we try to draw bright red lines in the shifting sands of clandestine operations. His theory that people always gravitate toward the strong horse perfectly fits this foolish fixation.
Don't get me wrong — I think waterboarding is torture — by the norms of life in peacetime and even civil confinement. And so are a number of other techniques that are routinely used by the CIA and special-operations groups in harm's way. Common sense tells us that.
Moreover, I wouldn't want any of our troops to be subject to these tactics, and I hope we don't have to use them, except in extraordinary situations like the ticking-bomb scenario.
But peacetime values are often the wrong measurement for wartime policy. It does not follow that, just because we find certain practices repugnant in our living rooms, we have to create a battlefield policy that satisfies our personal tastes or even our national ideals. War by definition is at odds with our ideals. Shooting people, blowing them up, bombing — there's nothing idealistic about it.
By all means, let's not descend into barbarism or become like the beasts we're fighting. But above all, let's not torture ourselves in ways that undercut our efforts in this life-and-death struggle.