Blogger Dean Barnett seems to have elicited a lot of personal and unfair condemnations for a post he did defending torture in some circumstances–at least, based on his angry reaction to his unnamed critics. I fear that his anger has, however, led him to argue in the same vein as those critics. Anyone who disagrees with him is, supposedly, blind to the consequences of his moral self-satisfaction (and even disrespectful of our troops).

The principal argument he makes is that adhering to an anti-torture principle could, at least hypothetically, have horrible consequences; but you could easily flip that type of argument around on him. Is there anything he wouldn’t countenance to avoid these horrible consequences? Would he be okay with torturing a terrorist’s innocent child to get him to talk? Is he isn’t, then should he too be charged with sacrificing our cities to his self-satisfaction?