Andrew responds again via two emailers. I’ve apparently put one of them into deep “despair.” He/she writes:

[Goldberg’s] logic leaves me with a feeling of despair. Has he intentionally created a place where there is no morality other than within a particular context, a context that is always changing? Is this what the neo-conservatives (in the broad sense) have left us with? ‘The difference was that the people we put in prisons were criminals. The people they put in the Gulag were men of conscience like Solzhenitsyn and Sharansky.’

Sullivan then says “So torture is okay dependent on the moral standing of the tortured? And who decides such standing? And after what due process?”

Wow, this is nonsense and I simply cannot believe Andrew is giving it such play. As Andy McCarthy noted below with his point about search warrants, all sorts of things are immoral depending on the situation, not just torture. I favor the death penalty, that doesn’t mean I think any old guy off the street can be executed by the state. Executing a shoplifter counts as cruel and unusual punishment to me. Executing a serial killing rapist is fine by me.

Indeed, so much of this depends on what you mean by torture. Imprisoning a law abiding person for decades simply because of what he believes is a horrific abuse of state authority and might even qualify as torture in my book. Imprisoning a person for, say, raping and killing someone is a perfectly legitimate use of state authority. So, yeah, the moral standing of the person involved is important.

I don’t know how many times I have to say this before these people will believe me — but I am not in favor of torture. But for the sake of argument let’s say I’m in favor of sleep deprivation and some smacking around of high-ranking members of al Qaeda caught overseas (and I am and I don’t think that’s torture either) if there’s reasonable cause to believe that it will save lives or shorten the war against people who cut off heads and blow up buildings. Does this mean I’m in favor of the same techniques for, say, Al Franken? Of course not. We draw these distinctions every day. Indeed, this is what decent civilizations do. It is not “relativism” for society to say we do X to murderers but we only do Y to jaywalkers. This is the fartherst thing in the world from moral relativism. And for Andrew to call this an example of my “remarkable relativism” is to do violence to the concept. He’s the one confusing arsonists and firefighters.

I’m tempted to leave it here and simply add my ditto to Andy McCarthy and Mark Levin below. But I will say one more thing. Enough with the bait and switch already. His other emailer writes:

Goldberg’s argument is a non-starter. Our torture policy is not just immoral – it’s been implemented on people who are far, far from “mass murderers.” Just look at Abu Ghraib … or Ashcroft’s pathetic record on, you know, actually prosecuting real terrorists. Our torture policy is the worst of all worlds–it inflicts torture on innocent people thus creating far more many terrorists than would have existed if we had not tortured anyone at all.

Why does opposition to the McCain amendment mean support for what happened at Abu Ghraib? Why does opposition to the McCain amendment even mean support for torture at all? Every time I say something about what a constructive policy might be, the other side says “you’re in favor of torture.” Every time I try to describe a person and a situation requiring harsher-then-normal measures, I’m told that the victims at Abu Ghraib don’t fit that description. No duh.

This is a complete red herring. As I understand it, what happened there (no matter whose version you believe) was already illegal. I’m in favor of that being the case. I simply reject this relentless moral grandstanding which says anybody who’s opposed to the McCain amendment — or in my case merely raising good faith concerns about it — must therefore be in favor of every abuse, every mistake, every offense (real or imagined) alleged against the United States over the last five years. If the McCain amendment is really just a referendum on All Bad Things, just admit it already. If not, stop arguing as if that’s the case.