JOHN WALLACE: Sometimes the dark side is too dark

I agreed with Vice President Cheney when he said that “We would have to work the dark side” to find the people who were responsible for the terror attacks of 9/11. They were uncertain times and it was good to have a man who had a clear vision of what had to be done. I just didn’t have a clear understanding of how dark it would get. But that’s what he said and that’s what he meant.

I think George Carlin said it best when he said that while he disapproved of torture on moral and ethical grounds, he had to admit that it was the best way to get someone to tell you something they didn’t want to tell you. I was going to say if someone attacks you for no reason, but then I thought, there must be some reason, real or imagined. OBL didn’t just wake up in his cave one day and say, “Hey, you know what would be funny? If we attacked the United States, thereby assuring our own deaths. Who’s with me?”

It seems highly unlikely that they were offended by our freedom, as we were told, but something put a bee in their bonnet. So for the acts of a few zealots, we took over two countries in our search for who was responsible for the deaths of over 3,000 people on 9/11. Over 4,000 of our soldiers died in that effort. Over 100,000 of their people died in the takeovers.

I look back and think maybe we could have done something differently. Vice President Cheney looks back and says, “I would do it again in a minute.” That sounds like something I would say about one of the best times of my life. I sorta expect our leaders to be capable of perspective. If I were complicit in the loss of over 100,000 lives, I would like to think I would wish something could have been done differently.

Is the former vice president saying that sometimes it is okay to torture people? That’s his story and he’s sticking to it. I understand decisions made in the heat of the moment. But two wrongs don’t make a right. Or has that changed, too?

Okay, one more George Carlin story. He tells of an ancient Roman torture. They would put a sack over your head and dip you in water. Sound familiar? But in this sack there would be a poisonous snake, a monkey and a dog. You could just tell me what you were going to do and I would tell you anything I thought you wanted to hear to prevent this from happening.

The value of these coerced confessions are questionable at best. Maybe we did get some actionable intelligence from the enhanced interrogations. Evidence would seem to indicate that we did. Does it justify torturing people? I wonder what Jesus would say about that. Or Moses or Muhammed, Buddha or Vishnu.

You don’t have a problem with it until they do it to someone you know or love. How would Dick Cheney feel if … I don’t even want to go there. His imagined answer terrifies me.

I think the only one who can answer that question with any certainty would be someone who had been taken prisoner and tortured, preferably someone whose love of country is unquestioned. Someone like John McCain. He has walked the walk. I don’t have room to tell you everything he has said about torture but I will give you the short version. He’s ag’in’ it. And, if I may, his face looked tortured when he accused his party of trying to rewrite history to defend the undefendable. He might not always be the smartest guy in the room, but on this particular subject he takes a back seat to no one. Good luck finding someone who has been tortured and thinks they are a better person for it.

Personally, I don’t have a problem with torturing our enemies. You could cut their heads off and display them on spikes around the Freedom Tower for all the world to see what happens when you attack us. And that’s why you should never trust me in a position to make that decision, because torture is wrong and unacceptable in a civilized society. In this ever-changing world, some things never change. Like right and wrong. And I would be wrong to let that happen. I know that. And if Vice President Cheney knew about this and permitted it to happen, he was wrong.

Torture is barbaric. And it brings shame and dishonor to those who would use it.

And that’s not debatable.

John Wallace is a resident of Leesburg.