How Many Lives Is “Moral Authority” Worth?…by John Allen

President Obama seems to be banking a lot on the power of “moral authority”. He has continually made decisions that will put America on a weaker footing all for the sake of enhancing our moral authority in the world.

He used this argument when he claimed that reducing our nuclear arsenal would give us “greater moral authority to say to Iran, ‘Don’t develop a nuclear weapon,’ to say to North Korea, ‘Don’t proliferate nuclear weapons.” Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff, used this same argument as a defense of releasing the so-called “torture” memos. President Obama will release, without a legal fight, photos of American soldiers allegedly abusing prisoners for the sake of setting a moral example to the world. And his continuous apologies for American sins are designed to enhance our moral authority in the world.

There are many things wrong with this approach, but they all stem from a dangerous naivete. One of the qualities I dislike most in adults (especially in our leaders) is naivete. Usually, when leaders are naive other people pay with their lives.

In Obama’s fantasy world, bloodthirsty Jihadis will quit plotting to kill Americans because we set a good moral example. Iran will stop pursuing nuclear weapons because we have shown them how civilized countries should behave. Countries around the world will rush to help us because we have atoned for our sins.

Now, to get back to the real world for a minute, Obama is forgetting a few things:

1) Radical Islamists bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, blew up the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996, blew up the U.S. embassy in Kenya in 1998, blew up the U.S.S. Cole in 2000 and destroyed the World Trade Center in 2001. All of this happened before a single detainee was ever waterboarded.

Waterboarding, or other harsh interrogation methods, was never the reason Islamic terrorists wanted to kill Americans. So to think that if we just admit we did it and promise to never do it again the terrorists will lay down their arms is just silly. The truth is that by releasing the memos admitting that we waterboarded and releasing prisoner abuse photos, wholly unnecessary moves, it will only inflame their hatred of America even more. Great, just what we need.

2) Iran isn’t building nuclear weapons because we have them and reducing our arsenal will have no bearing on their motivation to obtain these weapons. If you listen to their leaders (and you don’t even have to read between the lines) it is painfully clear that they want a nuke so they can wipe Israel off of the map. How many times do they have to say it before we believe it? To think that if we just provide a good example for them that they will give up their pursuit of nuclear weapons is, again, wishful thinking.

3) France, Germany, Turkey and other countries refused to join in and help us in Iraq. This happened in 2003, before it was ever made public that we had waterboarded anyone. They weren’t helping us before and it had absolutely nothing to do with us “torturing” anybody.

And, for all of the people out there who indignantly shout, “My country doesn’t torture!”, I’d say that you’re right. Looking at the “torture” memos, it is clear that we were extremely careful in our approach. None of the techniques used caused physical harm. The CIA didn’t mutilate, they didn’t pull out fingernails or use red-hot metal pokers. They threw a guy against a flexible wall after putting a freakin’ neck brace on him so he wouldn’t get hurt. They put a caterpillar in a cell with a grown man.

But, I know, waterboarding is the really bad one. It’s the one that crossed the line. Well, first of all, I wouldn’t want to be waterboarded. It’s scary, uncomfortable, maybe even painful (mentally, if not physically). But, it causes no lasting physical harm and it works to get people to talk. They even had doctors standing by that could stop it if the detainee was being harmed.

And here’s the thing. Waterboarding was only used on three people. Three people who were high-value detainees who we had reason to believe had info that could potentially save thousands of lives. It’s not like every Joe Six-Pack Jihadi that was caught planting a roadside bomb in Afghanistan was immediately waterboarded. It was only the three that we thought could give up valuable information. And it worked.

Check out these quotes I found in an article on National Review Online:

General Hayden calls these facts an “inconvenient truth.” He put it this way in his Fox News interview: “Most people who oppose these techniques want to be able to say: I don’t want my country doing this – which is a purely honorable position – and they didn’t work anyway. That back half of the sentence isn’t true. The facts of the case are that the use of these techniques against these terrorists made us safer. It really did work.”

Former CIA Director George Tenet has said, “I know that this program has saved lives. I know we’ve disrupted plots. I know this program alone is worth more than [what] the FBI, the [CIA], and the National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us.”

Former National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell has said, “We have people walking around in this country that are alive today because this process happened.”

And even Obama’s director of national intelligence, Dennis Blair, said in a letter to the intelligence community on April 16, 2009: “High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al-Qaeda organization that was attacking this country.”

These are people who were in a position to see classified information. If they say that these techniques worked, I think we’ve got to believe them.

Now, I do not want America to descend into barbaric depravity. But that’s the point. After 9/11, we didn’t. We took a very measured, reasonable approach in order to deal with very evil people. The CIA and the Bush administration protected us with a thoughtful, careful plan for interrogations.

President Obama called this a dark chapter in our history and columnist David Broder said this was on of the “darkest chapters in American history.” First of all, waterboarding three Islamist thugs and keeping America safe for over seven years doesn’t seem to be a dark chapter in our history. It seems like a pretty successful peiod. As Noemi Emery of the Weekly Standard put it:

The first job of a president is to safeguard his country and fellow citizens, which Bush did, to the apparent dismay of the opposition. Usually, an investigation takes place after someone has failed in his duty, to find out what went wrong so that it can be changed and improved on. But no attacks on U.S. soil in the seven-plus years between September 11, 2001, and January 20, 2009, is a record of success. Do the Democrats want to find out what went right, and then change it, to avoid repetition? The way that they’re going, they probably will.

And, is this part of the social contract in America? To uphold some politicians vision of America’s “moral authority” do we have to accept a weaker CIA and knowingly inflame our enemies by releasing offensive pictures of a few bad apples abusing prisoners? Do I have to accept that my kids might be vaporized, my wife incinerated or my parents beheaded all because Obama wants to display our moral purity to a world that will exploit it as weakness?

Think about Obama’s moral calculus. He gave the order to kill (not waterboard, not use enhanced interrogation, but actually kill) three Somali pirates to save one American life. That was a good call. But he’s not willing to waterboard an evil, degenerate scumbag terrorist (not kill him, just waterboard him) to obtain information that could save thousands of lives. How many lives is Obama willing to trade for his moral authority?

President Bush will forever have my gratitude for keeping America safe. After 9/11 there were many commentators who were warning us that in an open and free society we can’t possible protect against every terrorist plot. Terrorism is just a reality we will have to learn to live with, they said. Well, they were wrong.

And guess what, all of the people who are so tormented and disturbed by what Bush did to keep us safe are the same people who would have shouted, “See, he didn’t keep us safe” if there had been another terrorist attack. How do we know? Because liberals (Obama and Hillary Clinton among them) were saying that Bush had made us less safe even when we hadn’t been attacked again. So, had there been another attack we know they would have used it to hammer Bush. I am happy that given the choice, in an uncertain situation, Bush chose to act aggressively rather than timidly. There are Americans that are only alive today because of that decision.

George Orwell said:

We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm

Now, thanks to Obama’s “I’m better than Bush” grandstanding and his moral preening, those rough men will be a lot more hesitant to do what it takes to keep us safe. It remains to be seen how many people will pay for his “moral authority” with their lives.