Negative Expected Utility

Anne Applebaum's op-ed in the Washington Post this past week ought to shatter the idea that torture is even a remotely effective tool for intelligence gathering. Those of us who are on the side of decency in this need to be out front constantly pointing out that torture is a) irreducibly evil and b) egregiously ineffective. In fact, there has never been an interrogation method about which so much has been written on the basis of so little evidence of its efficacy. Somehow, though, as Anne writes, "'realists,' whether liberal or conservative, have a tendency to accept, all too eagerly, fictitious accounts of effective torture carried out by someone else." That's exactly right; the "MSM" are always so ready to accept any prefabricated consensus that if we allow the torture apologists to frame the debate as between people who are interested in protecting the rights of terrorists versus people who are interested in protecting the rights of Americans, the decency side will lose.

We can't allow that to happen. Morality---a morality common to every religious confession and to secular ethics as well---is on our side, and that should be enough. But in case it isn't, the utilitarian calculus of torture is on our side as well. Torture makes America less safe.