Further on the same subject, here's something from Josh Marshall:
There's a 'tough enough to make the tough calls' conceit behind almost all the pro-torture advocacy. Put in Dick Cheney terms, the courage to go to the dark side. But this conceit seems wholly belied by the unwillingness of the torture advocates to actually call it 'torture', as opposed to the various euphemisms about 'harsh' or 'enhanced' interrogation methods?
I can't imagine why in this context anyone would make the tough-enough claim with pride. It has a notorious pedigree, and if those making the claim are unfamiliar with this, too bad. I refer to a speech by Heinrich Himmler in October 1943 and to this passage from it in particular:
And none of them ['upright Germans' - NG] has seen it, has endured it. Most of you will know what it means when 100 bodies lie together, when there are 500, or when there are 1000. And to have seen this through, and - with the exception of human weaknesses - to have remained decent, has made us hard and is a page of glory never mentioned and never to be mentioned.
Thus: we who have actually seen it, seen what had to be done, were or became hard enough (while remaining decent!) to do it.
Now, I take care to emphasize what I do not mean in invoking this verbal precedent. I hope I've said enough on this blog about inappropriate comparisons with the Nazi experience for it to be clear that I intend no general pejorative association between the US and the Third Reich, between the Bush presidency and Hitler's regime, between the practices of torture at Guantanamo and elsewhere and the levels of criminality of the Nazis in mid-20th-century Europe. That would be an egregious slander on one of the world's great democracies, and regular readers know that it is a trope I hold in contempt.
My point is a different and more limited one. It is that the claim of courage in the commission of deeply immoral acts is to be deplored and not admired - and my reference to the Himmler speech is offered to highlight just that. Whether courage in the pursuit of wrong is even to be called courage would be questioned by some people. For my own part I think it sometimes can still be called courage - though I would hesitate before recognizing any courage in the authorization or practice of torture. Be this as it may, courage in doing evil is not at all admirable, for the simple and obvious reason that the evil done cancels the merit such courage would otherwise have, and the admiration it might draw, when used for better ends. Pernicious ends disfigure what purports to be the virtuous quality exercised in pursuit of them.