Brain Fertilizer

I understand the points Jane Galt and her readers/commenters make, and they make many good ones:

I'd rather be waterboarded than put in the general population of a high security prison. It is entirely possible that life at Guantanamo is more bearable than life at San Quentin, and no, that is not a defense of Guantanamo.

But that hardly constitutes support for torture, which I haven't and don't.

I understand Prof. Reynolds point, and I think it is a good one:

Have you noticed that people who spend a lot of time saying that they're anti-torture often seem to go out of their way to manufacture allegedly pro-torture enemies? It's almost as if it's more about brand differentiation than substance. Fortunately, the sensible anti-torture camp is expanding.

But I think the anti-torture crowd pulled a fast one on everyone when they framed the debate in terms of what each individual would personally allow or do.

I don't think that's the point. We all have our own strengths, our own weaknesses, our own viewpoints, our own principles, our own training, our own experiences, our own tendencies, our own principles.

The principles of a CEO are likely to be different than that of a factory worker, which is different than that of a McDonald's shift supervistor. Each industry has its own ethics, its own value system. And that's okay.

I don't expect a kindergarten teacher to make the same decisions or operate under the same restrictions as a police officer. I don't expect a military officer to see a problem and its solution the same way as an enlisted soldier, or a Dept of Defense civilian.

Most people have never been in the military. Most people have never had to deal with a terrorist actively attempting to continue warfare from inside the prison cell. Most people have never been in a truly life-or-death situation.

Some things, you need to leave to the experts to decide. Delegation is the key to success, because no one can know everything.

At the moment the anti-torture advocates succeeded in opening debate among laymen, the debate became ridiculous.

The U.S. is not a direct democracy, and voters don't have input into every decision. We vote for the people we want on the basis of their stated goals. If we want those goals to be achieved, we accept the methods they use to achieve those goals. If we don't, then we can vote the decisionmakers out.

I want terrorists to be stopped from killing people, not just Americans. If someone is wittingly continuing the battle after surrender and/or capture, then we have the right to kill them immediately. Anything short of immediate execution that doesn't involve maiming or extreme pain is a mercy.

That's the way I see it.

UPDATE:
This isn't to say that torture is right. Or that waterboarding is torture. I'm trying to sidestep that whole issue and point out that amateur oversight is often a bad thing. You have expert opinion for precisely that reason. I can get a second opinion on my brain tumor by seeking consensus from Instapundit, Daily Kos, and my blog readers, but it's unlikely to help me much.

(No, I don't have a brain tumor. It's not a tumor!)