An Interesting Twist on the Torture Debate

I came across this article from First Things, a website run by the Roman Catholic Church. I think I concur almost completely.

The problem we have with torture is that we have failed in defining what we are fighting against and calling out the evil as it is. We are fighting against an ideological foe that is comprised of tens of millions, or more than likely, hundreds of millions of adherents and/or sympathizers. This foe is Jihadist, fundamental, violent Islam. It is not as far out of the mainstream of Islamic thought as the popular political position claims and it is not all that "radical" in the Muslim world, which is why I didn't use that word.

We need to call our enemy out for what he is and declare their moral shortcomings. Once that is done we can start recruiting defectors by showing them the error of their ways. Right now, we can't even have the conversation, because our PC nation cannot call out evil when it sees it.

If we had an honest discussion about our enemy there would be two things working in our favor in this unnecessary torture debate;

1. People would be morally prepared to deal harshly with evil men, and;
2. We could speak boldly on the world stage and recruit defectors from the enemy camp, thereby possibly negating any need for 'enhanced interrogation techniques'.