Quote of the day II

I’m sick to frigging death of people – self-identifiedly conservative or otherwise – whose reaction to the ongoing revelation of what our government and its representatives did post-9/11 is to say,

Oh, well, I’m really opposed to torture, and clearly there were some cases where a few bad apples crossed the line, but we were just trying to do our best, and national security is really important, and these people are pretty awful people after all, so despite the fact that I’m really opposed to torture I’m still okay with what our government did.

NEWSFLASH: If you’re okay with all or most of what our government did, you’re not opposed to torture. Really. It’s that simple. At this point, being head-splittingly outraged by the post-9/11 actions of our government and its representatives is a necessary condition on being an opponent of torture. So tell yourself what you will, but if the outrage isn’t there then you’re no more opposed to torture than Lois Lane was not in love with Superman. She was, but she didn’t know it. Same goes for you, only in this case you’re acting as an apologist for crimes of war. And the only thing worse than an apologist for crimes of war is an apologist for crimes of war who’s also self-deceived.

–John Schwenkler