“A LITTLE SMACKY-FACE”: Henley’s on to something in focusing not on torture’s effects on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed–who can say he has not deserved great pain?–but on us, the citizens in whose name the torture would be committed. Raymond Chandler described Philip Marlowe by saying, “Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean.” You can deride that as a piece of sentimentality, but the competing mindsets are just as sentimental in their bitter way: The belief that those who protect society stand outside the law; the belief that America must be protected by any means necessary; the belief that when you stare into the abyss, the abyss also stares into you (or, to put it more crudely, you are what you eat), and that’s OK. There’s a sentimentality in machismo, and a weakness in the kind of “realism” that allows no limits on U.S. action.

It’s tough to say that we will not fight dirty. It’s an expression of macho sentimentality, I think, that prompts statements like the description of torture here–you can almost see the calculated, knowing, “I’ve been around the block and seen things you can’t imagine,” seductive little grin that captures reporters’ hearts. I don’t like the kind of man formed by willingness to torture. I don’t like the kind of nation formed by that willingness, either: A torturing nation accepts a mindset that is inhospitable to liberty and mercy, a mindset that places self-preservation above everything. Down these mean streets a country must go that is not itself mean; let’s not sacrifice a necessary humanity to gain an uncertain security.

Most of the time meanness is more dangerous than civilized standards. But when restraint becomes more dangerous than cruelty, cruelty doesn’t therefore become right.