While it may seem that in times of unusual external threats that it is necessary to take extroadinary measures to protect democracy, it’s also possible to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Today, when the White House lawyers seem preoccupied with contriving a way to stem the flow of possible lawsuits from former detainees, I strongly recommend that they think about another flood of suits, from the men and women in your armed services or the CIA agents who have been or will be engaged in CID practices. Our rich experience in Russia has shown that many will become alcoholics or drug addicts, violent criminals or, at the very least, despotic and abusive fathers and mothers.

Torture’s Long Shadow, By Vladimir Bukovsky Washington Post Sunday, December 18, 2005; Page B01

The above is an externality that I don’t recall seeing mentioned anywhere else. The writer has direct personal experience with this effect. There’s more.

Bukovsky continues:

If America’s leaders want to hunt terrorists while transforming dictatorships into democracies, they must recognize that torture, which includes CID, has historically been an instrument of oppression — not an instrument of investigation or of intelligence gathering. No country needs to invent how to "legalize" torture; the problem is rather how to stop it from happening. If it isn’t stopped, torture will destroy your nation’s important strategy to develop democracy in the Middle East. And if you cynically outsource torture to contractors and foreign agents, how can you possibly be surprised if an 18-year-old in the Middle East casts a jaundiced eye toward your reform efforts there?

Finally, think what effect your attitude has on the rest of the world, particularly in the countries where torture is still common, such as Russia, and where its citizens are still trying to combat it. Mr. Putin will be the first to say: "You see, even your vaunted American democracy cannot defend itself without resorting to torture. . . . "

Torture’s Long Shadow, By Vladimir Bukovsky Washington Post Sunday, December 18, 2005; Page B01

The vaunted American democracy managed to defend itself during World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, etc., without legalizing torture. The U.S. Constitution was written after a long and brutal war in which a foreign power was busily running around the entire country trying to destroy its independence, killing large numbers of people in the process. The Founders didn’t legalize torture then, and for good reasons that are no less good now.

A quick and apparently cheap solution that has huge externalities that wrap around to affect the perpetrators and their entire country is not good risk management.

-jsq