"Common sense?" "Our"? "We?"

To refer to one of my favourites, the problem with torture is that it is a blunder.

However, presenting this as being "represented by a military force that plainly can't tell the difference between right and wrong" is badly misframing the challenge.

Military forces do not "represent" - they fight. The issue is not "representing" at all, it is winning. Fighting the wrong battles and engaging in self-defeating behaviour of course does not help win such battles.

Ignoring anti-torture conventions raises the costs to the United States (and its allies as well, to get away from mere parochial national interest for a second). It likely generates more opposition, raising the cost to win. A short termist reaction.

At least in terms of the blundering wide-spread use of low-grade torture that the United States has begun to engage in. Blundering.

Representing doesn't enter into that. Wars and violence require unpleasant things to happen. Inhumanity to man if you want, but it is fundamental to conflict. Given the reality of that conflict, the fundamental challenge is winning. Winning not merely the battle but the war.

As well as looking out for long term interests.

Sadly the common sense of the individual soldier (and in the pressure of the moment, it may indeed make a great deal of sense to engage in short term violence to control violence) is not the best guide for long term interest, however one should respect the individual soldier and the dangers faced.

The key problem with having first allowed clumsy, blundering use of torture to become ordinary if not routine is (i) it is both natural and expected that as the story put it, the peers judging the soldiers will understand and contextualise the actions - letting their colleagues off at one level, even if disapproving of the actions, (ii) that the same actions will seem twisted and a confirmation of bad intent to the outsider.

Rather like the understanding my 'pious middle'of the Islamic world can extend to at least some portion of the jihadi activists.

Mirror image problems.

Will post further when I am not stoned out of my gourd on sinus medication.

However, one of the dangers of explicitly allowing physical interrogation techniques of nearly any sort, as Doug Cassell pointed out in the referenced debate (and he's a guy who knows a thing or two about torture and the military), is that interrogators rarely have the discipline to stop even when the rules specifically tell them to. And this is even more true when the rules are unclear and/or contradictory, let alone when they are just plain wrong.

(And yes, I do believe sometimes people should not do things because they are simply wrong, even if the immediate utility of being a moral human being isn't apparent.)

One parting thought before the synapses totally shut down...despondent though I may be about the prevalence of torture, I can only console myself with the thought that John Yoo must have an awfully difficult time getting laid in Berkeley.