Tough Enough

Anne Applebaum asks a necessary question about torture:

Given the overwhelmingly negative evidence [on the effectiveness of torture], the really interesting question is not whether torture works but why so many people in our society want to believe that it works. At the moment, there is a myth in circulation, a fable that goes something like this: Radical terrorists will take advantage of our fussy legality, so we may have to suspend it to beat them. Radical terrorists mock our namby-pamby prisons, so we must make them tougher. Radical terrorists are nasty, so to defeat them we have to be nastier.

Perhaps it's reassuring to tell ourselves tales about the new forms of "toughness" we need, or to talk about the special rules we will create to defeat this special enemy. Unfortunately, that toughness is self-deceptive and self-destructive. Ultimately it will be self-defeating as well.

Bush is a true believer in — and one of the main perpetrators of — this myth. For instance, Bush sees Iraq as test of wills that we can "win" by being stronger and more resolute than our enemies. And from "bring 'em on" to Abu Ghraib to the "Salvador option", he has not hesitated to ratchet up our "resolve", which has only served to make a bad situation even worse. Toughness isn't a winning strategy; it's the last refuge of the incompetent.