Does the opposition of torture on moral grounds (“personal” moral grounds if you are a post modernist and don’t really believe that anything is absolutely moral or immoral) automatically make you “for ‘them’ ”?

I do not believe that logic (“yer either fer us or agin us” arguments aside) can support this.

I am not addressing in any way the argument of the so called policy merits of torture or whether information gleaned from torture is often useful in critical situations (the “even if it’s only 1% of the time” argument won’t cut it if you realize that there is some point where the damage done to our ability to act diplomatically outweighs the marginal benefits, not to mention the possibility that having torture policies at all could fuel attacks meaning that torture policy needs to save more lives than it endangered…that is, if good diplomatic relations and the lack of torture policy saves more lives than having a torture policy, then it doesn’t make sense for anyone other than jingoistic sadists….BTW, I wonder why “erring on the side of caution” in the face of the empirical inability to test this proposition [how does one measure “lives not endangers”] always seems to mean favoring torture?)

But I’m not asking ANY of that. I ask this:

Applying ONLY the rules of logic and absolutely NO politics, does opposition to torture (for any reason) automatically equate to being “for” terrorists?

I don’t think it’s an automatic equation; rather, I’d argue the temptation for any democratic government is to avoid any perception of coddling terrorists (or suspected terrorists, or people who look funny, or whatever) at the expense of public security.

And that, of course, is putting aside the policy merits and even the moral ones.

There might be a case, though, where torture would be counterproductive for a certain class of party (the granola-eating postmaterialist leftists, for lack of a better phrase); I suspect that when Germany’s complicity under Schröder in the CIA rendition program comes out in full, the Greens will be hurt by it in a way that their Social Democratic ex-coalition partners won’t. Since the granola-eating postmaterialist left isn’t usually the lead party in a government, though, I can’t see them ever being in enough control of the government to stop a party whose interests might be served by torture from doing so.

Although we’re both Americanists, you know much more about comparative stuff than I, so I’ll pose the question: does Schröder’s complicity mean that (at the very least) leaders in parliament (including party leaders from each party) knew?

If yes, I see the Greens being hurt as you describe (unless they remain the only viable choice for the constituency for whom this issue matters). If not, I don’t think the impact on them is clear…I can even see it helping them.

And, really, smart-a$$, does a PhD member of MENSA really lack a better phrase? :)

Well, the foreign minister in Schröder’s government was a member of the Greens, and he probably knew about the rendition program.

Which reminds me, I suppose I ought to renew my Mensa membership :p