“… McCain acknowledges that illegal coercion would still occur, but he assumes it would not be prosecuted if it actually resulted in preventing an attack. I think McCain’s way will inevitably result in more torture because it is a nod-and-a-wink approach that will (however inadvertently) promote disrespect for the law, the atmosphere in which lower-ranking officials are apt to engage in more torture.”

I mentioned waterboarding way too casually in a short election piece earlier this week. I used it as shorthand for the whole interrogation debate and both the issue and Senator McCain deserve more.

Folks will dissent with the mainstream of conservative thought — heaven knows we do it right here on a wide array of issues — among ourselves and in interacting with readers, other blogs, and columnists. I certainly wasn’t writing folks who disagree on one rare form of interrogation out of the conservative movement (as if I have that power!). I was using shorthand — probably ill-advisedly — to refer to McCain’s role in the legislative debate on interrogation.

You may say that the violence they demand is “prudent.”

Let me give you an example of “prudential reasoning”: Caiaphas said that it was good that one man should die so as to save many. Eminently clear–far more prudent than NRO, far more prudent, in fact, than virtually any rationale for war perpetrated by the United States in its 200+ year history. The Romans were in the habit of killing dozens if not hundreds of Jews associated with the terroristic anti-Roman zealots. Certainly it was prudent to simply surrender one rabble-rousing Jew to Pilate.

Pilate’s reasoning was also admirably prudential: a mob of angry Jews is demanding blood, is sick of occupation and also sick of this guy Jesus who claims to be on their side but won’t actually “do” anything to get the Romans out of Palestine. The Jews want Barrabas, a proven terrorist zealot, and not Jesus, an obscurantist pacifist. Why shouldn’t Pilate, then, act prudentially and give the mob what it wants?

Certainly Pilate was a prudent man.

Far more prudent than an air force commander who orders that a city (like Fallujah) be strafed with several hundred tons of explosives, in order to “root out the terroristic element” taking refuge there. Certainly it is obvious that many dozens of innocents will die in such a bombing action. But of course it is prudent to drop the bombs nonetheless.

It is good that a few die to save the lives of many.

That is the essence of prudential reasoning.

It is good that a few die to save the lives of many. Especially if we are among the many saved.

Rather than submitting to this age-old logic of blood, Catholic Christians should follow their ostensible Lord and take up their crosses.

It is good to be saved by prudential murder. It is far better to be crucified.

NRO contributors Michael Ledeen and John Derbyshire have penned columns against torture in the National Review.

So has Victor Davis Hanson

And the virtual mouthpiece of the neoconservative movement — The Weekly Standard — has published articles criticizing the Bush administration’s practice of rendition and in support of a uniform standard prohibiting detainee abuse.