Column by Andrew Waldner

The latest issue getting everyone all hot and bothered is torture. President Barack Obama released memos used by the Bush administration to justify torture, but has sent mixed signals about pursuing prosecutions for those involved. If you’ve been alive and breathing, you know that this attempt at the middle ground has mostly backfired. Apparently everyone with a mouth and a microphone disagrees with him in about a thousand different ways.

First, I’d like to point out to everyone on all sides that we knew most of this before. We didn’t know some specifics, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed being waterboarded 183 times in a month, but we knew enough. We knew torture had happened, we knew it had received a legal stamp of approval from higher-ups and we knew it had ended with Obama.

Since this debate has fallen mostly along party lines, I’ll address those sides.

Conservatives: Everyone knew most of this, so give your “outrage” at Obama’s “carelessness” a rest. Many conservative pundits have taken some death-defying leaps of logic to surmise that the release of the memos will somehow make us less safe. To think that a terrorist who’d run into a mosque strapped to a bomb will somehow be “emboldened” because he’ll no longer get slapped if in U.S. custody is ludicrous. They hate us for a number of reasons, which already includes past torture, so nothing’s changed. They want to wipe us off the map just the same.

Liberals: Everyone knew most of this, so why are you just now screaming bloody murder? You only stand up to torture once you have someone sympathetic to your cause in the White House? Not only that, but stop calling for the heads of everyone involved. Whether some could have stood up to their orders is a moot point now; for better or worse, they were doing their jobs. Direct your anger at the higher-ups who ordered torture and bastardized the Constitution and Geneva Conventions to justify it.

My own opinions are as divided as anyone’s. On the release of the memos: I don’t see much harm, but it does throw the Bush administration’s fear after Sept. 11 into sharp relief. On torture itself: I think it’s indefensible. The U.S. has laws against it and there are plenty of international laws we follow that also protect anyone from this. So, to be honest, your opinions on it don’t matter. It’s illegal. Beyond that, it’s immoral and sick.

The big question is whether torture worked and that’s impossible to know. There is far too much contradictory evidence and hearsay for anyone, and I mean absolutely anyone, to make a judgment. If it comes out that we prevented Sept. 11 Part 2 because we bashed some terrorist’s head through a wall, I’ll still be conflicted. “The ends justify the means” is a lazy excuse fit for Neanderthals.

We’ll never have actual proof that it does any good except from those who support it, and their testimony is biased at best and paranoid and loony at worst (see any Dick Cheney interview … ever). There is plenty of evidence that it solved nothing, but supporters could justify this even with one small piece of information gained from it.

As for Obama’s initial decision not to take action against anyone involved, I think I agree. Those who gave their stamp of approval, people like Judge Jay Bybee, are either crazy or were coerced into giving their stamp of approval. While people like him or the former vice president may be responsible and do deserve punishment, there are too many complications now. Besides drawing out a dark chapter in our nation’s history and giving Cheney even more airtime, the issue is too polarizing and has been ruined by media and partisan bickering for anyone to get a fair trial. It wouldn’t end well, however it turned out.

So in the end, I’m lukewarm to the president’s actions. I don’t see harm in the release of the memos, nor do I see much benefit either. The decision not to prosecute, assuming he sticks to it, is tough. That’s especially so for those who are truly disgusted by what our nation has done, but I can’t see any way to do so fairly. We have enough problems to be going on right now, and inciting more partisan warfare is the last thing we need.