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Hans Albrecht Bethe once wrote, "If we fight a war and win it with H-bombs, what history will remember is not the ideals we were fighting for but the methods used to accomplish them. These methods will be compared to the warfare of Gengis Khan, who ruthlessly killed every last inhabitant of Persia."

In the aftermath of two botched car-bombings in the United Kingdom, a colleague observed to me that British Intelligence must have used torture in order to learn so quickly of pending attacks. He said that only torture could have loosed the terrorist tongues so fast. I felt compelled to question whether he felt this was right or wrong, and he said in a situation such as this, where you are certain of the guilt of the involved individual, and there are immediate lives to be saved, torture is a justified act.

I disagreed. My initial response was liberal, and idealistic: As a society, we can not afford to allow torture to become an option. Once it is a viable alternative, discerning what situation justifies the use of torture becomes a gray area. I went on to argue that a livable society requires making the choice not to engage in the activities of the lowest common denominator. The very fabric of civilization relies upon individuals choosing over and over again not to become barbarous, not to engage in the horror and darkness that they fear.

As in former discussions, I came under fire for applying these high-minded ideals to a concrete scenario. My colleague turned it around on me. "There has been a terrorist attack in Oregon. They have caught one of the terrorists. There will be more attacks. Your child is in a grade-school, and the information they could extract is the only thing that would save her life. Are you still against torture?"

For a moment I feel the singular light-bulb swinging over my head in a darkened room. "Are you still against torture?"

There are problems in this scenario, and I will exploit them because a this or that' situation based on parental emotion is nearly impossible to address in a rational argument. My protective instincts for my daughter are not rational. If there were ever a situation where her life were in jeopardy, I would not be on a rational plane. My moral reasoning does not extend to a desperate situation of danger and volatile emotion. I would save my daughter's life whether or not it was a good man or a bad man's well-being at stake. I would save her life at the cost of other lives. Protection of my daughter is an animal instinct,

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