Category: 
by C. William Chattin
Moments after Scott Roeder, the apparent trigger-man in the George Tiller murder, was apprehended, I (only half jokingly) asked friends if Roeder should be subjected to Bush-Cheney “enhanced interrogations.” It was somewhat debatable (at least at the time) whether Roeder should be thought of as a true domestic terrorist or a run-of-the-mill criminal, an assassin.
Apparently, in the wake of what Roeder told the A.P., Roeder should definitely be lumped in more with the jihadists than with Mark David Chapman:
[Roeder] claimed from his jail cell Sunday that similar violence was planned around the nation for as long as the procedure remained legal[.]
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“I know there are many other similar events planned around the country as long as abortion remains legal,” Roeder said. When asked by the AP what he meant and if he was referring to another shooting, he refused to elaborate further.
So we now have a threat of imminent violence against a general, if not specifically identified, target. KSM anyone? This all begs the question: what does the federal government, i.e. President Obama, do in order to protect American citizens?
For a moment, let’s table issues of constitutional rights, protections of citizenship and international law, and instead focus on morality. Is there a moral right, or even obligation, to subject someone, who is threatening/promising murderous violence, to coercive physical interrogation in order to elicit information that may save lives? I suspect the claim that “torture doesn’t work” would ring hollow if your loved one performed (late term) abortions.
The point here is that even if you have an absolute moral opposition to all things even approaching torture, these issues can get a little thorny in the “ticking time bomb” scenario. And, lest we forget there are issues of moral in-equivalence — murdering one abortion doctor is simply not the moral equivalent of murdering thousands of civilians — as well as pragmatism — torturing a Muslim is probably more likely to incite jihadists to terrorism than torturing Roeder is to inciting crazy rightwingers to more assassinations.
