The Intersection of Laffer Curves and Torture Policy

An overly simple and probably substantially wrong understanding of the so-called Laffer curve is that, with low tax rates, increasing tax rates produce more revenue for the government, but with diminishing returns. Upslope. Finally, at some point, an “optimal” tax rate, increasing the rate causes revenues to fall due to disincentives and other impacts on the economy. Downslope. A flawed but easy to grasp analogy is that government revenues follow the trajectory of a thrown softball: as the softball gets further (increasing tax rates) from the hand that flung it, it rises higher and higher (revenues increase), upslope, reaches a highest point (greatest revenue), and then as it continues (tax rates continuing to increase), it comes crashing back to earth (revenues collapse), downslope.

As my understanding of the torture policies instituted by our government has unfolded over the years, I have always, always, deep in my liberal, bleeding-heart gut, known them for what they are: an unmitigated horror. I am now convinced that I did not speak out enough against torture polices, send enough letters to the editor, communicate frequently enough with my legislators with strong enough language opposing the institutionalization of torture. Why?

I blame my godforsaken liberal, knee-jerk willingness to listen to all sides of an argument and to reevaluate my position on an issue, and my rather unusual (for a liberal) personal portfolio of national security experience. I listened carefully to the arguments that “enhanced interrogations, black prisons, extraordinary renditions” and so on, were necessary for national security. I was also somewhat sympathetic that a fearful if not cowardly electorate had, for whatever reason, directly through elected leaders and indirectly through the appointments and approvals of those leaders, chosen to place into policy-making positions a stunning array of those who were demonstrably incompetent, and thus incapable of conceiving how to implement an effective long-term national security policy addressing a complex issue like terrorism without resort to such unsavory and inadvisable backstops.

And I have to admit that the national security arguments bought from me some good part of what their authors probably intended – they left me just unsure enough of the slope of the moral ground on which I was standing. Who am I to express moral outrage over policies that might save a mother from the tragedy of losing a child to a terrorist attack? In retrospect, I suppose I rationalized that as detainee policy and interrogation techniques increase away from a zero point of perfectly and transparently (and anyway unrealizable) idealized humane treatment, there may, in fact, be some national security benefits to be obtained. Upslope.

But as the issue has exploded over the past several weeks, the national security argument has reemerged in full force, with many now arguing that being aware of, considering, and investigating the policies, and perhaps prosecuting those responsible where appropriate, seriously endangers, has already endangered our national security. See, for instance, Porter Goss. Or Dick Fergodssake Cheney.

I simply want those who are pressing this position to understand what its effect on my consideration of this issue has been. Those developing and implementing these policies, if nothing else, had to operate from an understanding that this is a free and democratic country, a country with a constitution and established laws and treaties, and that whatever policies they developed and implemented for national security had to operate and would necessarily succeed or fail within that fundamental structure. Those responsible for the torture policies who are trying to silence their antagonists and who are now arguing that our national security is being compromised, has already been compromised, by the democratic, constitutional, legal processes that are unfolding relating to these policies, rather are, apparently transparently and unselfconciously, compounding with that argument the increasingly compelling evidence that these policies, probably in the short term, and certainly in the long term, undermine our national security.

Here, then, is my point: those who developed and implemented these policies were responsible for one ultimate purpose – to provide for national security. So much of their opposition to investigation and prosecution now rests on the pivot of national security. But they, themselves, are arguing that their misbegotten torture policies and implementation, in the context of a democratic, constitutional, legal, moral nation, went so far that their consequences in that context decrease our national security. Downslope.

These people, now even by their own argument, took us so far along the Torture Laffer Curve that our national security is crashing and burning. Their responsibility WAS national security and by their own admission the policies they developed and implemented have failed, impairing our national security. It is time to unravel these policies and to drag us back along the axis of the Torture Laffer Curve. I don’t see any way for us to do this in the long term except to: Investigate and prosecute where appropriate. Investigate and prosecute where appropriate. Investigate and prosecute where appropriate. Investigate and prosecute where appropriate. Investigate and prosecute where appropriate. Investigate and prosecute where appropriate.