I have been pretty gung-ho in supporting the war on terror, and that won’t change. But Andrew Sullivan reminds us – that is U.S. as in the United States – of the dangers of holding our military and intelligence services to a different standard for the use of torture (see quotes from Sullivan below). Yes, the Islamists are disgusting filth. They have tortured our people – beheaded them, blown them to smithereens, stabbed them, etcetera.

We do not want to become our enemy. It is a slippery slope. Make an exception for torture because we are in a war on terror, then what is the next exception made? An erudite warning about becoming like your enemy was given 60 years ago by George Orwell in his work, Animal Farm. Of course, Orwell created a metaphor for the Soviet Communist Party at that time, but he knew all too well that his writings applied to any political upheaval.

Here’s an excerpt from the last chapter of Animal Farm. Keep in mind that it was the pigs who led the “rebellion” and that all the animals had originally agreed to “seven commandments” – a set of egalitarian rules governing all their lives.

YEARS passed. The seasons came and went, the short animal lives fled by. A time came when there was no one who remembered the old days before the Rebellion, except Clover, Benjamin, Moses the raven, and a number of the pigs. …

"My sight is failing," she said finally. "Even when I was young I could not have read what was written there. But it appears to me that that wall looks different. Are the Seven Commandments the same as they used to be, Benjamin?"

For once Benjamin consented to break his rule, and he read out to her what was written on the wall. There was nothing there now except a single Commandment. It ran:

ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

After that it did not seem strange when next day the pigs who were supervising the work of the farm all carried whips in their trotters. …

No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

We cannot follow the example of Orwell’s pigs. Andrew Sullivan isn’t going soft on the war against Islamist terror, but he is warning us about becoming pigs. Here’s Sullivan :

THEY SUPPORT CIA TORTURE: It's hard to find clearer evidence that Condi Rice wants to keep torturing detainees than the fact that the administration refused to acquiecse in a legislative ban on CIA torture last December. The techniques include Algerian-style water-boarding. Does Alberto Gonzales find that "abhorrent"? Will some reporter now do his job and ask Rumsfeld whether he endorses this CIA technique? The trouble with this president is - how do I put it? - he's lying. He publicly says he finds torture abhorrent, and yet he ensures that the CIA's expansion of torture techniques is retained. Remember that these relaxed CIA rules were widely disseminated throughout the military, where they are clearly illegal; and helped form the atmosphere and misunderstandings (or were they actually correct understandings?) of what was permitted and what was not. Again what's remarkable is not just the brazenness of the Bushies' endorsement of torture but the absolute cravenness of the Democrats, the pathetic excuse we have for a political opposition. If you're still unclear about the relationship between the new Bush-backed CIA rules and what has happened throughout the war on terror, revisit this post from Marty Lederman. And remember that the incidents we have are not from black box CIA interrogations. If the abuses were this bad in the regular military, can you imagine what is actually going on - where none of us can find out? …

IN PLAIN SIGHT: My review of the various government reports on torture by the U.S. in the war on terror is now up on the NYT site. Maybe it helps explain why I am still exercised about this. I remain a strong believer in the cause of liberating Afghanistan and Iraq from tyranny; and in trying to move the Arab Muslim world toward democracy. President Bush and prime minister Blair deserve huge praise for seeing this through. I just cannot believe what the Bush administration has managed to do in the execution - to America's reputation, to the West's integrity and to the cause itself. It is not irreparable - and I'm very cautiously optimistic about the long-term prospects for Iraq. But we owe it to the cause to investigate where we have gone wrong, and to do everything we can to put it right. The Bush administration's failure to come to terms with this simply isn't good enough, in my view. The fact that the United States has been routinely and illegally practising torture in its interrogation procedures is abhorrent to everything we are supposed to stand for. Some things simply cannot be wished away or moved on from. Especially when, in all likelihood, they are still occurring.