Machiavelli famously posited that the ends justify the means. There aren’t too many people, save Dick Cheney, who will defend that statement unilaterally. It seems Cheney is using essentially that argument when he asserts that torture is a perfectly valid tool as long as it yields positive results. But does it? Most experts agree that torture is not an effective interrogation technique. So why do it?

I think the answer lies in that torture is not (was not) being used as a means to an end of extracting information. Rather, it was a message showing terrorists that the USA is not a country to mess with and that should we catch you there will be no quick dispatch of your martyrous self to the waiting gaggle of virgins. We will make you suffer. Be sure to tell your friends. All of which makes me think that perhaps it is the concept of “martyr” that the Bush Administration really didn’t understand. After all, it’s hard to be a martyr if you don’t suffer. Gandhi wouldn’t really have made his point by just skipping breakfast.

In this way, the Neo-Con movement has been consistent. They send a loud and inescapable message that the USA is a big dog with big honkin’ teeth and we are not at all shy about sinking them into your pathetic little butt. This was the point of torture. This was the point of the whole war on terror. Clearly it would have been more effective, less expensive, and cost far fewer lives to wage the “war on terror” as a series of covert surgical strikes combined with political and diplomatic leverage to achieve a peaceful end-state. But that’s not the tough guy stance. We meet those who oppose us with a public show of force. Dammit!

This strategy is not limited to the terrorist problem either. A similar position is taken on teen pregnancy where the solution is a simple “just say no” abstinence policy. The end goal of reducing teen pregnancy would be much better served by installing condom dispensers in school locker rooms. But that is not an acceptable message or means.

In a similar vein, the war on drugs has been raging ineffectively since Reagan. We’ve incarcerated ridiculous numbers of our citizens, spent billions, and for what? Our use of illegal drugs is directly responsible for the Mexican drig violence problems near our southern border today. Legalizing, regulating, and taxing drugs would instead allow for the treatment of addiction, the reduction of violence and organized crime, and funding for anti drug use social programs. But again, that’s a means we cannot live with.

In the end, it seems that the problem is not that we are channeling Machiavelli. Rather that we are channeling Marx who said, “An end which requires unjustified means is no justifiable end.” We are too focused on means and messages, often to the exclusion of reaching a reasonable end. Like most things in life there is a balance needed. Ends are not justified by any means. But neither are means ends unto themselves.

We have to keep our eye on the ball, but it seems we are all too often focused on the infield chatter instead.