Tough Guys, but only from a safe distance
From day one of the War on Terror (TM), it was clear that the Bush people reveled in the notion that they were tough guys, willing to Do What Needs to be Done. They were all wannabe Kiefer Sutherlands. Far from showing qualms about suspending the rule of law and using torture to extract information, they obviously enjoyed the idea that they were willing to go all the way, unlike those wimpy liberals.
In the lead up to the war there were always pundits puffing out their chests on TV, telling us to 'man up,' cheered on by assholes who couldn't catch a bus let alone Bin Laden. The most vocal pundits and war bloggers seemed to think that advocating a war was the same thing as fighting one.
Same went for the torture fetishists. That's why Jack Bauer – a fictional character – was namechecked in the Republican primary debates like he was some kind of policy expert. Tancredo and others basically said we need to be tough, like Jack Bauer. That toughness meant hanging people in stress positions to their joints swelled, throwing them against walls, abusing, starving, and drowning (there's nothing simulated about the drowning in water boarding) until they said what we expected them to, not what was true.
They came up with a bunch of other justifications, but that was the real reason. Fuck them over so people know not to mess with us. It was the mindset of a corner thug blown up into a foreign policy.
Ta-Nehisi Coates has more on when it's easy to be a tough guy.
