It isn't expediency; it's necessity. People keep forgetting that fact. And why is it more moral to "take the hit" when you have a moral obligation to protect the lives of innocent people? If the high ground is "taking the hit," the higher ground is saving innocent lives.
Why must the moral high ground be all or nothing?
We teach kids that lying is immoral. But then we tell lies to serve higher moral purposes. We tell a thief that his accomplices have already fingered him, so he might as well confess so he can get a lighter sentence. Truth is, his accomplices have not confessed, and we're telling them the same thing. The higher moral purpose is to get evidence to convict the thieves so they don't victimize others. It's immoral to confine someone, but we do it with convicts to serve the higher moral purpose of keeping them from victimizing others.
Why is it moral to kill a terrorist on the battlefield, but immoral to waterboard him to save multiple lives? When you kill him, you destroy all he ever was and will ever be. When you waterboard him, he suffers no permanent damage and may go on to reform himself. Even if he were to suffer an injury, perhaps permanent blindness from oxygen deprivation, it's still possible he could go on to live a reformed, productive life. Lots of blind people live productive lives. However, by definition, dead people don't. But somehow, killing him is more moral than waterboarding him.
These are not utilitarian arguments. Moral people would not ordinarily lie to, confine, or kill their fellow human beings. These are moral choices made out of necessity. We make them every day and are comfortable with them every day because of necessity. You couldn't have a viable society without such choices.
Moral choices do not all peacefully coexist on an equal basis. There are times when one moral choice conflicts with another moral choice.
You'd have to develop guidelines, which is what I've advocated from the beginning. But we shouldn't be stuck in the past.
We now have aerial and electronic means of surveillance undreamt of in the 1700s when the Constitution was penned. We use those means in law enforcement, and we've worked on guidelines to keep those uses within our Constitutional framework. We now face new threats undreamt of in the 1700s that require us (again, necessity) to develop new ways of dealing with them.
Torturing people by ripping off their fingernails is cruel because, for one thing, it isn't necessary. Other techniques, such as waterboarding, are just as effective and are less harmful (and arguably not harmful at all). Torturing by ripping off the fingernails of low-level schmoes who don't have the info you need, or waterboarding those same schmoes, is cruel for the same reason: It isn't necessary. These issues can be solved.
