Life imitates '24'

Editor's note: Joseph Farah now Twitters at JosephFarah.

The actions of Barack Obama in recent weeks raise a profound question.

What if the FBI arrested some terrorists and determined they had information about a nuclear bomb smuggled into the United States and agents had reason to believe they had only hours to prevent a detonation in a major city?

What would Obama do?

Would he be content merely asking the terrorists where the bomb was?

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That's the impression I get from the administration's phobia about coercive interrogations.

Not only is Obama declaring to the world that the U.S. will definitely disallow coercive interrogations in such a scenario, he seems determined to punish the behavior of previous officials who took the common-sense, historically justified position to put the safety and security of Americans ahead of the comfort of people who seek to do them harm on a massive scale.

In other words, he is telling us he would prefer that a million innocent Americans be incinerated rather than frighten one terrorist.

It's nuts. But so is much emanating from the White House these days.

Every week, millions of Americans watch Jack Bauer on the TV show "24" save the country from attacks like these. Almost always, he finds it necessary to resort to coercive interrogations.

We've watched him thrown into jail countless times by gutless, wimpy politicians afraid of criticism or of making the kind of manly decisions we expect from officials charged with protecting us.

We've watched these politicians give orders that were incomprehensible or vague or that provided themselves with plausible deniability should anything go wrong.

Meanwhile, most of us cheer on Jack.

I suppose when Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid watch this show, they marvel at the courage of the politicians who, knowing they are committing millions of Americans to death with their decision to disallow coercive interrogations, stand by their "principles."

I suspect people like Janeane Garafalo – and maybe even Keifer Sutherland himself – do the same.

Maybe they think millions of Americans watch the show and are repulsed by Jack Bauer.

Or maybe they know that's not the case, but are content to do the show because the producers and the network responsible for the program give them the opportunity to do public-disservice ads promoting the global warming hoax.

I don't know.

But I wonder.

I wonder how any sane, rational person can look at a hypothetical situation like this and determine they would not resort to extraordinary procedures to extract information that could save a million lives.

There's nothing even remotely moral about such a decision.

We're not even talking about "torture," as Obama likes to call it to justify his unjustifiable position.

Coercive interrogations are not the same as torture.

I do not believe "water-boarding" constitutes torture.

Torture, to me, involves the permanent maiming of a prisoner – like cutting out an eye or cutting off fingers.

Coercive interrogations, on the other hand, usually involved scaring the prisoner or inducing enough discomfort that they decide to tell what they know.

It is beyond belief to me that we have a man in the White House who cannot distinguish between these two entirely different things.

But then, again, both of the major-party candidates seeking the presidency last year took essentially the same position on coercive interrogations. So, the American people had no choice – on this critical issue and so many others.

Neither will we have any choice to save ourselves from the next major terrorist attack – even if authorities are able to capture some of the perpetrators and planners in advance.

I suggest we just disband the FBI, CIA and Homeland Security bureaucracies, because they are useless without the tools they need to protect Americans.

Instead, as we have seen, this administration seeks to use them to spy on Americans who exercise their First Amendment rights to criticize their government.

In fact, I just have a feeling Obama would not be so squeamish about water-boarding his own domestic political opponents if he got the opportunity.