“If someone tells you he is going to make ‘a realistic decision,’” Mary McCarthy wrote, “you immediately understand that he has resolved to do something bad.” Calling a course of action "realistic" is, of course, a rhetorical strategy. Everyone, after all, thinks they're being realistic. You make a point out of how realistic you are being only if you're proposing something others are likely to find objectionable. When you say you're being realistic, what you're really saying is that objecting to your plan—or even imagining that there could be other options—is naive.

The realist worldview—however valid it may be—is essentially cynical. At bottom, realists believe where there is no strong legal authority—as there isn't among sovereign states—actors who refuse to consider some of their strategic options on moral grounds will inevitably suffer at the hands of those who are more ruthless. So as a nation our choices are either act without scruple or be destroyed.

After September 11, America became much more cynical. It is easy to take the high moral road when you don't think you are ever in any serious danger. But the attacks of September 11 showed us that we were vulnerable. Concerned that the next attack might be worse—that it might be a dirty bomb or a biological attack—we began to reconsider our options. Appearing on "Meet the Press" a few days after the attacks, Vice President Cheney told Tim Russert that "We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. We've got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we're going to be successful. That's the world these folks operate in, and so it's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective."

The danger of another—and possibly more serious—terrorist attack is very real. But do we really have to use any means at our disposal to protect ourselves? Since September 11, we have detained and tortured hundreds of suspected terrorists without charging them with any crime. At the same time we have begun to eavesdrop on and collect vast quantities of information about our own citizens. And we have done all this in clear violation of federal statute and international law—and have even begun to change the law to make what we've been doing legal. Setting aside the real question of whether we should do these things under any circumstances, it's worth considering whether these strategies have actually helped keep us safe at all.