Commentary:

First, a thought experiment: Imagine the one person to whom you're closest is in danger. Mortal danger. Someone, somewhere is threatening to kill them. And you have that person's accomplice literally in your hands.

Is there anything you wouldn't do to that person to save the one you love? Any amount of pain you wouldn't inflict to get them to talk?

Unless you're a Nepalese monk, I suspect an honest man or woman would answer those questions with a resigned, "No."

Admittedly, starting a column on torture with the above hypothetical is a gross oversimplification of a morally complex issue. But it's undoubtedly an important one, too. Because if each of us can't admit to ourselves that a stranger's pain is worth a loved one's life, then we're not arguing about real, actual torture; we're debating the idea of torture, which is a much easier straw man to whack. Put another way, it's much easier to dismiss torture as "Not OK" when you and your family have no skin in the game.

Does torture work? Is it an effective means of gathering intelligence? I have no idea. But then again, neither do politicians. The Democrats who compiled the recently released CIA torture report are not spies; they're not even among the bureaucrats who control the spies. They're politically motivated just like the Republicans who denounced them.

It is interesting, though, that the same congressmen who scream, "Trust the experts!" on climate change find a different set of experts' views negligible when their proclivities don't align.

Morally? Is torture morally explainable? I'm no ethicist, but I would think that depends on its efficacy. If sadism toward one person can save the lives of thousands, I'm not sure how one could say that's not an acceptable moral trade-off. But if it produces no actionable intelligence, then it's just cruelty for cruelty's sake; it's reprehensible.

Unfortunately, the Senate Democrats' torture report didn't answer any of those tough questions; but then again, there was no way it ever could have. Even if the cherry-picked information in the report actually would have told us the whole story -- even if its conclusions were 100 percent accurate -- it still could never be the final word on whether America should use torture. Tomorrow's threats might not look like today's.

The world is a terrifying and increasingly unstable place, home to millions of people who wake up every day with the will but not always the means to strike against America. That we, the taxpayers, employ a literal army of spooks to prevent them from achieving those means is an unfortunate but necessary evil.

So why, then, would we tell those who are deeply immersed in intelligence how best to do their job? Isn't that the same mistake that led to debacle in Vietnam? Politicians trying to fight a war by proxy from behind their marble-topped desks?

I don't know if torture works, and I therefore don't know if it's morally defensible. But if a grizzled veteran of the CIA says "enhanced interrogation" is necessary, what place is it of mine or Dianne Feinstein to say he's wrong? How many terrorists has Sen. Feinstein questioned with innocent lives on the line?

At the end of the day, if I would personally shove bamboo shoots under someone's fingernails if it meant saving the life of my child, what moral ground do I have to pass judgment on a third party?

People like to say that torture is un-American, but really; what's more American than defending your family against outside aggression? The error in logic is assuming our family isn't the one they're trying to protect.

NATE STRAUCH IS A COLUMNIST AND REPORTER WITH THE SHERMAN-DENISON (TEXAS) HERALD DEMOCRAT.