A very tough, complicated guestion...
It seems to boil down to what Baba Louie wrote.
Do the ends justify the means used to achieve them?
For us as Americans, we're dealing with a what amounts to a new situation. Terrorists are not on our previous experience list to any great degree.
We can define 9/11 as an act of war, but doing so does not negate 9/11's role as an act of terror. That is the crux of the issue, I think.
9/11 as an act of war is something we have done to try and get a handle on the situation, an attempt to control events on our terms. It allows us to focus the enormous might of the military with complete justification, and also makes room for military solutions. Solutions of this sort are of the "bigger hammer" variety, involving bombs, troops, collateral damage, infrastructure and basic resource destruction, lots of somewhat indiscriminate death from a distance, and things of that ilk. Military operations happen on a large scale, and involve re-shaping/destroying structures, be they physical or cultural, on a national level. This is where you get concepts like regime changing and fundamental government rebuilding as goals. Cultural changes installed at this point are designed to facilitate placement and maintenance of the new system on the conquered populace. This is to ensure that we don't have to do this twice, as war is an expensive undertaking. This somewhat idealized conclusion is what we are trying to achieve in Afganistan.
This is the high-moral-ground solution. In the process we try to minimize collateral damage, not slaughter non-combatants, only attack military targets and objectives, and only destroy infrastructural resources (Like water supplies.) if we absolutely must. This solution has no room in it for torture in any sense. It is based purely on bare neccessity, with a government's impersonal influence on decisions. This is how a "civilised", modern society is supposed to protect itself, in an ideal world. Unfortunately, there's the other part to consider.
9/11 was ultimately an act of terror. It didn't take out a military or infrastructural entity, nor was there any follow-up or long-term plan. It was perpetrated by religious fanatics to achieve a fanatical result, which could be defined as casting an emotional influence over our entire society's thinking proccess. It is an attempt to install a permanent component of fear, of emotionally-driven irrationality, in order to re-shape our version of civilization. the stronger the emotional influence, the more successful the fanatical attack. This definition attaches a different significance to torture as a means of furthering a solution in addition to entirely re-defining what the solution ultimately resolves into for us as a nation.
It was an act of terror. It conjures up rage, fear, desire for revenge, self-righteous satisfaction and emotionally-driven pontification and justification. These kinds of changes are not usually beneficial to a society. Pervasive irrationality is erosive to civilisation as an institution and disruptive to long-term planning and national success. If we as a society are willing to condone torture as an accepted methodology where before it was viewed as totally unacceptable, it serves as a symptom indicating that the terrorists have succeeded in reshaping our society. By giving in to our righteous indignation and anger, we are taking a step further away from our own professed goals of national evolution. America has always been the good guys. Our nation strives for equality and freedom, lofty ideas that require us to treat all people, even ones that behave barbarically, as people. If we compromise our ideals by instead treating all people (For where do you draw the line?) as barbarians, to the hubris that grievous injury can absolve responsibility for the application of standards that by our own admission we find intolerable, that then legitimizes the fanatic's influence, and gives the attack a level of credibility that we as a society should refuse to endorse. We should not allow our anger and grief to diminish our standards of humanity. America has always embodied a higher expectation of acceptable behavior towards others, both individually and institutionally. It's part and parcel to the basic pricipals this country was founded on. To compromise our standards, and condone a backwards step on the behavioral ladder of civility is to give Victory to the terrorists. Individual cases of irrational fanaticism should not be able to influence us as a whole. It's hard to regard torture as any kind of achievement.
On a personal level, don't get me wrong, here. I'm not saying that feelings of anger, outrage, pain and grief are wrong or unjustified. I can completely identify with a desire to feed any given captured terrorist into an arc furnace, slowly. I have the same or very similar responses to a lot of the things stated on this thread. But I also have a deep and pervading distrust of emotionally-driven thinking, and I try to think about things more than once, with a firm grip on my feelings so I can prevent or at least recognize and dismiss emotional influences that I consider detrimental. Self-righteous petty vindictiveness does not become us on The High Road, or as a nation. We should stand together, shoulder-to-shoulder, and show the world the standard by which we judge civilisation. I think it might be time for a little "cultural surgery", deftly applied in the form of high explosives.
