Torture is “difficult.” That’s evidently the view of Jon Stewart, who on Wednesday used the word to euphemistically allude to Zero Dark Thirty’s torture scenes. He’s not the only one who feels that way, either: Any number of critics have praised the film for being “morally complicated” or “a morally ambiguous movie about a morally ambiguous subject.”
Let’s put aside, for a moment, the question of whether Zero Dark Thirty’s portrayal of torture is all that complicated. More important is the language that we use to describe actual torture: Complicated. Difficult. Morally ambiguous.
Note that one rarely, if ever, hears opponents of torture describe the issue as complicated. For them, it’s actually pretty simple. Phrases like “complicated” only come up when the speaker is conceding that there are situations where torturing someone might be the right thing to do. By calling that question “difficult,” one actually answers it.
So to call torture a complicated issue is to implicitly adopt the pro-torture position. But by hedging the issue and not endorsing torture outright, the speaker also satisfies a psychological requirement: He alerts you to the fact that he struggles with the issue internally, because he is disgusted by the idea of torture. He is reminding you, in other words, that he is still a good person.









