I am annoyed at the current state of thing in this ‘war on terror.’
First off I have never liked the idea of a war on a common noun. You can’t win that kind of war because the common noun will always be around. The wars on poverty and drugs are wonderful examples of that sort of stupidity. I am all for war on a named enemy, say Al Qaeda and it’s allies. You know when you’ve won that war. With they give up or cease to exit.
Besides that point I’m really fed-up with the stupid and pointless political crap that gotten in the way of pursuing our enemies.    The current state of affairs seems to be that on one side of argument you have to be for torture and going all Jack Bauer on their stupid medieval skulls, and the only other option is go full court ACLU with Miranda and layers of lawyers.

When this started going down in late 2001 and early 2002 I was all for military tribunals for the captured terrorists. Provided that they were not American citizens. Any American citizen, and I didn’t care if he was arrested in Miami or pulled out of cave in bung-phuk Pakistan, gets full constitutional rights, period. You never sign over to your government the power to declare that this class of citizens got right and that this other class did not have those same rights. That’s madness in my books.
Also I never ever supported the use of torture. Simple gut check on this one – take a technique any one you like – if there are no circumstances in which you would be fine with a US solider subjected to that technique then there are no circumstance you can use it on your prisoners. What has always made this country better than other countries is our movement towards a more moral stance. Yeah we’ve had our problems, but we’ve been the good guys more often than not and good guys do not fracking torture. Period.
Thanks to Bush and company we are the kind of country that tortures and have prisoners die ‘under questioning.’ This is the greatest mistake that Bush allowed or actively pursued in his two terms. Not Medicare Part D. Not TARP. Not the invasion of Iraq. Turning our nation into a torture nation.
Unfortunately the other side seem to want to think of this problem as just like any other criminal problem. I’d much rather have the captured terrorists subject to effective – not torture based – interrogations. (Frankly we have some experts in this field who are great at getting people to spill things with thuggish tactics and scenes reminiscent from room 101 in 1984.) Treating these combatants as criminals may cost lives.
In our current political environment we seemed to be faced with only two choices, each extreme. Go Jack Bauer or go Boston Legal.
Well, if those are my only two choices, fine, I’ll go Boston Legal and not like it, but I will have not surrendered the ideals this country was founded upon. Yes it will cost lives, but our freedom and right always cost lives.
I believe we have a right to bear arms and that the second amendment is an individual right. The price of that right is that some people will abuse the right, use those arms to rob, rape, and murder fellow Americans. You can not have that right without the corresponding cost. (That is not to say that revoking the 2nd and going for full gun confiscation would stop all those murders either. Likely a reduction, but you’d never have gun deaths fully eliminated. Life doesn’t work that way.)
The point is that the right includes having to deal with people who abuse the right. It’s something I accept as part of having that right, so if my choice is Jack Bauer or my rights, I’ll go with my rights and accept a few terrorists attacks succeeding as the price of those rights.
I wish that was not my choice. I’d happily treat the terrorist captured as POWs. Hell what does that really mean? You lock’em up until their side quits or is destroyed. Isn’t that a win?And afterwards you can try them as war criminals for violations in the rules of war. Sadly it’s be very hard to get to that outcome from where we are now.
Jack Bauer.
Boston Legal
Are there two synapses in all of Washington at all?