I must say it interesting to me, that two months before the midterm Congressional elections, we are now being treated to discussions of secret prisons and captured terrorists and military commissions for those responsible for 9/11 and other acts of terror. My friends, always be suspicious of your government when they hold a press conference, fill the hall with people who they know will clap at every word or put those in uniform behind them for a photo op and then announce something or admit something. Be very suspicious.
I am tired of politicians from both sides of the aisle making no sense of the fight against terrorism. The President of the United States, confirming classified projects then demanding Congress approve things to finally bring to justice, murderers that we have held for over 5 years.
I do not want to coddle a single terrorist, but if we do not kill them and we capture them, they have to get treated like prisoners. I am in favor of torture in certain cases, but Senator McCain got a bill passed that said we cannot. The Supreme Court has said we cannot do some of the things we want to do...sooo we have to change what we do. This does not mean be nice to or easier on Terrorists, hell no. But it does mean we have to get smarter, faster, deadlier, sneaker, smaller staffed and a whole lot more focused.
We are a nation of laws and while laws can be changed, they usually--most of the time--cannot be ignored and they certainly can not be ignored by our own government. I will say this again; we are not using all the tools we have. We are not pushing all the buttons, firing on all cylinders. When we do and are still not getting it done, then—maybe--we can take the easy way out--just not yet. Bin Laden not being dead or Zuwari not being without his head has nothing to do with torture and everything to do with lack of our political will
Now, I know that a lot of you seem to think that we can drop the Atomic Bomb on any and all Muslim Countries and end this war the “easy” way. You don’t care about the hearts and minds aspect of this war. You had better start caring because it is just as important as the “military might” part of this war. The truth is that we do not have enough bombs to destroy the entire Muslim population. If we tried, we would fail and then those people that we missed…well, we would have created even more hatred for us. You have to get this, until we actually change the Muslims world opinion of us, until we can convince Muslim parents to stop strapping bombs to their kids chests, until these things happens, we will not be moving forward towards victory in this war. More than half the world hates us and while you might not care what the rest of the world thinks, they are no longer afraid of us and that is a very, very bad combination.
How we treat our enemies matters. How we treat our friends matters. How we fight this war matters.
I do not want CIA officers going to jail for doing what they thought was the right thing. If we have spies in harms way, taking risks--be they life and limb, danger or administrative-might-go-to-jail danger--our government is ethically bound to take care of them, cover their asses, give them a safe haven. They shouldn’t be making laws backwards; that is lazy government, piss poor leadership and it does not work.
I do want this war won. I want our men home, over 23,000 men killed or wounded in Iraq is enough. We should not cut and run, but it is long past time that we change the way we are fighting. One of the ways we have to change is how we arrest, detain and question terrorists. We have to because our courts and our government have told us so.
We have to figure this out now, as this war which our government refuses to declare as such, a war that is, is not going away any time soon.