Comments Posted By Britt
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All right, here's my brief take on this. 9/11 changed things, changed them more then I think even most of us on the right realized. Let's talk about England and the IRA. The IRA waged a terror campaign against civilians, bombed randomly, and carried out assassinations. In response, the British government got dirty. The SAS was given a hunting license and no bag limit, and the rules went out the window. Many in the United States at the time were horrified that a civilized Western government would do the things that the British were doing in Ireland. It wasn't cricket. At the same time, the French DGSE had a whole network of black ops types and petty thugs who had a very wide latitude to deal with sedition and subversion. Since it was very hands off, French citizens were tortured and killed. When this came to light, many people were again disturbed that a civilized modern country could so easily take the gloves off. Israel has throughout its entire existence been at war with enemies both inside and outside its borders. Again, the intelligence and security agencies of the state operate on a wartime footing, and the military is quick to level whole blocks because of the mortar fire coming from one house.
Especially in America it was easy to criticize, easy to talk about high morality. Sure, there was Pearl Harbor, but wars don't really happen anymore. War is something you see on CNN, it's night vision explosions, talking heads, and animated maps. Certainly war can never come here, not again. Secure in that knowledge, Americans felt free to judge the actions of country's who were indeed at war. Then Tuesday morning happened, and everything changed in an instant. The left retreated into the useful intellectual cocoon of "it's all America's fault" and the equally comfortable security blanket of "war is not the answer". Meanwhile, the right had to make some decisions, and they were made. Hastily, not very well thought out, laden with the seeds of a thousand unintended consequences, but made. The Patriot Act, "enhanced interrogation", the Department of Homeland Security, all sprang up overnight even as the relics of the Cold War dropped laser guided bombs on the Taliban. It all happened so fast, and yes, there was more then a little resemblance to cattle stampeding. The problem lies in the fact that there was, and is, a legitimate threat to the lives of American citizens. It is all well and good to talk about the morality of torture, but thanks to Gitmo at least one major terror plot involving the New York City subway system and the Brooklyn Bridge was foiled before it began. Is it too much of a reach to say they have provided other crucial intelligence? How many American lives have been saved because some nameless GS-12 wired Abdul for sound with a field generator? The issue is that this is not an abstraction, there are real pros and cons. There are issues where one side is clearly right, and the other clearly wrong. This is not one of them. It is all well and good to speak of American moral authority, but the fact is that Gitmo, as distasteful as it is, saves American lives. The WTC, in my mind, was the base of the ivory tower. Now we're down in the mud with the rest of the nations in the world who are fighting a war, and the moral landscape, the pitfalls and the sinkholes, aren't as clear from the ground level as they were from way up there.
The thing I fear most is, to quote Admiral Yamamoto, the "terrible resolve" our country brings to the battlefield when aroused. I want the GWOT to stay low intensity, because if those seventh century psychos get a hold of a nuke and detonate in an American city I fear what my people will do in response. I don't want my country to be the one to exterminate an entire region (or religion) in righteous anger. The stakes are too high to play by the rules sometime. Ask Churchill. In the early days of WWII his only offensive option was the night bombing of German cities. This would be indiscriminate terror bombing. It would not be pinpoint bombing of military or industrial targets, it would be bombing of homes and apartments and hospitals and everything else in a city. So he waited until a German bomber made a mistake and released its payload over London. Then he started leveling German cities, indiscriminately. I don't want to go to that stage. If the torture of one can save millions of Americans from death, and if that in turns means hundreds of millions of others will not die, then isn't that one guy's comfort worth it?
That's not an unreasonable scenario at all. That's the danger. Sure, we could have tortured German POWs in the Bulge to find out where Skorzeny's American uniformed special troops were up to, but that wasn't necessary or proper. In the kind of war we're in now, one man's silence could mean the death of thousands or millions of innocent civilians. Add in the fact that the relevant international law does not protect Al-Qaeda terrorists from any rough treatment or summary execution by their captors, and you find that legally they have no rights. Which, in my mind, is how it should be. Terrorists are hostilis humanis generis, like the pirates of old, suitable only for interrogation and disposal. Those who kill civilians to make a political point are the lowest of the low, and they should not be given a tribunal or counsel.
I've sort of wandered on a bit, but basically my take is that Gitmo is one of those regrettable necessities of war. They can't all be fought with shining knights on white stallions. "War is cruelty. There's no use trying to reform it, the crueler it is the
sooner it will be over." General Sherman said that, and I think he was right. Even the wars we think of as good wars are nasty, brutal things. Why is it that we can incinerate 50,000 innocent civilians in the blink of an eye but wring our hands over holding one murderer's head under water? I just reread Victor David Hanson's "Carnage and Culture" over again, and it's the question he raises, but never answers in the book. Why is it that we have such peculiar rules? Why is that when the B-29s deliberately create a firestorm in Tokyo we applaud the skill of our aviators, and are shocked and revolted by the Japanese beheading bomber pilots on landing? Why is it that an attack on a military target angers us to the core because there was no note delivered beforehand to the Secretary of State declaring the intent to do so? VDH argues it is cultural, that the slaughter of thousands in open battle, even if they are civilians, is preferable to the death of dozens in a suicide bombing.This is far from finished, but I really can't do anything but keep rambling, so I'm just going to end it right here.
Comment Posted By Britt On 3.08.2008 @ 18:30
