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Edited on Mon Apr-20-09 11:19 PM by The Traveler
Perhaps it is true that Khalid Sheik Mohammad was indeed the perpetrator of that barbarous act. Perhaps someone else did it. I have no great investment in the answer, for I think it irrelevant to the deeper issue here. Let us focus on the deed itself. Why is it so repugnant? Because it was savage and so explicitly exemplifies that which is dark and profane in human conduct, and all that was unleashed on an innocent man.
We consider the deed, and it stirs that very darkness and profanity within each of us. I am not a saint, and I certainly do not regard myself as a poster boy for mental health. Were the perpetrator of that or similar deeds to fall into my hands, something really bad might happen. I hope not. But, as I said, there is that dark and vicious thing within me, too ...
But this darkness is not what we, as a civilized people, must needs call upon very often. We must divert from savagery and aspire towards reason with the determination of a drowning man swimming for the surface. And reason dictates that if we are to oppose savagery, both how we attain victory and how we conduct ourselves after achieving it are critical to our very success. We profit not at all if we utterly defeat the savages by becoming savages ourselves. Were that to happen, it would just be a chapter in history in which one group of savages defeats another. In either case, it is savagery itself that is the victor.
This "war against terror" or "war against radical Islam" or whatever the hell you want to call it is first and foremost a violent conflict over ideas. For example, we have an idea that women must be granted the freedom to discover their life's fulfillment, just like any man. They don't necessarily like that idea. We think honor killings and acid attacks on school girls are an abomination. They do not. From our perspective, they are savages. From their perspective, we are infidels and blasphemers. It is a perfect example of cultures in collision. And if we are, as we would like to believe, the superior culture, then we must especially in our conduct of war and counter-terror operations adhere to standards our ancestors struggled to establish over the past few centuries ... standards implemented in our concepts of due process, rule of law, justice, and limitations placed upon acceptable forms of violence.
As a man who has done violence on behalf of his country, I can assure you. We do not need to violate those standards to defeat these bastards. By adhering to them AND defeating them, we demonstrate the power of our culture and the efficacy of its ideals. In this manner, we win not only the violent struggle ... we also win a critical battle in the war of ideas.
Alternatively, we can succumb to the infection, to the same darkness and profanity that compels one man to cut off another man's head and claim it is done for the love of God.
Many of us here refuse to yield to that infection. And so the Kalid Sheik Mohammads can plot against us and kill us and all that ... but they cannot strip us of our freedom, our dignity, nor deprive us of the civilization our ancestors struggled to build. And that is what these assholes really fear.
What we should fear is this ... they can't deprive us of our civilization. But we can do it to ourselves. All we have to do to start down that road is to grant amnesty to the torturers.
Rule of law. You either have it, or ya don't.
Trav
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