Perfect Storm

It ain’t that we’re so dumb;
it’s just that what we know ain’t so
--Will Rogers

You can never get enough
of what you don't truly need
--Eric Hoffer

Somebody must have been telling lies
about Joseph K., for without having done
anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning
--The Trial, Josef Kafka
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Seldom does the Wall Street Journal define the problem as clearly as does the following statement from Obama's Gitmo by William McGurn:

"As president, [Obama] is finding out that this very much is a new world, that we do face a new enemy, and that the problems posed by Guantanamo have less to do with the place than the people we detain there.

"Put simply, the U.S. needs the ability to detain people we know to be dangerous without the evidence that might stand up in a federal criminal court. Because we can't say when this war will end, moreover, we also need to be able to detain them indefinitely. This is what makes the war on terror different, and why our policies will never fit neatly into a legal approach that is either purely criminal or purely military."

This is the perfect summary of the perfect storm that the U.S. has created over the past seven years.

Self analysis becomes necessary in a time of national psychosis if one is to maintain bearings. One question for analysis regards our definition. America either is or is not democratic.

We cannot claim to be a liberal democracy ruled by constitutional law and said to respect the rights of man + a repressive regime. Only totalitarian regimes, "detain people we know to be dangerous without the evidence that might stand up in a federal criminal court." It is a far stretch to imagine any American could endorse the idea of jailing people on the basis of suspicion alone.

Does this suspicion become verified by virtue of torture, secrecy and the mantle of state secrets? As if by piling on and accretion the charges gain legitimacy? A country cannot place people in detention indefinitely and without trial and still be a democracy. Period

If this is the case, then democracy is as road kill, dead as a possum on a Florida highway.

"Because we can't say when this war will end, moreover, we also need to be able to detain them indefinitely." Sweet. So much is packed in this sentence.

It supposes we are at war, which is as fallacious as the concept that terrorism could destroy our way of life. Calling it a "war" is an attempt to legitimize the illegitimate. Somehow, the war hawks also manage to deny POW status to the captured personnel.

Like some Communist/Fascist/Banana Republic dictators, we simply judge terrorists outside the strictures of law. By fiat, we call them detainee and throw away the key. Q: Who has the power to detain people without trial? A: A dictator.

When a respectable news outlet like the WSJ allows this commentary, it is also approving the concept of Dachau, a place designed to detain those deemed too dangerous to the Nazi regime. It is a small step between Bagram/Gitmo to Dachau. In fact. less than a step -- a matter of millimeters. 9 mm to be exact.

Once a detainee is so dangerous as to be out away for life, it is easy to kneel him in a ditch and put a 9 mm slug in his brain pan. Nazis do this every day on the History channel, yet we fail to recognize our present policies are moving us in that direction.

"This is what makes the war on terror different, and why our policies will never fit neatly into a legal approach that is either purely criminal or purely military" is so simplistic it twists Ranger's little brain (yes, an oxymoron since all Ranger brains are little. There is only one part smaller.)

Present U.S. policy is so muddled on the topic of terrorism as to preclude rational critical thinking on the matter. The national has wrapped the topic in a hopeless welter of emotionalism. We've wrapped terrorism in a cloak of fear to support policies that are otherwise indefensible.

The WSJ and the U.S. government ignore the fact that terrorism can be religious, political, philosophical, economic, nationalistic, sociological, psychological or any combination thereof. Yet present U.S. policy attempts to pound this multi-facted concept and pound it into a square hole with a BFH (*Big F*@%ing Hammer.)

We deal with terrorism in the most simplistic manner as we are led by simplistic leaders, and then wonder why it morphs into a Long War. When leaders like Obama see the contradictory nature of our counterterrorist policy, they become constrained by simplistic political considerations reined in by the pragmatic reality that fear and emotion are the vote getters in America today (Susan Boyle, anyone?)

The WaPo says, "The idea of a "9/11-style" commission appointed with the president's imprimatur . . . was quashed by Obama, who said that such a panel would provide a forum for a renewed national argument over torture and the broader question about the fight against terrorism." Yeah, y'know, God forbid we should actually have a national discussion over torture and the PWOT.

"His concern was that would ratchet the whole thing up," a senior White House official said. "His whole thing is: I banned all this. This chapter is over. What we don't need now is to become a sort of feeding frenzy where we go back and re-litigate all this."

We weren't aware it had been litigated in the first place.

Fear and emotion are the vote getters. That is, if you're not holed up in an isolation cell in Club Bagram or Club Gitmo.