I wrote this opinion piece for the Johns Hopkins News-Letter: For conservatives, success will follow a return to roots. (Their title, not mine.)

How the British prisoners were treated via Washington Post:

The 26-year-old Royal Navy lieutenant said that when the 15 were brought to the Iranian shore, they were subjected to repeated interrogations. “The questions were aggressive and the handling rough, but it was no worse than that,” he said.

But after they were moved to a prison in Tehran the next day, “the atmosphere changed completely,” Carman said.

“We were blindfolded, our hands were bound, we were forced up against a wall,” he said. “Throughout our ordeal we faced constant psychological pressure.”

He said they were later stripped and given pajamas. “The next few nights were spent in stone cells approximately eight feet by six, sleeping on piles of blankets,” he said.

“All of us were kept in isolation,” Carman said. “We were interrogated most nights and presented with two options. If we admitted that we’d strayed, we’d be back on a plane to the U.K. pretty soon. If we didn’t, we faced up to seven years in prison. We all, at one time or another, made a conscious decision to make a controlled release of nonoperational information.”

[…]

Air said in response to a question that the worst moment for the group was probably the incident when they were lined up against a wall at the prison in Tehran. But he said it was not an actual mock execution.

“I think some of us feared the worst when we were in that situation, hearing weapons being cocked and not having any awareness, being blindfolded and our hands bound,” the 25-year-old Royal Marine captain said.

After reading this, I don’t think Iran has really done anything wrong. Let’s take the incident the soldier calls the “worst moment.” They were lined up against the wall, blindfolded, and the Iranians cocked their weapons. But this was only a threat. The Iranians only induced panic — and that’s all it was, there was no actual physical harm done.

Having shown that the worst moment isn’t that bad, it’s easy to debunk the notion that the British soldiers were tortured in any way. The Post notes that they faced “constant psychological pressure.” So the Iranians played some mind games. It’s not like they pulled out anyone’s fingernails.

Even though the handling was rough, I’m pretty sure Iran is still on solid legal ground. They did not engage in outright torture. Coercive interrogation was only used to get information. Torture is a pretty reliable way of getting information, judging from how well the War on Terror is going (no attacks in 5 years). Thus, I think although the British have recanted their stories, they are actually lying now. Their confessions were right and they were illegally in Iranian waters.

Besides, even if they were subjected to worse treatment, it’s not like Iran and Britain were at war. The British were not prisoners of war and hence are not subject to the Geneva Conventions. They were only detainees.

So I really don’t understand why the Washington Post is giving space to quotes from a bunch of dhimmis who simply surrendered. Nothing wrong went on here. And even if they did, the Iranians were justified in using more coercive techniques in order to get the proper information. It just goes to show that you can’t avoid liberal bias.

[Alright, time to shift from satire mode.]

Quote worthy of remembering:

Roper: “So now you’d give the devil the benefit of law?”

More: “Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the devil?”

Roper: “I’d cut down every law in England to do that.”

More: “Oh, and when the last law was down, and the devil turned on you, where would you hide, Roper, all the laws being flat? This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast, man’s laws not God’s, and if you cut them down — and you’re just the man to do it — do you really think that you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?

“Yes, I’d give the devil the benefit of the law, for my own safety’s sake.”

Neoconservatives, the devil has turned on you. Where are you going to hide?

I just wanted to get this prediction on the table before events happened. We will revisit this after primary debates and the presidential debates.

I predict that YouTube will radically transform the way we view the debates.

I am extremely confident about this.

Note: I plan on utilizing YouTube to its fullest extent when any debates roll around. With any luck, I will be one of the persons helping along that transformational process.

Holy crap! This just in from the Washington Post: Republican Thompson Enters Race.

Oh wait, that Thompson. April Fool’s.

Blake Bailey recounts the appalling Road Home program at Slate.

If there is a hell, it is not a place of burning. It is the eternal waiting room for heaven.

The banality of everyday life is suffocating. Even events of seeming significance shrink into nothing. I’ve been have a lot of trouble caring, lately. My work, the 24-hour news cycle, all the little pictures that facebook’s news-feed serves me, they seem irrelevant. I have bigger things to worry about.

Has corruption entered the American character? I know, I know, Americans have never had pure hearts. What I mean to ask, “Is America on the decline?” Has the war on terror caused us to accept a bunker mentality? America is in the vicelike grip of fear. Our backgrounds have been turned into potential terrorist battlefields. Let me tell you something, the idea of the bureaucratic agency called the Department of Homeland security frightens me. Do we really want the tentacles of the federal government reaching into every crevice of our lives?

Face it, we can’t protect our malls from suicide bombers. And that prospect scares me. What happens to America when they hit the heartland? Will the people clamor for the government to take their civil liberties? The sad thing is that I am certain that this will be the response. I am beleaguered on both sides: The ever-present specter of tyranny is equally as destructive as a terrorist’s bomb.

Something deep within our souls changed that day, when the barbarians sacked Rome. The American Empire suddenly felt vulnerable. Our collective psyche is still wounded. Like fools, we turned to our strong leader George Bush, who turned out to be the biggest fool of them all. His Manichaean paranoia₁ is dangerous. Disparate bands of Islamic terrorists and disparate totalitarian Islamist movements have been linked together into the monolith that is Islamo-fascism. We’ve raised our children under the dark cloud of terror. This is all they’ve known. This is almost all I’ve known. I was just aware enough to know that 9/11 changed everything, but I didn’t know anything about that everything that had been changed.

I have glimpses. I remember a time when you felt a slight twinge when the airplane landed and could give your loved ones a hug right before they boarded the airplane. These kids will have grown up in America under siege. As long as they can remember, you’re supposed to submit. You’re supposed to take off your shoes. Your luggage occasionally has a paper in it saying that TSA conducted a search. You’re supposed to smile and thank them for protecting our country. For us, security is a hassle. For them, it’s natural to leave the hair gel at home, or put it in a plastic baggie.

They’re growing up in a world where the phrase “The American Way” is foreign. Truth is trashed for expedience. The institutions of justice are tossed aside for the prerogative of the executive. They may read in the history books about a different America, not hated by the international community, full of dreams and full of the entrepreneurial, the frontier spirit. Alas, they hear, that time is over. We are a different America who faces a different threat, unlike any other.

Not I, you say. But maybe you’re like me, under another level of the cloud cover. Worried about the internal threat, I run the trouble of ignoring the fact that I’ve allowed them to frame the debate. The fear still envelopes me. We need to beyond the fear and quantify the threat in a realistic manner.

I also chastise the scoffers who think there’s no threat at all. I won’t take the time to address them, but I will say that the threat of terror is very real and will continue to remain real no matter what happens in Iraq. The question becomes: How do we address terror without fighting a war on terror? How do we fight without fear? How do we keep ourselves safe without security consuming our lives? How do we undo so many mistakes? How do we reframe the debate?

One answer is that we cling tenaciously to our traditions.₂ I mean various things by tradition. Most especially, I’m referring to our institutions of justice and government. If we give those up, then all is for naught. We must also preserve our moral traditions. This has nothing to do with gay marriage. This has everything to do with our belief that every human being has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Of course, this isn’t enough. It’s not enough just to believe that we need traditions. In order to reaffirm tradition, we need to defeat the bunker mentality, the Manichaean mentality. We need to end the war on terror. We need to work with the international community to make terrorism unacceptable and a crime against humanity. We need to work with the international community to create an acceptable mechanism for punishing states that sponsor terror.

Americans need to be prepared for the next attack. We need to not become panicked animals who need to be herded by the government when that next attack hits. The Department of Homeland Security is just a bastion of pork-barrel spending. The real effect of terrorism is psychological. They can do nothing if we dust ourselves off. They can do nothing if every attack is met with swift emergency response. The casualties are reduced and quickly we return to our everyday lives. They can’t break us if we don’t submit.

Yet even all that’s not enough. It’s not a question of what we need to do, but implementation. Brzezinski asks, “Where is the U.S. leader ready to say, ‘Enough of this hysteria, stop this paranoia’? Even in the face of future terrorist attacks, the likelihood of which cannot be denied, let us show some sense. Let us be true to our traditions.” This is why I’m so worried about 2008. I see no one.

This is the problem I struggle with now: How to save America from the decline. I see many things that need to be done, but no will to do them. I can’t do this alone. You can’t do this alone. Unfortunately, I don’t know what can be done as long as our current crop of candidates remains mediocre and politically un-courageous. I thought letting this all out would provide with the clarity to provide solutions, but I see nothing at this point. At least, nothing that will solve everything all at once.

For now, let me be courageous. Let yourselves be courageous. And maybe I can get some other young people to be courageous. Spread the word that the “war on terror” is counterproductive. Tout America’s traditions as the best way to protect the “homeland.” Wherever you see false security, speak up.₃ Don’t let anyone get away with anything anymore. Don’t let security be determined by politics. America deserves real solutions, not this madness. Tell all the politicians, when it comes to keeping America safe: No more bullshit.

If they tar you as unpatriotic, shout even louder. They want nothing but theater. We want real security. We want the security of civil liberties. We want the security of emergency response. We want the security of international institutions and international law. We want the security of justice, not some vague forever-war. Most of all, we want the security of not being afraid.

I think that if this happens, if America awakens and demands a return to her traditions, the so-called leaders may finally do something.

This is Phase 1: The Awakening.

₁Brzezinski used this phrase when he was being interviewed on the Daily Show.

₂I was surprised at Brzezinski’s line at the end of his article, mentioning that we should be true to our traditions. It spoke to me very much. I find it strange that now it is the conservatives who want to throw away tradition.

₃This is the difficulty with the bureaucracy. The people no longer control how the nation keeps itself safe. Bureaucrats do. These people think they’re experts, but they’re just fucking things up.

From today’s Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Thompson has also been criticized for failing to back some comprehensive tort reform bills because of his background as a trial lawyer. Here he insists his stance was based on grounds of federalism. “I’m consistent. I address Federalist Society meetings,” he says, noting that more issues should be left to the states. For example, he cast the lonely “nay” in 99-1 votes against a national 0.8% blood alcohol level for drivers, a federal law banning guns in schools, and a measure limiting the tort liability of Good Samaritans. “Washington overreaches, and by doing so ends up not doing well the basics people really care about.” Think Katrina and Walter Reed.

I’m sold. Run, Fred Thompson, run.

Interesting reading on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

Selected quotes:

“In contrast to most of al-Qa’eda’s senior leaders, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed liked to indulge in the sins of the Western civilisation that his movement is devoted to wiping out.”

“Peter Bergen, the author and leading expert on al-Qa’eda, said: ‘I think he really was in it for the fun. To use a horrible metaphor in this context, he was having a blast.'”

For some reason, this reminded me of The Dread Pirate Bin Laden. I momentarily thought of KSM as some sort of swashbuckler.

Captain’s Quarters adds this:

“Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was not the only jihadi who indulged the sins of the flesh while on assignment as a terrorist. The 9/11 attackers also enjoyed so-called Western decadence during their short stay in the United States. As the 9/11 Commission report noted in its excellent recounting of the plot, a half-dozen of them made test flights to Las Vegas in the three months preceding the attack — and while in Sin City, they indulged in alcohol, gambling, and strip clubs. KSM apparently lived the dissolute lifestyle as a rule, though, and not an exception.”

Anyway, if this is true, KSM is no Islamofascist, no jihadist — he’s just a plain criminal. But what to make of the 9/11 foot soldiers?

On a semi-related note, here’s my quote of the day for August 28, 2006: “There are criminals and killers — we know the scum who wear the mask of the Jihad and religion… They used to kill people as criminals and now they kill them under the cover of jihad.” — Abdul Qader Mohammed Jasim, the Iraqi minister of defense

I don’t think the actors in 9/11 were mere criminals, but I do think criminals are trying to legitimize themselves with the cover of jihad. I also think that it may be helpful to take control of the narrative and not call the terrorists jihadists, but to call them common criminals. Food for thought, especially for the Manichaeans out there.