Waterboarding

[dburkhead]

The humanity will self destruct in not too distant future if we stay on
the current violence driven path.

Change has to occur at the grassroot level.

Are we living in the better world because of all the violence we have inflicted on one another?

It is precisely because we are not living in the fairy tale world, we need to change.

I'm pretty sure Seth made that claim when looking at what happened with his older brothers.

Are we living in a better world? Compare, oh, say, the Mongols under Tammerlane, the Romans under Caligula, or Mexico under the Aztecs to modern Western Civilization. The answer would appear to be "yes."

And why do we need to be the ones to start the change? Why aren't you going out and trying to convince the RIFs to change. Try it and let us know how it works for you.

 

[dburkhead]

No. The RIF's winning is my fellow americans suspending their humanity because of fear. Fear of another terrorist attack. Fear of their lives. All because the government told them so. This war will never end so long as they want it to continue. They will continue to take away our rights out of the fear of the masses. And as long as we have rights, the war will never end.

Oh please. You seem to be saying that the war will end as soon as the US stops fighting and starts sitting around singing Kumbayah.

As for what our government will do to our own people--the treatment of prisoners of war has nothing whatever to do with that. If Obama is going to try to take away our rights, he's going to do that regardless of whether we waterboard some prisoners in an effort to get information from them.

If you really want to see what the Rifs winning would actually look like, go back and look at Afghanistan in, say 2000. If you are a Christian, you can look forward to basically being a slave. If you're not a "person of the book" (like, say, an agnostic such as myself) you can look forward to being dead, dead, dead. But I guess that's preferable to us as a society getting our hands dirty to stop it.

 

[turnandshoot4]

You haven't addressed the fear issue.

 

[ruger17hmr]

Violence invites more violence!

The world is getting becoming more and more complicated, intertwined
with much maligned self interests.

Human population explosion is making the dire situation much worse.
Gone is the compassion and care, replaced with abuse and scorn.

You said. " And why do we need to be the ones to start the change? Why aren't you going out and trying to convince the RIFs to change. Try it and let us know how it works for you. "

We are in position to do something about the current situation. We attempt to force our will on the rest of the world on the daily basis anyway.

 

[dburkhead]

dburkhead, you look off onto the dark horizon and see a world without waterboarding where we are broken and bent, enslaved under the Islamic Hegemony.

I look off into the dark dark horizon and see a world with waterboarding where we are broken and bent, enslaved under a fascist government of our own making.

Then comes the question of proof of direction. How do we know which way we are going? What are the sign posts along the way?

Again, my sign posts are things like the Patriot Act, NSA wiretapping, the cancerous growth of the TSA, the powers taken by the last executive office and which are about to be handed to Acorn's candidate and the biggest Anti-Gun VP we have seen in ages.

Much of what you see there is, quite frankly, enemy propaganda. Most of these "new powers" are anything but ("new" that is). As just one example, the gathering of military intelligence has always been separate from criminal investigation and has had a different set of rules applied to it. When I was in the Air Force (during the Reagan years, BTW), my career field was "cryptologic linguist" which gives me some firsthand knowledge of the situation. The only real difference is that international terrorism has been shifted from the "criminal" side to the "military" side.

Do I also see RIF sign posts? Sure, but not those so much in the Middle East. I see the real battle taking place in Europe where they are coming to terms with how to grapple with RIF on a societal level. The most vital game there is going to be how integration will overpower immigration and will that act faster than radicalization can recruit small terror cells that can make a hand full of bombs here and there (as opposed to a nuke).

What you seem to not be seeing is that Europe is losing that fight, largely for want of recognizing tht they are in a fight for their life. You might want to consider Revel's book "How Democracies Perish" While we managed to duck, at least temporarily, the particular bullet he was warning of (Soviet communism), the principles he was writing about are still working.

Here's the thing. Unless we do something to prevent it, the RIFs will get off a WMD attack against the West (at the least, with the US being the prime target). Sooner or later they'll be able to get a nuke from Pakistan or North Korea or maybe bugs from the kleptocracy that's the bulk of the Russian government and military.

Did you know that the pneumonic form of smallpox has a 98% fatality rate? That smallpox immunizations are only good for about 30 years (so that folk, like me, who are old enough to have been immunized are not still immune)? That the only folk who have been immunized recently enough to survive it are very senior military and ex military of the same generation (the military stopped smallpox vaccinations more recently than did the civilian population)? That the Soviet Union certainly had samples of that material before it's collapse? That the chaos following the collapse of the Soviet Union was such that even they cannot say for certain that they've accounted for all of it? That corruption and greed in the Russian government and military is such that they cannot really guarantee the security of what they can account for?

What do you think their reaction would be to a deliberately engineered (the only kind there really could be) outbreak causing the deaths of on the order of 2-300 _million_ Americans? Author John Ringo has his own opinion. He'd like to avoid that response. So would I. But sitting around singing Kumbayah is not going to do it.

Between those sets of sign posts, the first is far more concerning than the second because it is metastasizing far faster. We may never lose to the RIF because we will do ourselves in faster than they can get here. And, yes this is an old battle. We will wage it and win, but only if we do not sell ourselves out first.

We also will not win if we surrender the field to the enemy.

You might want to consider that the very things you are concerned about were a response to a failure of intelligence in the first place. Another major failure of intelligence, and the response to that, will do far more damage than permitting waterboarding ever will.

 

[dburkhead]

You haven't addressed the fear issue.

Why do you carry a gun?

That's all the response the "fear issue" requires.

 

[turnandshoot4]

My carrying a gun doesn't harm people unless they DIRECTLY attempt to cause harm to me.

 

[dburkhead]

Violence invites more violence!

And "peace for our time" usually means "until next Tuesday, at the latest."

The world is getting becoming more and more complicated, intertwined
with much maligned self interests.

I don't think that statement means what you think it means.

Human population explosion is making the dire situation much worse.

This prediction has been made for at least 200 years. Still waiting.

Gone is the compassion and care, replaced with abuse and scorn.

Please cite me any time and place where it has been better? I can cite lots of times where it has been worse.

You said. " And why do we need to be the ones to start the change? Why aren't you going out and trying to convince the RIFs to change. Try it and let us know how it works for you. "

We are in position to do something about the current situation. We attempt to force our will on the rest of the world on the daily basis anyway.

"Force our will" is a funny way of saying "not rolling over and accepting the RIFs imposition of their view of Sharia on us."

 

[dburkhead]

My carrying a gun doesn't harm people unless they DIRECTLY attempt to cause harm to me.

The statement was directed at the fear issue. If you weren't afraid, why would you need to carry a gun?

Yes, you are going to say that what I just said is not a valid argument. I agree. That's the point. It's not a valid argument here. It wasn't a valid argument when you made it.

 

[turnandshoot4]

The reason it is not a valid argument is because I will shoot an attacker that has a gun pointed at me. I will not however shoot an someone that might know someone that is going to kill me.

 

[dburkhead]

The reason it is not a valid argument is because I will shoot an attacker that has a gun pointed at me. I will not however shoot an someone that might know someone that is going to kill me.

This is the logical fallacy of a "non sequitor." The comparison is in response to the fear issue that you said I didn't respond to. What you are saying here does not speak to that.

So you carry a gun because you are afraid that someone will point a gun at you. So it's your fear that causes you to carry a gun.

Remember, you said I didn't address the "fear" issue. I'm doing so now.

 

[ruger17hmr]

The world has lost more people due to the violence in the past 100 years than the deaths from all the conflicts the world has ever experienced before.

How can you say that we are living in the better world?

 

[dburkhead]

The world has lost more people due to the violence in the past 100 years than the deaths from all the conflicts the world has ever experienced before.

How can you say that we are living in the better world?

First off, I suspect your "fact" is anything but. But even if it were true, there have been more people alive in the past 100 years than have lived in the entire history of the past.

You might want to learn a little history. 6000 participants in a slave revolt crucified along the Via Appia in a single day. Google Tammerlane some time. Ditto "Trail of Tears." You might also want to give "Black Death" a look-see as well since things like modern medicine and sanitation are a part of the overall picture of "better off" vs. not. Oh, and then there were those Aztec practices of cutting the still beating hearts out of thousands of people at a time as a religious rite.

People who think that now is not better than, well, most times and places in history can only believe that if they have a fantasy view of history.

 

[Bill of Rights]

ruger17hmr,

The simple fact is that the violence you see as so problematic is brought to us. Many of the stated reasons for them doing so are political actions.

What do you think we as a country should have done when the Pentagon and the WTC were hit by aircraft?
What should have happened when the USS Cole was attacked? The Khobar Towers bombed? The Marine barracks in Beirut suicide-bombed?

What about when the WTC was first bombed in 1993? What should we have done when each of these incidents occurred? Just forgive them and let bygones be bygones? Or is the appropriate response to unacceptable violent crime an equally violent retribution?

I'm sure most of us recall when we were children being given some horrible-tasting, foul medicine, which we were forced to take into our mouths and swallow to make us feel better. It was distasteful, but when all was said and done, it worked, and whatever illness we had was soon removed from us. So it is with violent response to violent acts: it's distasteful, but that does not make it unnecessary. In the case of human-caused violence, not only is it aimed at the one person who launched the acts against us, it also serves, if violent enough, to give others pause before attempting the same or similar against us.

Blessings,
B

 

[ruger17hmr]

"there have been more people alive in the past 100 years than have lived in the entire history of the past."

Precisely my point! Please refer to my past comment!

The world is moving towards the final curtain call.
With all the weapons of mass destruction the world possess, it wouldn't take much to demolish ourselves unless things change. The level of violence is increasing and the severity of the effects mind numbing. And yet, we all claim to be victims.
Ever increasingly becoming vindictive, looking for the next target to annihilate in the name of justice and peace.

An eye for an eye policy paved the way for the WWI, WWII, and numerous genocides, which resulted in 100's of millions of
deaths just during the past 100 years. Isn't it about time we need to explore other alternative policies? Hopefully one that is not spear headed by the violence.

This 'us' vs 'them' mentality will lead us to the path of destruction that we may not be able to recover from.


"a look-see as well since things like modern medicine and sanitation are a part of the overall picture of "better off" vs. not."

It is due to the "modern medicine and sanitation", not by-products of violence driven policy.

 

[Glock Lover]

First off, I suspect your "fact" is anything but. But even if it were true, there have been more people alive in the past 100 years than have lived in the entire history of the past.

You might want to learn a little history. 6000 participants in a slave revolt crucified along the Via Appia in a single day. Google Tammerlane some time. Ditto "Trail of Tears." You might also want to give "Black Death" a look-see as well since things like modern medicine and sanitation are a part of the overall picture of "better off" vs. not. Oh, and then there were those Aztec practices of cutting the still beating hearts out of thousands of people at a time as a religious rite.

People who think that now is not better than, well, most times and places in history can only believe that if they have a fantasy view of history.

You may want to look at the statistics again. I did a paper on this when I was completing my BA in History, here are some stats for you. FYI, All are approximate.
Number Dead: Wars
World War I: 8.5 million, 7.7 million POW
World War II: 55-75 million, most say about 72 million
Number Dead Genocide:
Mao, China/Tibet: 50-78 million
Stalin: 20-30 million
Sudan: 100,000
Sierra Leone: 200,000
Milosevic, Yugo.: 150-200,000
Liberia: 100-200,000
Turkey: 1.5-2 million
N.Korea: 1.3-1.5 million
Ethiopia: 1.4-1.6 million
Rwanda: 500-900,000
Iran/Iraq: 500,000
Spain: 30-50,000

These are just a few numbers. Obviously many more wars were fought and many more genocides were and are taking place. Just food for thought I would put out there.

 

[Bill of Rights]

If it is a "military tribunals act" I suspect what you have is a codification of existing practice. In every war we've ever fought, who do you think determined whether someone was an enemy combatant (lawful or otherwise) but the military itself?

People talk about review by the courts but military courts (of which the tribunals under discussion are a special case) are courts every bit as much as the one's you'll find in downtown Indianapolis. And, quite frankly, the conventional wisdom is that if you're innocent you're better off in front of a military court; if you're guilty, you're better off in front of a civilian court. And from what I've seen, the conventional wisdom is spot on.

I suspect a lot of what you hear is a matter of someone seeing something in the Media (who delights in not just painting the current Administration in the worst possible light, but is not above outright lying to do it), thinking it's an actual correct interpretation of events. This is called believing the enemy's propaganda.

While I'm not Bush's biggest fan*, I also recognize that most of the "bad" things claimed about him are exaggerations or outright fabrications from the Left. My biggest fear is that the Left will believe their own propaganda and simply assume that the powers they claim Bush has stolen are rightfully theirs since they stole, er, I mean "won", this election.

*Typical of my unhappiness with Bush is the TSA. On 9/11, three out of four airplanes were not only highjacked but hit their targets. The fourth was hijacked but didn't hit it's target, whatever that target might have been. What was different in that case? Simple: the people fought back. The lesson I take from 9/11 is that the best response to the threat of hijacking is to permit, encourage, and facilitate the passengers fighting back. My ideal of "airport security" is from Michael Z. Williamson's book Freehold:


And I am dead serious.

I went back and read the "Military Commissions Act of 2006", which I above referred to as the "Military Tribunals Act". My prior understanding was that it granted the power to the president, specifically, to determine who was an "unlawful enemy combatant". This is incorrect, and that power is instead granted to tribunals created under the Sec'y of Defense. They consist of multiple military officers, and thus, the issue I took is inapplicable.

I still say that there are multiple answers to this, each of which is correct, given different circumstances. This is not relativism, but rather the difference between murder and self-defense. Both involve the death of a human being, however the latter is justified by the actions of the decedant.

I still do not want to authorize by my inaction or silence the use of torture on "the enemy", primarily out of fear of at some future date being so labelled myself. At this point in time, I am willing to work within the law to change it. I cannot say that at some future time, circumstances might not have changed to make that impossible, a fool's errand.

Waterboarding is not a torture to the body but the mind. It is putting a person in fear of his life (and those who've been through it, please correct me if I'm mistaken, but SERE training does not put a person in fear that his own service would take his life.) We carry firearms and operate under Indiana law, specifically Castle Doctrine, and are justified and protected from prosecution if we use deadly force to stop an act that puts us in just that frame of mind: fear of our lives. If we are going to use that type of tactic, IMHO it should be with damn clear certainty that the person on whom we are using it has committed an act of violence against our people.

I still don't have an answer, a simple line to draw to say that this use of more extreme tactics is acceptable, but that use of them is not.

Insofar as the discussion of whether Khalid Sheik Mohammed should have been tortured, I would say that what I have heard/read of his actions deserved the worst punishment we could impose upon him. Such punishment, however, I think should be carried out either after a trial or in the attempt to apprehend such a person. That is to say, if he resists capture and is killed before going to trial, too bad. If he goes to trial and is convicted of the murder of innocent Americans, however he is executed is unimportant to me. I would think that his execution should be long, slow, painful, and well-publicized, however, to hopefully deter others from making similar attempts against our country.

In one of Tom Clancy's books, he wrote of a small country's airline. One of their planes was hijacked and the hijackers defeated by the passengers. The hijackers were restrained with belts, etc. in two seats in First Class, towels placed across their shoulders in front, and their throats slit right there on the plane. The message conveyed was very clear and no one had ever attempted to hijack any of their planes again. Mr. Clancy's books are mostly fiction, but the principle holds true, and FWIW, I agree with you regarding airline security.

Blessings,
Bill

 

[dburkhead]

"there have been more people alive in the past 100 years than have lived in the entire history of the past."

Precisely my point! Please refer to my past comment!

And see my past comment about how that prediction of imminent doom has been made for better than 200 years. Still waiting.

The world is moving towards the final curtain call.

And that prediction is thousands of years old. Yeah, I know, "this time for sure."

With all the weapons of mass destruction the world possess, it wouldn't take much to demolish ourselves unless things change. The level of violence is increasing and the severity of the effects mind numbing.

Exactly my point. Allowing the RIFs to continue unchecked until they get something like pneumonic smallpox will kill us all.

You, however, want to sing Kumbayah while the gangrene spreads unchecked.

And yet, we all claim to be victims.

Yeah, we held a gun to the RIF's heads and said "create a culture which insists on total world domination and the enslavery and murder of everyone who doesn't accept your particular imaginary friend in the sky as the one true imaginary friend.

Ever increasingly becoming vindictive, looking for the next target to annihilate in the name of justice and peace.

"Ever increasingly?" Again, I suggest you take a further look at history. You're living in a fantasy land.

"a look-see as well since things like modern medicine and sanitation are a part of the overall picture of "better off" vs. not."

It is due to the "modern medicine and sanitation", not by-products of violence driven policy.

And that "modern medicine and sanitation" is part of what makes us better off now vs. then. That "modern medicine and sanitation" is among the things that will go away if the RIFs win. Back in the 12th century, Islamic doctors were among the, if not the, best in the world. And that's exactly what they want to go back to--12th century medicine, 12th century pretty much everything, where they stand on top of it all and everyone else will either submit or die.

 

[dburkhead]

You may want to look at the statistics again. I did a paper on this when I was completing my BA in History, here are some stats for you. FYI, All are approximate.
Number Dead: Wars
World War I: 8.5 million, 7.7 million POW
World War II: 55-75 million, most say about 72 million
Number Dead Genocide:
Mao, China/Tibet: 50-78 million
Stalin: 20-30 million
Sudan: 100,000
Sierra Leone: 200,000
Milosevic, Yugo.: 150-200,000
Liberia: 100-200,000
Turkey: 1.5-2 million
N.Korea: 1.3-1.5 million
Ethiopia: 1.4-1.6 million
Rwanda: 500-900,000
Iran/Iraq: 500,000
Spain: 30-50,000

These are just a few numbers. Obviously many more wars were fought and many more genocides were and are taking place. Just food for thought I would put out there.

Now take those numbers and render them in terms of percentage of the populations involved and compare them to something like Tamerlane. History is full of massacres. You might also want to remember that we simply have a better record of massacres in the 20th century. For example, who knows what happened to the Anasazi? Archaeological digs can only tell us so much. For that matter, there were several competing hominids before homo erectus took the lead. What happened to the others? Yes, I know they went extinct, but exactly why did they become extinct? (They couldn't "compete" with Homo Erectus? Probably. But think about what that means exactly.) Same thing for HE itself. For a long time h.erectus was contemporary with early Homo Sapiens. Why, exactly, is homo erectus now extinct? Was it a case of planned parenthood gone horribly wrong or did they get, you know, killed off?

This myth that things were so great in the past and are so horrible now is just that--a myth.

 

[dburkhead]

I went back and read the "Military Commissions Act of 2006", which I above referred to as the "Military Tribunals Act". My prior understanding was that it granted the power to the president, specifically, to determine who was an "unlawful enemy combatant". This is incorrect, and that power is instead granted to tribunals created under the Sec'y of Defense. They consist of multiple military officers, and thus, the issue I took is inapplicable.

About what I thought. Mostly a codification of existing practice. If anything it's an actual increase in protections since in the past it was often the commander in the field (often a junior officer) who made that determination.

I still say that there are multiple answers to this, each of which is correct, given different circumstances. This is not relativism, but rather the difference between murder and self-defense. Both involve the death of a human being, however the latter is justified by the actions of the decedant.

Bingo! The actions taken to defend your person against an attacker are justified by the actions of the attacker. That those actions you take may inadvertently lead to innocents being hurt or killed (through, say, missing a shot) also lies at the feet of the attacker. No attack, nobody hurt.

I'm simply saying that as a society we have the same right. Actions we may take as a society to defend that society could be abhorrent at other times, but are justified by our being forced into that position by the attackers. No attack on our society, no such actions necessary. Don't break down my door and don't get shot. He who has ears to hear, let him here.

I still do not want to authorize by my inaction or silence the use of torture on "the enemy", primarily out of fear of at some future date being so labelled myself. At this point in time, I am willing to work within the law to change it. I cannot say that at some future time, circumstances might not have changed to make that impossible, a fool's errand.

The "solution" to that is to make sure that, like with lethal self defense, there are checks in place to make sure that the situations where such things are used are actually justified. That can only happen if the terms of such justifications are actually in place. The only way that can happen is if a person can say, in at least some circumstances "yes, this was bad, but the circumstance was bad enough that it was less bad than the alternative" and have that be considered a valid answer.

As an analogy, suppose that lethal self defense were made completely illegal. If faced with a "him or you" situation, you would either have to accept dying, or kill him and either go to jail or try to hide that the "crime" had taken place. As things stand now, if you are threatened, you can do what you have to do, then call the police and let the courts decide with a reasonable chance of having a bona-fide self defense case determined to be a good shoot.

I'd rather have the situation where, if it's justified by circumstances, you can legally use lethal self defense openly rather than a system where, if I do kill in self defense, I have to either accept a murder conviction or try to hide the "crime" and then live the rest of my life in fear of it being discovered (no statute of limitations on murder).

And if the case turns out where the shoot wasn't justified, where I didn't have valid reason to kill in self defense, well, then I go to prison and justice is served.

And this is where I am on the idea of things like waterboarding and outright torture. The bar on justification for using them should be high, no question. But making the height infinite--saying that there is no situation that could ever possibly happen that would make their use justified, doesn't make them not happen. It just drives them underground.

If, as has been suggested here in several places, a future administration of the US is of the kind to use such tactics on US citizens in investigation of crimes that may be no more than political disagreement, well that administration is going to do it however high we've made the bar for things like military interogations of possible key intelligence sources.

Put simply, if Obama's going to do it, he's going to do it regardless of our policy in Iraq. The one thing that might be different is how open he is about it. If it's going to happen, I'd rather it be out where it can be seen rather than hidden in back rooms. It makes the excesses more obvious.

Waterboarding is not a torture to the body but the mind. It is putting a person in fear of his life (and those who've been through it, please correct me if I'm mistaken, but SERE training does not put a person in fear that his own service would take his life.) We carry firearms and operate under Indiana law, specifically Castle Doctrine, and are justified and protected from prosecution if we use deadly force to stop an act that puts us in just that frame of mind: fear of our lives. If we are going to use that type of tactic, IMHO it should be with damn clear certainty that the person on whom we are using it has committed an act of violence against our people.

Maybe the first person to be waterboarded tought he was going to drown but it had to rapidly become clear that nobody was drowning.

It's uncomfortable and scary. And that whole "torture of the mind" thing I don't buy. It dilutes the term "torture" in much the same way things like "terrorist" and "nazi" have been diluted by simply applying them to folk the user of the term didn't like. I mean, anybody using a term like "Chimpy Bush McHitler" really needs to study some more history to learn what Hitler was really like. And calling peaceful protestors at an abortion clinic "emotional terrorists" is beyond the pale.

I still don't have an answer, a simple line to draw to say that this use of more extreme tactics is acceptable, but that use of them is not.

And here we are, I think, in more agreement than you may realize. My discussion here has really been more theoretical and philosophical than about the specific alleged and verified uses of such tactics in Iraq. On the one hand, I think that the hypothetical I gave uptopic would, were such a thing to actually happen, be a pretty clear-cut case where pretty much any level of interrogation would be justified. On the other hand, I don't think anyone here would say that "did you, or did you not exceed the speed limit on I65 on January 3rd" while applying a soldering iron to the suspects genitals was justified. Best answer is somewhere between, leaning a lot toward the high end, I would think. Where, exactly, on that continuum the line would be (and how it varies depending both on circumstances and the level of "vigorousness" of the interrogation) is something which I think reasonable men (and women) could disagree on. Too bad the world is so full of unreasonable men and women.

Insofar as the discussion of whether Khalid Sheik Mohammed should have been tortured, I would say that what I have heard/read of his actions deserved the worst punishment we could impose upon him. Such punishment, however, I think should be carried out either after a trial or in the attempt to apprehend such a person. That is to say, if he resists capture and is killed before going to trial, too bad. If he goes to trial and is convicted of the murder of innocent Americans, however he is executed is unimportant to me. I would think that his execution should be long, slow, painful, and well-publicized, however, to hopefully deter others from making similar attempts against our country.

Here's the thing. I don't support the use of any kind of torture as punishment. Not ever. By the time you get to capital crimes, i don't see it as punishment at all. As H. Beam Piper put in the mouth of one of his characters (paraphrased), "we don't kill them for committing those crimes, we kill them for being the kind of person who commits those crimes. It's a sanitation measure, like shooting sick cattle."

One of the things that would, IMO, justify the use of "vigorous" interrogation (whether rather mild forms like waterboarding, modest sleep deprivation, "in your face" grilling, or more extreme up to and including actual torture) is time pressure. If you don't need the information right away, you've got time to use other methods. If you have time for a trial, you aren't under enough time pressure to justify that kind of interrogation.

In one of Tom Clancy's books, he wrote of a small country's airline. One of their planes was hijacked and the hijackers defeated by the passengers. The hijackers were restrained with belts, etc. in two seats in First Class, towels placed across their shoulders in front, and their throats slit right there on the plane. The message conveyed was very clear and no one had ever attempted to hijack any of their planes again. Mr. Clancy's books are mostly fiction, but the principle holds true, and FWIW, I agree with you regarding airline security.

One recurring theme in the US's military action in the past has been that we were generally rather slow to get our ire up, but once we did, we tended to be quite ruthless in putting down the threat. The idea of "leave us alone; we'll leave you alone. Mess with us, and you'll wish your grandparents had never been born." Or as Teddy Roosevelt (the good Roosevelt) said, "Speak softly and carry a big stick" (implication being the willingness to use that stick at need).

I, personally, think that's an excellent approach and would like to see us return to it.