How ironic, huh: for years we've heard screaming about the (as far as I know, mostly illusory) liberals who wanted to understand what motivated people like Mohammed Atta, while now we're expected to attend closely to the motivation of people like Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld. Motes and beams, indeed.

One of the arguments that's always irritated me is that oh, it's so easy to criticize, but that it's really tough to be a decision-maker, having to make the hard choices. The reality is that the easy choice was to torture, in the days right after 9/11, when America held the moral high ground and had backing to do literally anything they wanted. Cheney was bragging about going to "the dark side, if you will" on TV literally the next day if memory serves.

The hard decision - to have built an international coalition to find and prosecute those who would murder the innocent, to reach out in a genuine way to the Islamic world in a way that ratcheted down tensions and above all to respect the rule of law, here and abroad - would have saved billions of dollars that are desperately needed now... and thousands of Americans who could have helped rebuild this country.

Instead, they made the easy decision, and set the world on fire... and in the process not only destroyed another country and took over a million Iraqi lives, but sapped the strength of America itself.

This is the Seriousness we are supposed to meekly respect.

Long time listener

I guess you started since last Wednesday:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/12/17/douthat/

Are you shooting for the King of Snark title this Holiday week?

When the only tool you have is a cluestick, bamage...

My first post in this thread took an intense amount of mental effort for the meager result. About all I have left is snark. Let's see how I do once this fever breaks.

Io! Saturnalia!

"Treat them with humanity," Washington directed

Washington was a wuss.

After all, Hessians only burned colonial cities and destroyed farms and villages, killing Americans and despoiling the countryside. Islamofascisterrorists knocked down a building... and, oh yeah, made a hole in one of our boats.

No mercy.

Mele kalikimaka.

Your presentation is somewhat confused... more heat than light, as I read it. Glenn may be having the same difficulty, or may just have better things to do on a Christmas day.

Legislation will not solve these problems, my friends.

It's hard to know what "problems" you're referring to. In any case, I don't see anyone here proposing "legislation," instead just the application of laws currently on the books.

Justice is bleak. It has no place for mercy, nor any for empathy. I'm surprised to here you plugging it. Not me, Glenn. Not any more.

Remarkable that an attorney should be "plugging" the idea of justice, I know. But tell us, Amnesty International Guy... what is it you propose as an alternative? I'm genuinely in the dark as to your thinking.

To believe in it would mean that one has studied it

An interesting perspective.

I've often felt belief to be, rather, pretty much the opposite of the product of study.

But try convincing rubes of the existence of gawd, and you'll have a captive audience of fools who don't require that their instructor has studied anything beyond how to convince rubes to believe in what he is saying.

I suspect we might be saying the same thing. My point was just that they "believe" in torture the same way your crowd of rubes believes in creationism: completely absent any study of the reality of the situation.

I don't even "believe" things I've actually studied. I maintain a healthy skepticism of Newton's First Law, as anyone who's ridden shotgun in my car can attest.

Regardless of anything else, the Israel/Palestine war should be the signal example of the vapidity of the "take the gloves off" argument. The only state that has put more effort into sharpening and refining the "Do not fuck with us" message better than the United States is the government of Israel. And how's that working out for you guys?

I have been led to understand that the whole "find the biggest guy on the cellblock and beat the shit out of him" ploy is a crock, too.

Even if I grant that the Likudnik position is correct in every regard... I don't get how they think they are going to prevail in a shooting war against an occupied population.

This is a serious question. Does anyone actually believe that the Palestinians can be bombed into submission? Any of you guys out there arguing that we're all anti-Semites and useful idiots for Hamas - what's your vision of the future, really? Do you think all the Palestinian militants - every last one - will lay down their arms after a few more bombing runs, some targeted assassinations, ground invasions, whatever?

I am honestly, genuinely lost as to the thinking here. What military solution is even possible?

Get it through your skull: violence is not a good strategy for the Palestinians. If that's the battlefield they choose to engage the Israelis on...THEY WILL LOSE.

What will that defeat look like, Ben? Seriously, how do you envision that?

I'll grant you your point. Let me ask you this, though: does it change the tone or the import of the article if Glenn had written "two to three hundred" or something other than "several hundred?"

Are you familiar with the rhetorical tack of teasing out one small element of an argument and using it to distract from the central point? What do you think of that gambit?