The Courage to Rule

Courage is the ladder on which all the other virtues mount.
--Clare Booth Luce

Capitol Hill is in an uproar over rules for questioning terror suspects...President George W. Bush wants to make it rougher on those who would take away our peace and way of life in American. Why do we need such rules? We’re the only one’s that will ever follow them, and the version Congress wants to pass would effectively tie one arm behind our backs.

Al Quaida certainly has not observed the Geneva Convention. They don’t wear uniforms; they operate behind the skirts of women and from within houses of worship, schools and hospitals. Why do we need to set up exceptions for these thugs?

When will the eggheads in Washington figure out that these people are hell-bent on destroying each and every one of us? They're like the Japanese in WW-2, as American forces approached the homeland of Japan. There was no sanctity for life, and the bloodshed was so overwhelming on Okinawa, President Truman deemed the use of nuclear force a better, more humane alternative. That decision speaks volumes.

I am not suggesting that we resort to that extreme. For one thing, terrorism today is the product of no one country, knows no borders; it is a movement, not a municipality. There’s nothing to bomb back to the stone age, except the innocent civilians caught in the crossfire.

A toughening of the “rules” by which the United States elicits information from its captives is perfectly okay by me—so long as the toughening is directed towards the interrogatees, not the interrogators.

Face it, brute force is the only thing thugs understand and respond to. If they do not value their own lives, why should we?

In a choice between us or them, I choose us, frankly. That does not make us any less of a nation; such a position does not lower our standards of humanity. But it will ensure that we survive, and at the end of the day, that’s The President’s job—to protect the citizens of the United States of America.