XDA

I coached community soccer for about a decade as my kids were growing up. I attended too many meetings where rules were promulgated and discussed. Finally, I was able to cut through to the core and see which rules were good and which ones that were bad. Here's how it shook out. Those rules that got more kids playing soccer were good; those rules that in any way prevented kids from playing soccer were bad. Let's apply this sort of test to a different real world problem, the War against Islamofascist Jihadists.

When the enemy sends someone over here to carry out a plan to kill Americans and destroy this nation in whole or in part (like Mohammed Atta, for example), the very best thing that can happen is that we detect that person and he (it's going to be a he, trust me) suddenly disappears and is never heard from again (until the war is over). It's the uncertainty that is the most damaging to the enemy in some foreign land. What happened? Was he detected and killed? Was he detected and flipped? Did he just abandon his task and run away? What went wrong? How was he detected? Who informed against him? What happened? Disappearance is the best thing that can happen for us; the worst thing that can happen for them. Anything that helps us make enemy agents in America just disappear is good; anything that makes it hard to do that is bad.

I guess we could just kill them or execute them without delay after a military tribunal as we did the German spy/saboteurs in the Ex Parte Quirin case; that would be one form of making the agent disappear (and it is the traditional punishment for spy/saboteurs during wartime). However, I'm not necessarily advocating that. A captured enemy agent properly interrogated (not tortured) can be a big asset. What we don't want to do is tell anyone we captured him, how we captured him, what he did wrong or let him have access to his family and his fellow jihadist so they learn to do it better the next time. That's the dumb way. Simply disappearing is the ideal.

As things happen in the world (and if we hear about captures of foreign agents and foiled foreign plans, we're necessarily doing it the dumb way--I'm thinking more about U.S. citizens and what the administration and Courts are doing with that) I'll post with this simple rule to guide the discussion. I can hear your hearts all atwitter.