[x-factor]

Originally Posted by The Reaper

I have not suggested that we do anything of the sort.

To be clear, I wasn't implying that you had. I was responding to the general issue your rhetorical question raised, not to you in particular.

On the other hand, I think that it would be prudent to do some worst case planning. As noted, with age comes pragmatism and reality, except for the most diehard of libs.

I don't want to give the impression that a) I believe anyone here has anything but good intentions or b) I don't think anything needs to be done. I already mentioned a couple of pragmatic policies I think would be appropriate (domestic CT agency ala MI5, beefed up surveillance capability to include more judges to speed up the warrant process, etc) and your notion on recruiting American Muslims is another one. I think its important to distinguish, as Peregrino said, between policies that enforce our existing laws and ones that rewrite them.

As for worst case planning, certainly I'm all for that too, but even in the worst case there's still lines we shouldn't cross and creative tactics that we can use to avoid having to cross them.

My concern is that we don't seriously damage half a millenium (at a minimum) of evolution towards a better world (from the Protestant Reformation to the Enlightenment to present day America) out of panic.

I would rather fight those who have no honor without it myself, rather than see my children not grow up at all. Sometimes, you have to amputate a limb to save the patient. Did Lincoln destroy the Union when he suspended Constitutional rights and freedoms?

I know we made amends for Lincoln's suspension of habeus corpus and the Japanese internment after the threats had abated, but still we need to be very careful its a slippery slope.

We amputate one limb for this enemy and what about the next one? Or the enemy after that? Again, like Peregrino said, we can win and still fail.

Nevermind that I think some of the harsher methods won't work anyway. The more overtly draconian in dealing with our own Muslim citizenry we get the more we'll just be playing to the jihadists' hand and helping radicalize the fence-sitters both at home and abroad. I'm going to paraphrase Peregrino one more time since his last post was so good: the key to the fight is proving our way of life is better, not confirming the enemies' lies about it.