Churchill reborn! (no, not that wanker Ward)
Woot! I like this guy! Read on...
Neil Brown: Ruthlessness in pursuit of terrorism is no crime
[...]And if your enemy thrives on vitriol and hatred, the last thing you are obliged to do is give him a platform at a show trial to go on spreading more of his poison.
So, just as interesting as Churchill's own direct and robust proposals on what to do with the ultimate evil that came to within an ace of destroying British and European civilisation in the 1940s is the lesson this should give us about handling some very analogous events that face us today.
Fundamentalist Islam and its lunatic followers are waging another war and pose as great a danger to the civilised world as the war that Churchill was fighting in the '40s. In fact it is probably a greater danger, for the present enemy has no command structure and no identifiable centres of operation or headquarters that can be targeted and liquidated.
But the need for unequivocal and, dare I say it, more ruthless action is just as great.
Indeed, we will get nowhere if we are anything short of ruthless and if we continue to handicap ourselves, as we are now, by self-imposed moral and legal principles that are outdated, counter-productive, highly theoretical and guaranteed to do nothing but
give the enemy an advantage that could ultimately lead to our defeat.
Unfortunately, we do not seem to have learned anything about dealing with tyrants.
Take a few examples. We know from the recent furore over capital punishment that Australia's policy is to oppose the death penalty for all offences, even terrorism.
No matter what horrors the terrorists commit, they know that if they are caught in Australia, they will get legal aid, trial by jury and, at worst, "life imprisonment", in reality 10 years or so in jail. We are virtually telling them it is worthwhile taking the risk.
RTWT here. I didn't think we had men like this today- Aussies are obviously made of sterner stuff than we.
via Vodkaboy