My outrage has been mostly in hibernation lately. Alito, the domestic spying, all that kind of stuff would have had me blowing gaskets two years ago. Recently, though, I've kept my ire to myself.
I think I'm a lot closer to being a race car in the red again. Although the initial feeling upon reading this is more akin to nausea than outrage.
I'm sure plenty of people will defend it as an example of steely resolve and stuff that's necessary for us to do to win the OMG War on Terror. They'll offer a false choice: "Would you rather die in an attack or have some terrorist's wife kidnapped?" As if it were that fucking simple.
I don't really need to explain the moral issues here, nor the unintended consequences. (It's kind of hard to claim the moral high ground at the general assembly when you're the country that goes around kidnapping wives.) I feel like doing so would just be reading Yeats in a hurricane.
Meanwhile, there will be some uninformative news reports about this, some outrage which will be quickly marginalized, then forgotten. And I'll feel like an ass for having gotten so pissed off again for no good reason.
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I just got around to reading Seymour Hersh's "Chain of Command." Apparently this tactic was used by Jordan when it busted up Abu Nidal's terror ring. As depicted in the book, the Americans looked wistfully upon the practice but refrained from using it because it was against the law. Something must have changed recently.
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