Remember the story about the man condemned to death by the king, who before being taken away to the headsman and chopping block cries out, "Sire!  Spare my life and I will teach your horse to talk!"

The king, intrigued by the possibility, gave the condemned man a one year reprieve, in which to teach the king's horse to talk. 

The man, when asked what the heck he thought he was doing, making such a promise, replied: "In one year, the king may be dead,or the horse may be dead or I may be dead.  And who knows, the horse may learn to talk."


We procrastinate in the same way.  If there is a difficult problem, we set it aside, in the hope that it will go away or that we will.    Sometimes it works and the problem goes away.  Sometimes the problem gets bigger.


For centuries, if someone was insane, he or she would be locked away. Debtors were treated the same way.  ("Can't pay your bills?  Go to prison!")  And still we treat criminals and terrorists that way.  Lock them away to avoid having to face the problem.


Anybody watch last Sunday’s “60 Minutes”?  Part about how Saudi Arabia treats (in the medical/psychological sense) their returning detainees? http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/04/30/60minutes/main4980766.shtml

One point was that said detainees tended to become more radical in captivity.

Other point is that most (maybe 90%) can be cured by treatment.  (Of course, the Saudis co-opted them with goodies as well as counseling, which most countries will not do.)

Religious radicalism is like cult membership.  It is a treatable disease.  You have to break the adherents out of the cult and then de-program them.

Our approach at Guantanamo was not to de-program them to try to solve the problem but to lock them away as pariah-sociopaths.  Which has not worked at all.  We would have been better off putting them under house arrest with ordinary American families.  In sort of adult foster care.   Hell, I'd take a detainee if you paid me half of the per capita cost of Guantanamo.

We are still in the 18th century in out approach to anti-social behavior.  We don’t try to treat criminals, we just sequester them away with other criminals and hope they cure each other; let the prison gang hierarchies do the socializing;  good luck on that. 

We don’t try to treat terrorism.

But treating terrorism, in the sense of treating religious radicalism, is the only possible approach to terrorism.  The Bush-Cheney method is like trying to discipline a chihuahua dog; swat the dog with rolled up newspaper and he snarls and bites the newspaper and becomes more vicious. 

If we follow the Bush approach to “fighting terrorism,” we cannot win.  Terrorism is based on hate and alienation.  The more we fight and kill terrorists, the more hate and alientation we stir up.    The more bystanders we kill and maim, the more terrorism.

Bush’s plan was to prop-up or institute governments in the Middle East that would provide a structure by which they themselves would co-opt and fight terrorism and terrorism’s roots.  The problem with that is that these governments themselves arouse radicalism and contribute to hatred and alienation.  They are not an answer or at least a  full answer, but are instead our attempt to pass on the problem to others.

We have to learn how to treat radicalism in the individual and radicalism in societies.  The small fraction of detainees who were terrorists could have been our lab rats for experimenting on treatment.  We failed to take advantage of the opportunity. 

This hits close to home, too  Religious radicalism ad alienation is a growing trend in our own country, that needs to be confronted and dealt with.

Regarding waterboarding and such, what is with so many Republicans?  They  are saying--
1.  Waterboarding is not torture.
2.  But, we need to keep secret all matters regarding waterboarding because we find it embarassing and sensitive,
3.  even though we don’t give a fig what other countries think of us;
4.  and waterboarding is so effective,
5.  (even though it is just a leetle twist of the wrist, not anything like torture really, just momentary discomfort)
6.  that we should feel free to use it anytime,
7.  even though the CIA and Bush administration themselves stopped using waterboarding
8.  though they continued to defend the practice,
9.  and even though no review showed waterboarding to be effective 
10  because the CIA refused to undertake the review of the effectiveness of waterboarding
11  that the CIA Inspector General requested back in 2003.

Talk about schizophrenic!  Dizzy, ditsy Republicans.  No consistency, no integrity of thought or opinion.