Santayana defined fanaticism as redoubling your effort while losing sight of your goal. America's recent discussions about the war on terror would give him few grounds to change his view.
Several GOP presidential candidates have said they would support bringing back waterboarding, a practice the U.S. prosecuted as a war crime after WWII. Apparently it's only torture when the other side does it.
Last week the Senate was consumed with debate over a defense bill. Among its provisions: an amendment by New Hampshire Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte to nullify an executive order banning torture. Another proposal: allowing U.S. citizens captured on U.S. soil to be held indefinitely without charge by the U.S. military. (An amendment to strike that language from the bill failed, despite the commendable support of Virginia Sens. Mark Warner and Jim Webb.) Yet another provision would require civilian authorities to hand over terrorism suspects to the military.
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And it's not like civilian authorities have been overwhelmed. The Heritage Foundation has produced a handy summary of the 40 terrorist plots foiled since 9/11. That's 40 as in four per year. Some of them posed serious danger. But some of the "plots" are almost laughable, involving losers with delusions of grandeur. Take Iyman Faris, whose plan was to make the Brooklyn Bridge collapse by using a blowtorch. Hamid Hayat lied about attending a terrorist training camp, but he wasn't plotting anything more specific than generic "jihad." Raja Lahrasib Khan's "plot" consisted of trying to ferry $1,000 to radicals in Pakistan.
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Conservatives also ought to short-circuit the circular reasoning about accused terrorists that often dominates discourse on the right. That reasoning goes like this: X says he is not a terrorist and thinks he should be able to prove it in a civilian court. But he should not enjoy that luxury, because terrorists do not deserve civilian trials and X is a terrorist.
Conservatives also ought to renew their skepticism about government's ability to get things right something they seem to doubt in every area except national security.
