From Dana Priest's must-read Washington Post chat on national security:
D.C.: Dana, this piracy situation seems to be being handled with kid gloves. Why can't the president declare the pirates enemy combatants, (they are terrorists, after all) swoop in and throw them in Guantanamo?
Dana Priest: They aren't terrorists. They are pirates. Common criminals with big guns and, apparently, a little boat. They are after the loot. Let's not blow this out of proportion. The reason I think it has become such a big deal is not because they kidnapped an American (Americans get kidnapped all the time by bad guys in Colombia, Iraq and elsewhere for the hostage ransom) but because this general problem has gotten so out of hand. Pirates are holding 15 ships right now for ransom and have extracted $150 million in payments from shipping companies. The kid gloves is probably because the U.S. does not want to become the lead in this mess.
This is what happens when you have a government that asserts the authority to confine people indefinitely without charging them with a crime. It eventually becomes a banal fact of life. People begin to take for granted that anything they find threatening or scary can or should be dealt with in this manner.
Also, this is a classic moment:
More Cheerful in Princeton: In the morning while I do my exercises, I watch C-Span's Washington Journal to get some idea of what people think outside Liberal La-La Land. Yesterday and today that had on classic neocons (Danielle Pletka and Rich Lowry) telling us that we have won in Iraq and that we can win in Afghanistan. Are they just trying to preserve their record of being wrong, or is there anything to their statements?
Dana Priest: I didn't hear the statements but generally that crowd has been, shall we say, overstating their claims for quite a while now.
Indeed. But hey, as long as you can always start a new think tank, what's the problem?
-- A. Serwer
