A Desert Called Peace (100 page)

Votes . . . what does it say about us or our preferred democratic system that so many of our people prefer the palatable lie to the unpleasant truth? Nothing good, surely. Thomas Carlyle had this much right, though: "A lie will not stand." Indeed, the Islamofascists are going to knock it down around our heads while at the same time removing any restraint of ours behind which they hide. Then again, as mentioned, they're insane.

"'Are going to?'" you ask. Oh, yes. This goes back to torture. Many people who would otherwise object to torture would permit it in the so-called "Ticking Bomb Scenario." This is, though few seem to realize it, an admission that, given a means of immediate feedback, torture works. But what is al Qaeda, what is the entire Islamic Fundamentalist movement, in an age of nukes and bugs and gas, except one big ticking bomb with an unknown time of detonation?

Is it the immediacy of the threat that makes torture valid in the ticking bomb scenario? Immediacy hardly seems an absolute moral principle. How about immediacy times potential harm; isn't that better? So if you can morally break out "Skevington's Daughter" (Look it up; I don't have a sample here to show you. Not my thing.) for five hundred pounds of TNT in a van somewhere now, can't you break it out also for a nuke in New York in ten years? For a dozen nukes scattered about the U.S. or Europe in twenty-five? For a world-scourging plague in fifty?

I think you can. If the threat is real, I think you—we—must.

As I said, it's very sad.

And then, too, let us not forget the
real
poltroons. You know the type: "We'll officially forbid torture but if you—soldier or law enforcement officer or intelligence agent—engage in it illegally with the intent of protecting me and mine and it turns out that you just might have protected us then we'll pardon you. Then we can feel clean and safe and pure and virtuous and still be properly grateful."

Despicable moral cowardice; that's what that is.

Someone (Michael Kinsley, I think) called all this, "salami slicing." He was right, of course, it often
is
salami slicing. Salami slicing is not one of the classical logical fallacies. Ever try to eat a large salami without slicing it? If it's a question of slicing the salami or starving do you prefer to die? Go ahead with my blessings. Before you expire though, could you pass over the salami, the knife and the crackers? Yes, they're there in the little refrigerator, in behind the beer.

Thanks. Care for some salami? Go on, have some. It might help keep you alive.

Special thanks to the many people who helped with this, from concept to copy editing: Yoli (who puts up with me), Matt Pethybridge, Sam Swindell, Bill Crenshaw, Mr. Dunnell, Mo Kirby, Sue Kerr, my brother John, Scott Connors, Genie Nickolson,
Obras Zorilleras
on Baen's Bar, Toni Weisskopf, Modean Moon, and, of course, Jim Baen.

If I've forgotten anyone, chalk it up to premature senility.