Tiger Down

Wretchard, writing about the defeat of the Tamil Tigers, says down in the comments something that I think needs to be taken seriously by those squabbling over waterboarding:

Although I not entirely sure the facts as reported are accurate, the Sri Lankan civil war may turn out to be a textbook example of how to turn favorable position into a fiasco. The West should have been on the winning side, and thus able to moderate the blows that are descending upon the unfortunate ordinary Tamils now. But the West appears to have been seized by fecklessness amounting to madness; a kind of peacenikism run amuck that has had catastrophic consequences not only for Western diplomacy but for the Tamils themselves; a more perfect demonstration of the destructive stupidity of UN-ism and NGO-ism would be hard to find. Now it seems that not only has China managed to insert itself into the scene, it has managed to demonstrate forcibly how stupid it is to take Western advice.

On an another level, I almost laughed at reading how the Tigers in their extremity would settle for nothing less than a guarantee of safety from the Gringo man: the US and Britain. They didn’t want a guarantee from the UN; nor the European Union, nor the NGOs nor any pillar of the enlightened so-called International Community. They wanted the protection of the US and Britain. Because when you come right down to it, they were more certain of a fair shake from these reviled powers than from anyone else.

I think it is highly probable that Jihadis the world over if captured, would overwhelmingly choose — nay beg — to be held in US or British custody rather than put their trust in the gentle ministrations of their co-religionists in Egypt, Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. If you showed them the Bush memos, they would agree to be treated thus with such haste as to be unseemly, when the alternative is incarceration in some Muslim country. We’ve been fed such a load of drivel by the Left that we sometimes forget that almost nobody would choose to live or trust in a country they are fond of and that practically any sane person would prefer to take their chances in the places the Left hates the most.