Predictably, the terror-loving left and their confederates among the Vichy right were cheered by the Supreme Court’s decision to bar war crimes trials for the terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay. As this war has progressed on a global scale, it’s become increasingly clear to me that the major impediment to victory is the moral cowardice of fifth columnists within our own societies who refuse to sanction justified and necessary measures to deal with the enemies of all decent men. The most difficult thing about this war is not the defeat of the enemy on the battlefield – it is dealing with whiners, complainers, and traitors who obstruct and object to any sort of reasonable plan to win the war.

In the long term, there is only one way to win a war: to physically destroy the capability of the enemy to wage war and, at the same time, to defeat and humiliate the enemy so thoroughly that it will be generations before they even think of challenging you again. That is how you win wars. Not through “precision” bombing and efforts to limit civilian casualties. While in many cases there is no reason to deliberately cause civilian casualties, efforts to avoid them typically end up being counter-productive in the long run.

The problem is that we live in a society of sissies. I mean that in the most literal sense. In talking to opponents of the war or particular measures taken to win the war, I get the general sense that their primary objection – whatever rhetoric they may use to conceal it – is that they think that war is mean and that, if wars have to be fought, they ought to be fought in as gentle a fashion as possible.

I believe the opposite to be true – and I believe that history is on my side on this one. I don’t like war anymore than the next person. I would much rather our enemies surrender before we fire a shot. I’d much rather live in a world of strong, sensible, and friendly nations – a world where an American superpower co-exists with a British Empire and a Japanese Empire would be something like my ideal. But we don’t have that world yet. People want to kill us. Wars are still with us – wars that must be fought and won.

People would benefit, I think, from a lesson in the philosophy of William Techemseh Sherman, who once proclaimed that, “war is cruelty – there’s no use refining it. The crueller it is, the sooner it will be over.” That is what I believe. “Nice” wars – wars fought with one hand tied behind one’s back because of stupid and counter-productive moral objections to necessary tactics and strategic moves – inevitably lead to stalemate. That is because only the harshest and most cruel measures can force an enemy to capitulate and, knowing that our side is either unwilling or unable to take those measures, our enemies feel free to hold out for as long as they are physically able.

What is needed if we are to achieve victory in this war is a whole new attitude, a whole new way of waging war. No more minimizing enemy casualties. No more holding back. Blast our enemies to hell and let their “God” deal with them.

The place to start is at Guantanamo Bay. The terrorists held there have long since lost all intelligence value. Whatever information they have now is outdated and useless.

So, this is the situation with regard to the prisoners in Guantanamo:

1) They can’t be put on trial because, in most cases, they probably haven’t committed any crimes under American law and, in any case, it’s doubtful if the evidence collected would stand up to American criminal procedures (to begin with, I doubt if the Special Forces bothered to Mirandaize most of them).
2) They can’t be tried by Military Commission because the Supreme Court says they can’t.
3) They can’t be let go because, in most cases, they’d simply return to terrorism.

So, what is to be done with them? The answer is simple and elegant: kill them. Kill all of them.

Terrorists are not criminals in the legal sense: the justice system is not equipped to deal with them. Nor are they soldiers – for they do not behave by the code of soldiers, nor do they serve a legitimate cause. Rather, they are something else altogether.

So, by common law, by tradition, what are they? Simply put: they’re outlaws. They are individuals who have chosen to reject society and, in so doing, have rejected the legal protections of society. They exist outside of the law by choice – and so outside the law they should be dealt with.

Forget trials. Forget evidence. By mere fact of association, they’re all guilty. Anyone who serves with al-Qaeda or any other terrorist group in any way, shape, or form deserves to die – they’ve forfeited any right to life they may have had. Just kill them all.

How to do it? After all, shooting them might be difficult – it might lead to mass violence in the camps and, without a doubt, would be rather messy. Hangings or any other process of phased execution would, likewise, be problematic. Luckily, there’s an obvious solution: poison them.

It would be fairly easy – after all, the Americans have been feeding them for years. Few, if any, of them would have time to react once they realized what had happened and those who did – who refused to eat or proved resistant to the poison – could simply be shot.

Of course, there are other alternatives. One might be to make the whole thing an exercise in civic participation. If you held a lottery to give individuals a chance to execute a terrorist personally, I imagine there would be plenty of applicants. Personally, there are few things on this Earth that I would like more than to kill Omar Khadr, the Canadian-born Jihadist who treacherously killed an American medic with a grenade.