I’ve already said all I care to say about the principles behind this matter, but I’ll give you a recap here anyway, if you’re decent enough to listen.

Using vicious tactics against the vicious fails because it convinces the fence-sitters that we’re no different from the other side — and because it convinces the other side that their cause is just. We want the fanatics to doubt the justice of their cause. It doesn’t help when we give them reasons, however feeble, to keep on fighting.

Yes, of course this is warped reasoning on their parts. But anyone who is on the fence between them and us is by definition going to display some warped reasoning. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to win them over. On the contrary, we must win them over if we are to defeat militant Islam. And if we can win over the fence-sitters by doing the right thing, so much the better.

Oh, and Dylan, what if someone took away your mother, or your newborn child? What if they treated them well, but wouldn’t tell you where they were until you met a set of demands? What if you were completely innocent, and this happened to you?

Would you still put the word “kidnapping” in quotes if it were your family? No, I’m sure you’d just shrug that off. Caring about it would be evidence of a “pathetic anklebiting mentality.” Your words, not mine.

But, who knows, perhaps I’m way off.

Also, what’s with the comments section lately? It seems that numerous comments don’t address the posts themselves, (see, for example the post above me by Still Angry). Are these trackbacks that are being shown with the rest of the general comments just in case we want to follow them to whichever blog is linking to PL?

Jason Kuznicki at Positive Liberty is up in arms about a report that the United States has detained (or “kidnapped” as he would have it) the wives of suspected insurgents to