On Balance ...

The moral integrity of a compassionate and good man seeking to make sense of an undisciplined world where the good order of international balance has been set on edge by the gradual and stunningly vicious success of a relatively small, but resourceful and intransigent order of Islamist jihadists is set on edge by the irrationality of it all in an otherwise rational world order.

As though by reason alone, by extending an offer of listening respectfully to an aggrievement and attempting to work out a reasonable response, beneficial to settling the point of contention, the afflicting will see the light of reason.

President Obama - in speaking of the conflicting opinions in the United States over the approach to responding to terrorism, and the agenda of his predecessor in meeting the challenge - is right when he observes that "Both (ends of the spectrum) may be sincere in their views, but neither side is right".

Perhaps entirely right, might have been better put. Somewhere in between. To harbour a healthy sense of trepidation over potential, but not succumb to irrational fear. And to respond proportionally, yet wholly engaged.

To maintain, as President Obama has done, that it is the hard-hitting response of the United States against terrorism that may be at fault for the increasing numbers of jihadists is questionable, at best. Spain, Indonesia, Britain have also had to handle the fall-out of attacks on their soil, by terrorist groups.

As have Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, on an ongoing basis, none of whom agonize over handling their attackers with kid gloves.

Democratic societies prefer to react and to protect themselves under the letter of their national laws, in observation of international law. Although those laws were never constructed with the challenge of opposing the unappeasable will to bloodshed of terror groups dedicated to instilling mass terror in the societies they target.

The United States suffered censure internationally with the use of Guantanamo Bay as a terror-incarceration site. Where jihadists or those under suspicion of being jihadists have been handled with rather less than the rule of law, and kid gloves. Where methods approaching the grimness of torture were employed, which insulted the Geneva Convention.

Meant to set a standard of international behaviour, a protocol for treatment of prisoners of war. Terrorists do not oblige by acting out their jihadist agendas with treaties in mind; their purpose is to kill and to terrorize. They do not represent national standing armies.

The West and western democracies agonize about overstepping the bounds of decent human response in the apprehension and treatment of suspected terrorists. But there is a certain amount of hypocrisy in play here. The simple fact being that there are national agencies that are meant to be discreet and operate strictly underground, tasked with actions not to see the light of day.

If President Obama feels so conflicted and morally agonized over Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, perhaps he might respond to a question that might puzzle some ... why appoint Lieutenant-General Stanley McChrystal to act as the new U.S. commander in Afghanistan? This is the man credited with turning around the emerging civil war situation in Iraq, where Iraqi Sunni were inspired to challenge al-Qaeda in Iraq; the "surge".

This man is a counter-terrorism expert. Men under his command are known as throat-slitters. They identify enemies of the state, those whose intent it is to sow terror and bloodshed in the United States, or among American troops, and they summarily execute them. This secretive practise is no secret to the President of the United States nor his executive body.

Why the agony of the double standard?