What Would You Have Done?

At his retirement, George W. Bush, it was reported, was looking forward to the lush fees he would earn through speaking engagements. He knew how remunerative the speaking circuit was, and felt entitled to believe that he would be in high demand for speaking engagements and would end up right royally endowed. If his father could do it and become wealthy at it, why not him?

And then, of course, there was also that very impressive sum earned for his memoir, Decision Points. Look, it's a tough job, being president of the United States of America. Talk about pressure, talk about earning that pittance of a salary in the name of the public good. Yes, there's the power thing, and that's considerable, but beyond ego, it's desperately fatiguing.

Not for the faint of heart. How would you like to be reading a story to a group of elementary school kids when your secret service agent whispers to you that a series of spectacularly deadly attacks against your country are taking place and everything is chaos and confusion and death?

You act. Decisively. As best you can, given the uncertainties and the need to ensure that the Commander in Chief is kept safe from harm so he can continue administering the affairs of the country. A vast, populous, wealthy and world-dominating country. The weight of those responsibilities are not to be taken lightly.

And then, suddenly those international trips in response to invitations for speaking engagements are summarily interrupted. A trip to Switzerland to speak in Geneva at a dinner for the United Israel appeal, having to be cancelled. Why? Risk of violence. Threats to have him prosecuted. Why? Because he authorized extraordinary measures.

Which extraordinary times require. He proudly admitted in his book that he took it upon himself personally, as the executive administrative lawmaker of his country to give consent to a mode of enquiry held to be torture by his critics. No lack of critics. Everyone laughing at his awkward sentence constructions.

Lack of intelligence of the President of the United States? Not quite; a diamond in the rough, a man with a solid, good sense of puckish humour, and that counts for quite a bit. "Damn right", he gave the go-ahead for water-boarding. Extreme persuasion to elicit from reluctant enemies information that would assist his administration in countering ongoing threats.

This decisiveness is what is required of leaders when their countries are imperilled. Amnesty International considers him a criminal, providing "a detailed factual and legal analysis of ... criminal responsibility for acts of torture". What would they have him do? Wheedle and coax and cajole? Were they responsible for the well-being of a country?

Christopher Hitchens, out of a sense of curiosity, decided to submit himself to waterboarding. And then he wrote how he felt about having undergone the procedure, which was anything but pleasant; it was indeed a form of torture, he said. Persuasive; it elicited from the few - and they were few - valuable information assisting the U.S. in its battle against terrorism.

The United States signed on to the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment or Punishment (sounds quaint, doesn't it?) and when they did, it was done out of a sincere conviction they would never apply anything approximating torture for any reason. That was before 9/11.

Much changed on that date. Waterboarding was not the worst of the changes to take place, nor was Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. But then, we're talking about a civilized and civil society, not a menacingly tribal, viciously hateful, death-dealing, death-embracing ideology fixated with Islamism's fantasy of jihad and martyrdom.

As for Amnesty International taking credit for frightening George W. Bush off his international speaking circuit; they just wish. In fact, security agents had discovered a plan by Arab Muslims, anarchists and their anti-Israel sympathizers to mount a protest that would be certain to lead to violence, as reported to the Swiss daily Tribune de Geneve.

Moreover, despite what Amnesty International claims, a Swiss Justice Ministry spokesman informed the Associated Press that the former U.S. president has immunity from prosecution for actions while he was in office. It's fairly easy to be an armchair critic, to stand on the high horse of humanitarian actions under any form of dread provocation.

Righteous indignation makes the righteous feel good, but it does nothing whatever to protect a population from the atrocities planned for them by those who think little of wholesale slaughter of people to demonstrate the lethal level of their hatred.