THE dead at Fort Hood had not even been laid to rest when their massacre became yet another political battle cry for the self-proclaimed patriots of the American right.

Their verdict was unambiguous: Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an American-born psychiatrist of Palestinian parentage who sent e-mail to a radical imam, was a terrorist. And he did not act alone. His co-conspirators included our military brass, the Defense Department, the F.B.I., the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the Joint Terrorism Task Force and, of course, the liberal media and the Obama administration. All these institutions had failed to heed the warning signs raised by Hasan’s behavior and activities because they are blinded by political correctness toward Muslims, too eager to portray criminals as sympathetic victims of social injustice, and too cowardly to call out evil when it strikes 42 innocents in cold blood.

Today on DenverPost.com, Vincent Carroll wrote: "Shouldn't this country's experience after 9/11 reassure those who fear a backlash against Muslims?... The most recent data, from 2007...: Of 1,477 offenses motivated by religious bias, only 9 percent were directed at Muslims."

Peter Boyles was echoing the "there has been no Anti-Muslim backlash" mantra.  They seems to be ignoring the rest of the FBI Religious Hate Crimes data:

Year - % of Religious Hate Crimes that were Anti-Islamic

1995 - 2.3%

1996 - 1.9% (page 11)

1997 - 2.0% (page 10)

1998 - 1.5% (page 10)

1999 - 2.3% (page 9)

2000 - 1.9% (page 11)

2001 - 26%  <-- I'd call this a "backlash"

2002 - 10.8% (page 13)

2003 - 11% (page 9)

2004 - 13%

2005 - 11.1%

2006 - 12%

2007 - 9.0% (last year available)

Muslims in America were 0.5% of total U.S. population in 2001 (Jewish was 1.4%).  In 2007, Muslims made up 0.6% of total U.S. population (Jewish was 1.7%).

A bit of war music for Veteran's Day, the dead cry, 'Remember me'  the mothers cry, 'I can't forget'  the nation cries, 'I know not war or sacrifice and we will forget'  MC

Music from "Mansions of the Lord"

The song was sung by the West Point Glee Club at the end of the movie "We Were Soldiers"

"The Mansions of the Lord" 

To fallen soldiers let us sing 
where no rockets fly nor bullets wing 
Our broken brothers let us bring 
to the mansions of the Lord 

No more bleeding no more fight 
No prayers pleading through the night 
just divine embrace, eternal light 
in the mansions of the Lord 

Where no mothers cry and no children weep 
We will stand and guard tho the angels sleep 
All through the ages safely keep the mansions of the Lord 

Words by Randall Wallace

Dispatching more troops to Afghanistan would be a monumental bet and probably a bad one, most likely a waste of lives and resources that might simply empower the Taliban. In particular, one of the most compelling arguments against more troops rests on this stunning trade-off: For the cost of a single additional soldier stationed in Afghanistan for one year, we could build roughly 20 schools there.

It’s hard to do the calculation precisely, but for the cost of 40,000 troops over a few years — well, we could just about turn every Afghan into a Ph.D.

The hawks respond: It’s naïve to think that you can sprinkle a bit of education on a war-torn society. It’s impossible to build schools now because the Taliban will blow them up.

In fact, it’s still quite possible to operate schools in Afghanistan — particularly when there’s a strong “buy-in” from the local community.

Greg Mortenson, author of “Three Cups of Tea,” has now built 39 schools in Afghanistan and 92 in Pakistan — and not one has been burned down or closed. The aid organization CARE has 295 schools educating 50,000 girls in Afghanistan, and not a single one has been closed or burned by the Taliban. The Afghan Institute of Learning, another aid group, has 32 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with none closed by the Taliban (although local communities have temporarily suspended three for security reasons).

In short, there is still vast scope for greater investment in education, health and agriculture in Afghanistan. These are extraordinarily cheap and have a better record at stabilizing societies than military solutions, which, in fact, have a pretty dismal record.

In Afghanistan, for example, we have already increased our troop presence by 40,000 troops since the beginning of last year, yet the result has not been the promised stability but only more casualties and a strengthened insurgency. If the last surge of 40,000 troops didn’t help, why will the next one be so different?

Matthew P. Hoh, an American military veteran who was the top civilian officer in Zabul Province, resigned over Afghan policy, as The Washington Post reported this week. Mr. Hoh argues that our military presence is feeding the insurgency, not quelling it.

Already our troops have created a backlash with Kabul University students this week burning President Obama in effigy until police dispersed them with gunshots. The heavier our military footprint, the more resentment — and perhaps the more legitimacy for the Taliban.

Schools are not a quick fix or silver bullet any more than troops are. But we have abundant evidence that they can, over time, transform countries, and in the area near Afghanistan there’s a nice natural experiment in the comparative power of educational versus military tools.

Since 9/11, the United States has spent $15 billion in Pakistan, mostly on military support, and today Pakistan is more unstable than ever. In contrast, Bangladesh, which until 1971 was a part of Pakistan, has focused on education in a way that Pakistan never did. Bangladesh now has more girls in high school than boys. (In contrast, only 3 percent of Pakistani women in the tribal areas are literate.)

Those educated Bangladeshi women joined the labor force, laying the foundation for a garment industry and working in civil society groups like BRAC and Grameen Bank. That led to a virtuous spiral of development, jobs, lower birth rates, education and stability. That’s one reason Al Qaeda is holed up in Pakistan, not in Bangladesh, and it’s a reminder that education can transform societies.

When I travel in Pakistan, I see evidence that one group — Islamic extremists — believes in the transformative power of education. They pay for madrassas that provide free schooling and often free meals for students. They then offer scholarships for the best pupils to study abroad in Wahhabi madrassas before returning to become leaders of their communities. What I don’t see on my trips is similar numbers of American-backed schools. It breaks my heart that we don’t invest in schools as much as medieval, misogynist extremists.

For roughly the same cost as stationing 40,000 troops in Afghanistan for one year, we could educate the great majority of the 75 million children worldwide who, according to Unicef, are not getting even a primary education. We won’t turn them into graduate students, but we can help them achieve literacy. Such a vast global education campaign would reduce poverty, cut birth rates, improve America’s image in the world, promote stability and chip away at extremism.

Education isn’t a panacea, and no policy in Afghanistan is a sure bet. But all in all, the evidence suggests that education can help foster a virtuous cycle that promotes stability and moderation. So instead of sending 40,000 troops more to Afghanistan, how about opening 40,000 schools?

NY Times

If Initiative 300 in Denver passes, and you forget your wallet and get pulled over, police officers will be forced to impound your car leaving you stranded.

Which is why we're asking for your help. We need you to vote No on Initiative 300 if you live in Denver County.

It's deceptive. It's scary. It's expensive. And it's unnecessary.

Police officers already have the ability to impound vehicles if they are concerned about public safety. The Denver Post, Mayor Hickenlooper, ten members of the Denver City Council, House Speaker Terrence Carroll, and a long list of Denver community organizations and individuals oppose Initiative 300. And the proponents of this nightmare are counting on low turnout in an off-year election to sneak this one past us.

• Send an e-mail to 5 friends in Denver and ask them to vote no.
• Talk to your friends, neighbors, and co-workers in person about how important it is for them to return their ballots, and ask them to vote no on Initiative 300.
• Sign up to volunteer.

As for voting, the 2009 Election will be Mail-In Ballot only. Voting couldn't be easier-- it just takes 2 stamps to return, or you can drop it off to the Denver Election Commission in person. So please Vote NO on Initiative 300 and help spread the word.

If you live in Denver, you should have received your ballot in the mail. To check on your voter registration and on the status of your ballot, click here to look it up at the Secretary of State:

http://www.sos.state.co.us/Voter

If you believe you are registered to vote and you have not received your ballot, call 311 today.

"— Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s reported recommendation of 40,000 additional troops — is itself counterinsurgency light. In his definitive recent field manual on the subject, Gen. David Petraeus stipulates that real counterinsurgency requires 20 to 25 troops for each thousand residents. That comes out, conservatively, to 640,000 troops for Afghanistan (population, 32 million). Some 535,000 American troops couldn’t achieve a successful counterinsurgency in South Vietnam, which had half Afghanistan’s population and just over a quarter of its land area."

Could $292,000 pay for a college or trade school education, room and board?  Subsidize a young person until they could land a good job?  With the change left over, could it pay to make high school more hospitable to the poor? For public works projects? For more teachers? Research and development?  We ignore the needs of young people at a terrible cost. And yes, it does take a village.  What are the economic effects of 1.2 million high school dropouts per year?  At $7,300 per student, that amounts to $8.76 billion a year, year two adds another 1.2 million students and becomes $17.52 billion, ad infinitum. Can we solve the problem?  Can we afford not to? What can you buy with $8.76 billion?  How about 175,200 teachers at $50 K a pop, that's one teacher for every 7 dropouts.  MC

"The report puts the collective cost to the nation over the working life of each high school dropout at $292,000. Mr. Sum said that figure took into account lost tax revenues, since dropouts earn less and therefore pay less in taxes than high school graduates. It also includes the costs of providing food stamps and other aid to dropouts and of incarcerating those who turn to crime."

The picture is even bleaker for African-Americans, with nearly one in four young black male dropouts incarcerated or otherwise institutionalized on an average day, the study said. That compares with about one in 14 young, male, white, Asian or Hispanic dropouts.

Researchers at Northeastern University used census and other government data to carry out the study, which tracks the employment, workplace, parenting and criminal justice experiences of young high school dropouts.

"We’re trying to show what it means to be a dropout in the 21st century United States," said Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern, who headed a team of researchers that prepared the report. "It’s one of the country’s costliest problems. The unemployment, the incarceration rates — it’s scary."

A coalition of civil rights and public education advocacy groups and a network of alternative schools in Chicago commissioned the report as part of a push for new educational opportunities for the nation’s 6.2 million high school dropouts.

"The dropout rate is driving the nation’s increasing prison population, and it’s a drag on America’s economic competitiveness," said Marc H. Morial, the former New Orleans mayor who is president of the National Urban League, one of the groups in the coalition that commissioned the report. "This report makes it clear that every American pays a cost when a young person leaves school without a diploma."

The report puts the collective cost to the nation over the working life of each high school dropout at $292,000. Mr. Sum said that figure took into account lost tax revenues, since dropouts earn less and therefore pay less in taxes than high school graduates. It also includes the costs of providing food stamps and other aid to dropouts and of incarcerating those who turn to crime.

Continued at the: NY Times

From the Bob Herbert op/ed, "Igniting the Growth of Jobs"

NY Times

'40,000 teachers lost their jobs in the last year.  16 to 29 year olds, worst unemployment ever since national records have been kept.  One in four black men in Illinois between the ages of 20 and 24 has a job.'

One of the regents of the University of Colorado, Michael Carrigan, told me that Colorado had a return on investment of 40 to 1 for each dollar invested in higher ed. The only figures I could find for Colorado was a 15.07 percent return.  New Jersey leads the nation with 42.32 percent, followed by Massachusetts 39.16, New York 37.82, California 36.53 percent.  All in all a substantial return on investment.  The lowest in the nation, predictably, was Mississippi at 6.49 percent.  Most surprisingly, Indiana is second from the bottom at 7.22 percent

Higher Ed Return on Investment for States

Most significantly, Herbert says this:

""The past," as William Faulkner told us, "is not dead. It’s not even past." The lessons of the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s are right in front of us, ready to be studied, analyzed, updated and applied to the present-day needs of the country."

I hate to say this, but we are a country of nepotism, in our unions, our military, in corporations, in government.  Because of this "inbreeding" and counterproductive behavior, we must import the brightest minds/strongest work ethics from around the world to carry our water and be used as if indentured servants.  It is all a vast pyramid scheme where the unqualified extinguish the flames of the most gifted and reap the rewards off the backs of the timid.  Their only qualification?  Being members of the lucky sperm club.  Here's something the "conservative revision" Bible will surely leave out, "As you have done to the least of these......."  The least very much includes the youthful poor, who have no say in the conditions they find themselves in and obviously don't have the attention of those that have the most.  While we argue about war, healthcare, social justice, gay rights, Obama's Nobel Prize, etc., no one considers our most precious asset nor what should be our greatest legacy to them, "Liberty and Justice for all.."  This is what is great about the idea of America, eloquently pronounced in the Preamble of the Constitution, not just to ourselves but to our Posterity,  the word was capitalized unlike the word "ourselves":

"............We accept that life is unfair, that some people will live in cramped apartments and others in sprawling mansions. But our existing insurance system is not simply inequitable but also lethal: a very recent, peer-reviewed article in the American Journal of Public Health finds that nearly 45,000 uninsured people die annually as a consequence of not having insurance. That’s one needless death every 12 minutes.

When nearly 3,000 people were killed on 9/11, we began wars and were willing to devote more than $1 trillion in additional expenses. Yet about the same number of Americans die from our failed insurance system every three weeks.

The obstacle isn’t so much money as priorities. America made it a priority to provide tax breaks, largely to the wealthy, in the Bush years, at a 10-year cost including interest of $2.4 trillion. Allocating less than half that much to assure equal access to health care isn’t deemed an equal priority............."

Complete Op/Ed at The NY Times

"Don't look back, they may be gaining on you." :-))

denver and the west

Romanoff's Senate campaign raises more than $200,000

By The Denver Post

The campaign for U.S. Senate candidate-come-lately Andrew Romanoff said Tuesday that it had raised more than $200,000 in the 21 days he was eligible to collect donations in the third quarter.

Romanoff needed a big start to show he's viable, though he will have to keep up the pace to compete with the fundraising juggernaut of Sen. Michael Bennet, who has taken in $2.5 million and counting since his appointment in January, analysts say.

Romanoff fundraisers collected cash from more than 1,500 individuals, said spokeswoman Joelle Martinez, using that figure to bolster Romanoff's image as the race's grassroots candidate.

Continued at the Denver Post

Great writing and video clips

What "Capitalism" Is Not

By Terrance Heath Created 10/02/2009 - 11:26am

If I were to summarize message Michael Moore's new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story in one sentence, it would be this: Capitalism is not a form of government. That's the answer to the question posed at the beginning of the movie, via 1950s educational/propaganda films.

Capitalism is not a form of government. It is a tool we've allowed to be used as a weapon. We threw out the instructions and rules for its usage, and it became a weapon — much like a hammer can be used to build a house or smash a skull, depending on whether it's wielded by a carpenter or a psychopath.

Moore spends the rest of the movie showing us how we not only tossed out the rules, but junked every other tool in our collective toolbox, and left ourselves with the hammer. But everything is not a nail, and the hammer isn't suited to every aspect of the task in front of us. Moore gives us until the end of the movie to figure out what that seemingly abandoned task might be.

Capitalism is populated by people whose names we know and people whose names we don't — all characters in what Michael Moore has subtitled "a love story." We know the speeches of the former, and the stories of the latter, because we've watched those same stories unfold in our own communities in the last couple of years. The speeches were intended to arouse our passions, by retelling part the most recent chapter in the story of how we got here — the part that happened on Wall Street and in Washington.

Continued

Campaign for America's Future

"It's Deja Vu all over again" Yogi Berra

Unfortunately, we still refuse to have a national discussion about Vietnam and not just about our casualties- US Armed Forces 58,202 Killed In Action 304,704 Wounded In Action, 1,948 Missing in Action (Nov.7, 2001). The most tragic omission? We never bothered to own up to what actually happened TO Vietnam, Armed Forces of South Vietnam 233,748 Killed In Action 1,169,763 Wounded In Action. One million North Vietnamese Army and Vietcong killed, three million Vietnamese civilians killed. Who are we that we can ignore our responsibility for such chaos? And what are the consequences of such belligerence? Such ignorance? The question is staring at us again in Afghanistan and Iraq. Where do Islamic radicals get their weapons and ammunition? Does a country ever secure the blessings of liberty by the actions of foreigners? Can centuries of isolation, theocracy and tradition be supplanted by military might or intrigue? In ten years? 30? 50? Ever? Indeed the doves ARE right.

November 30, 2008

'The Doves Were Right' By RICHARD HOLBROOKE

LESSONS IN DISASTER

McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam

By Gordon M. Goldstein

300 pp. Times Books/ Henry Holt & Company. $25

In 1961, John Fitzgerald Kennedy brought to Washington a new generation of pragmatic young activists who came to be known as the New Frontiersmen. When the journalist Theodore White later wrote a memorable photo essay about them for Life magazine, he called them the "action-intellectuals."

The most celebrated were Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara and McGeorge Bundy, whose title - modest by today's standards - was special assistant to the president for national security affairs, but whose importance was great (today the position has a more grandiose title - national security adviser). Mc­Namara, of course, became one of the most controversial public servants in modern times, while Bundy got less attention, except for Kai Bird's excellent 1998 dual biography of him and his ­brother William (who had served as assistant secretary of state for East Asia).

 But in "Lessons in Disaster," Gordon Goldstein's highly unusual book, Bundy emerges as the most interesting figure in the Vietnam tragedy - less for his unfortunate part in prosecuting the war than for his agonized search 30 years later to understand himself.

Bundy was the quintessential Eastern Establishment Republican, a member of a family that traced its Boston roots back to 1639. His ties to Groton (where he graduated first in his class), Yale and then Harvard were deep. At the age of 27, he wrote, to national acclaim, the 'memoirs" of former Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson. In 1953, Bundy became dean of the faculty at Harvard - an astonishing responsibility for someone still only 34. Even David Halberstam, who would play so important a role in the public demolition of Bundy's reputation in his classic, "The Best and the Brightest," admitted that "Bundy was a magnificent dean" who played with the faculty "like a cat with mice."

Continued: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/books/review/Holbrooke-t.html

THE most intriguing, and possibly most fateful, news of last week could not be found in the health care horse-trading in Congress, or in the international zoo at the United Nations, or in the Iran slapdown in Pittsburgh. It was an item tucked into a blog at ABCNews.com. George Stephanopoulos reported that the new “must-read book” for President Obama’s war team is “Lessons in Disaster” by Gordon M. Goldstein, a foreign-policy scholar who had collaborated with McGeorge Bundy, the Kennedy-Johnson national security adviser, on writing a Robert McNamara-style mea culpa about his role as an architect of the Vietnam War.

Bundy left his memoir unfinished at his death in 1996. Goldstein’s book, drawn from Bundy’s ruminations and deep new research, is full of fresh information on how the best and the brightest led America into the fiasco. “Lessons in Disaster” caused only a modest stir when published in November, but The Times Book Review cheered it as “an extraordinary cautionary tale for all Americans.” The reviewer was, of all people, the diplomat Richard Holbrooke, whose career began in Vietnam and who would later be charged with the Afghanistan-Pakistan crisis by the new Obama administration.

Holbrooke’s verdict on “Lessons in Disaster” was not only correct but more prescient than even he could have imagined. This book’s intimate account of White House decision-making is almost literally being replayed in Washington (with Holbrooke himself as a principal actor) as the new president sets a course for the war in Afghanistan. The time for all Americans to catch up with this extraordinary cautionary tale is now.

Analogies between Vietnam and Afghanistan are the rage these days. Some are wrong, inexact or speculative. We don’t know whether Afghanistan would be a quagmire, let alone that it could remotely bulk up to the war in Vietnam, which, at its peak, involved 535,000 American troops. But what happened after L.B.J. Americanized the war in 1965 is Vietnam’s apocalyptic climax. What’s most relevant to our moment is the war’s and Goldstein’s first chapter, set in 1961. That’s where we see the hawkish young President Kennedy wrestling with Vietnam during his first months in office.

Most Americans, looking at a globe, would be hard pressed to find Afghanistan. Americans on the whole know very little about the land or its people — and care even less. They know we’re at war over there, wherever it is, but if you were to ask what a Pashtun is or mention the name Abdullah Abdullah you would most likely get a blank stare.

Americans’ minds are on other things, like trying to figure out why, if the Great Recession is over, as Ben Bernanke seems to believe, the employment landscape still looks like a toxic waste dump.

A New York Times/CBS News poll found that eight years after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, there is a general feeling of disenchantment with our military involvement there and a desire to bring it to an end. About half of all Americans believe that the war has had no effect on the threat of terrorism, and a majority want the troops out of there in two years.

Americans are tired of the war. Some of the young people currently being outfitted for combat were just 10 or 11 years old when Al Qaeda struck the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001. They are heading off to a conflict that most Americans are no longer interested in. The difference between the public’s take on this war and that of the nation’s top civilian and military leadership is both stunning and ominous.

"General Hoar drew upon his experience with CENTCOM in the days leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq to stress the importance of allied cooperation, notably the ability to base military operations from Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey, as key to success in the region.   As U.S. strategy for the invasion coalesced, Hoar expressed misgivings, in particular regarding the number of troops committed to the operation.

A year after the official cessation of hostilities, Hoar continued to maintain that coalition forces did not have enough troops on the ground to accomplish their mission.  In December 2003, Hoar stated that Assistant Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, "...doesn't know much about the business he's in".  In testimony before the Senate committee on foreign relations on May 19, 2004, he stated regarding the situation in Iraq, "I believe we are absolutely on the brink of failure. We are looking into the abyss"

On September 7, 2004, Hoar and seven other retired officers wrote an open letter to President Bush expressing their concern over the number of allegations of abuse of prisoners in U.S. military custody.  In it they wrote:

The Miami Herald

September 11, 2009

BY CHARLES C. KRULAK and JOSEPH P. HOAR

In the fear that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Americans were told that defeating Al Qaeda would require us to ``take off the gloves.'' As a former commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps and a retired commander-in-chief of U.S. Central Command, we knew that was a recipe for disaster.

But we never imagined that we would feel duty-bound to publicly denounce a vice president of the United States, a man who has served our country for many years. In light of the irresponsible statements recently made by former Vice President Dick Cheney, however, we feel we must repudiate his dangerous ideas -- and his scare tactics.

We have seen how ill-conceived policies that ignored military law on the treatment of enemy prisoners hindered our ability to defeat al Qaeda. We have seen American troops die at the hands of foreign fighters recruited with stories about tortured Muslim detainees at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. And yet Cheney and others who orchestrated America's disastrous trip to ``the dark side'' continue to assert -- against all evidence -- that torture ``worked'' and that our country is better off for having gone there.

In an interview with Fox News Sunday, Cheney applauded the ``enhanced interrogation techniques'' -- what we used to call ``war crimes'' because they violated the Geneva Conventions, which the United States instigated and has followed for 60 years. Cheney insisted the abusive techniques were ``absolutely essential in saving thousands of American lives and preventing further attacks against the United States.'' He claimed they were ``directly responsible for the fact that for eight years, we had no further mass casualty attacks against the United States. It was good policy . . . It worked very, very well.''

Repeating these assertions doesn't make them true. We now see that the best intelligence, which led to the capture of Saddam Hussein and the elimination of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was produced by professional interrogations using non-coercive techniques. When the abuse began, prisoners told interrogators whatever they thought would make it stop.

Torture is as likely to produce lies as the truth. And it did.

What leaders say matters. So when it comes to light, as it did recently, that U.S. interrogators staged mock executions and held a whirling electric drill close to the body of a naked, hooded detainee, and the former vice president winks and nods, it matters.

The Bush administration had already degraded the rules of war by authorizing techniques that violated the Geneva Conventions and shocked the conscience of the world. Now Cheney has publicly condoned the abuse that went beyond even those weakened standards, leading us down a slippery slope of lawlessness. Rules about the humane treatment of prisoners exist precisely to deter those in the field from taking matters into their own hands. They protect our nation's honor.

To argue that honorable conduct is only required against an honorable enemy degrades the Americans who must carry out the orders. As military professionals, we know that complex situational ethics cannot be applied during the stress of combat. The rules must be firm and absolute; if torture is broached as a possibility, it will become a reality. Moral equivocation about abuse at the top of the chain of command travels through the ranks at warp speed.

On Aug. 24, the United States took an important step toward moral clarity and the rule of law when a special task force recommended that in the future, the Army interrogation manual should be the single standard for all agencies of the U.S. government.

The unanimous decision represents an unusual consensus among the defense, intelligence, law enforcement and homeland security agencies. Members of the task force had access to every scrap of intelligence, yet they drew the opposite conclusion from Cheney's. They concluded that far from making us safer, cruelty betrays American values and harms U.S. national security.

On this solemn day we pause to remember those who lost their lives on 9/11. As our leaders work to prevent terrorists from again striking on our soil, they should remember the fundamental precept of counterinsurgency we've relearned in Afghanistan and Iraq: Undermine the enemy's legitimacy while building our own. These wars will not be won on the battlefield. They will be won in the hearts of young men who decide not to sign up to be fighters and young women who decline to be suicide bombers. If Americans torture and it comes to light -- as it inevitably will -- it embitters and alienates the very people we need most.

Our current commander-in-chief understands this. The task force recommendations take us a step closer to restoring the rule of law and the standards of human dignity that made us who we are as a nation. Repudiating torture and other cruelty helps keep us from being sent on fools' errands by bad intelligence. And in the end, that makes us all safer.

Charles C. Krulak was commandant of the Marine Corps from 1995 to 1999. Joseph P. Hoar was commander in chief of U.S. Central Command from 1991 to 1994.