He put this in comments on my KSM post and now he’s put it on his own blog — which you ought to be reading by the way –  and whatever the venue, I liked this point a whole lot:

You see once KSM and his cohorts are dragged in front of a jury and are handed down the death penalty, then they lose the super villan with super powers status that Bush, Cheney and just about every Republican in Congress has given them for the last 8 years. And guess what, if there are no more boogey men then Republicans will have a hard time finding someone to fearmonger against when they are pimping their national security cred.

That would help explain why, say, Pete Hoekstra wants to keep Guantanamo in business. But it’s also not like we’re ever going to run out of potential bogeymen, sadly. We do, however, have the option, as a country, of behaving like adults.