At the web’s center of “progressive” thought, a Daily Kos diarist finds a lot to admire in the closing statement of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed at his tribunal in Gitmo: Daily Kos: The Eloquence of an Enemy Combatant. (Hat tip: Killgore Trout.)

…KSM delivered a closing statement in broken English that contains eloquent statements about the nature of war and America’s predisposition to define.

KSM makes a statement that many in a liberal arts college would find familiar; that it is often the winner of a war that dictates its history. If Britain had beaten out the colonies in the Revolutionary War, he insinuates, George Washington would not be a hero, but an ‘enemy combatant:’ a terrorist…

He is saddened by the deaths of the 3000 civilians in Sept. 11, especially the lives of children, but points out that America too, when pursuing a target, will knowingly bomb houses with children and innocents inside. …

Now we are calling killing terrorism, he says, whereas centuries earlier we called it “manifest destiny” as America wiped out Indian populations. A shrewd point. …

He is likewise preoccupied by making the point that Islam is not a bloodthirsty religion. …there are exceptions to injunctions against violence found in the Qur’an. It is our “bad luck,” he says, to be included in that exception. …

Killing is killing, and we need to stop defining our actions as noble and holy and the terrorists’ as evil and inhuman. KSM seems as saddened by the seeming inevitability of war as any pacifist.

He just wants us to admit that there are victims on both sides - that, to some suffering communities who have been on the wrong end of American bombs, Americans are the inhuman ‘enemy combatants.’

UPDATE at 3/15/07 12:10:00 pm:

Here’s another example of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s “eloquence:” Reputed 9/11 mastermind says he decapitated journalist Daniel Pearl.

“I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl,” Mohammed said through a personal representative, according to the transcript released by the Pentagon.

UPDATE at 3/15/07 2:29:41 pm:

The diary has now been deleted, and the Kidz are working themselves up into a lather: Daily Kos: LGF false flag op on dKos.

“False flag op.” Heh. As if it’s unusual to find posts like that at Daily Kos.

And these geniuses want to be the leaders of America.