Look, on 9-11, we were all scared. Not many Americans knew much about this deadly enemy. Our leaders, though, already knew more, right from the outset.

In the first year after, every potential day of Americans gathering seemed a ripe opportunity for the second attack: Veteran’s Day. Post-Thanksgiving Christmas shopping on Friday. New Year’s Eve on Times Square. Memorial Day. Fourth of July. The anniversary of Hiroshima.

But while we feared, we learned all we could about this Bin Laden guy and al-Zawahiri and their mob. And it became clear this wasn’t the USSR with 20,000 nukes pointed our way. It really was more like The Mob, a little scarier because they used modern technology better. But they didn’t have labs and manufacturing facilities in caves and the wilds of pakistan’s mountains. The second shoe never dropped because they could terrorize, but they never had a second shoe of the only real WMD, a nuke.

And no government in the world would feel safe giving them one. So the best way to diminish that threat is the continued destruction of nuclear stockpiles, growing intelligence networks that can speak Arabic and Pakistani languages and constant pressure on the leaders.

The answer is not TV-land bad cop show tactics. Nor does it mean you kill the Constitution and wiretap everyone who thinks Bush is a dry-drunk shit-for-brains lorded over by one of his Daddy’s constantly present valet overseers for Junior, one Dickless Ratbastard Cheney. We are, after all, permitted to entertain truthful thoughts per Tom Jefferson and James Madison and that terrorist lot.

And any extra measures in that first year of fear might have some sort of legitimacy to them, but by then, the leaders knew even more. And those big bad grumpy lawyers like Addington and Yoo turned out to be mewling little wusses to keep justifying torture and other breaches of the Constitution over and over again. They did far worse damage to most of the 305 million Americans still living than Al Qaida did. And they still get a free pass for doing so.

Now yesterday, I saw Israel trade several imprisoned terrorists for two Israeli soldier corpses. I thought that odd, as the living guys freed could hurt them again. From a national security perspective, it was a no-gainer. On the other hand, the respect for their troops and military families was evident. It’s part of the deal trying to remain civilized, even against hostiles.

We didn’t lose our country to Al Qaida and never will. But guys like Addington, Yoo, Cheney and Bush surrendered an enormous amount of civility and legal rights anyway. Because they’re scaredy cats. Still. Look at Cheney’s multiple deferments during Vietnam. You can only see a lifelong scaredycat in that dumb mook. He covers it well by throwing down lots of shit verbally and shooting his friends in the face because they look like ducks.

Maybe a duck made him wee-wee in his Ratbastard-Size Pampers when he was a mere Rat-Mouse.

But the Israeli example has inspired a novel way we could end this era of blood and debt and record war profiterring and cronyism.

Let’s make a deal.

If Osama and al-Zawahiri swear off the terror planning and turn in their guns, they can live out their lives in quietude out there in the Pakistan badlands. We get to go back to having our civilians safe everywhere. And for our part of the deal, we give them Cheney and Yoo and Addington. After Al Qaida cuts off their nutsacks, they’d likely make very compliant and docile slaves.

Can I really be serious?

Sadly, no. I can’t. I may think it a perfectly justified trade but in the end, I know we can never surrender our civility.

And leaders and pundits who defend the surrender of our civility are very, very small men. Cowering in a corner and snarling. But ultimately, permanently weak and pathetic.

WE can’t give them up to barbarism. But maybe we can sell them to a circus needing new sideshow freaks.