Interrogator: We are an organization acting as a legal proxy of the United States of America, and you are being held as our captive. One of the explicit conditions of our contract with the United States government is that we voluntarily adhere to all the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We will be handing you over to the US government in due course, and provided you do not act in a violent manner yourself, no illegal force will be used on your person.
Ahmed: Aren’t you using illegal force now?
Interrogator: Our client, the government of the United States of America, has gone through all the correct channels to ensure the international legitimacy of our actions in apprehending you. United Nations Resolution number 560097 gives us full authority to take whatever steps necessary to bring about the cessation of hostilities in Somalia.
Ahmed: So this is a legitimate military operation. I wonder who gets to decide what exactly it is that makes an act of aggression legitimate.
Interrogator: Perhaps it is the fact that an overwhelming majority of the international community sanctions our actions?
Ahmed: You know, our actions were also sanctioned by our community. We were supported by the vast majority of our people. Everyone wanted it to happen.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Seems he’s not shy after all, shaking or no shaking,” said Williams, who almost seemed relieved. “Looks like this is just another run-of-the-mill mass murderer, then. A fanatical worshipper of what’s ‘right.’ ”
“Of course he is,” the USD shrugged. “But keep watching—this is where he starts to get all philosophical on us.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Interrogator: The people can be wrong, of course. Look at how the German electorate voted in Hitler.
Ahmed: Then who’s to say that the people of the world aren’t wrong about interfering in Somalia’s internal affairs?
Interrogator: You have murdered huge numbers of your own countrymen.
Ahmed: We had no choice.
Interrogator: Are you honestly expecting me to accept that in the space of the last six months you have come to believe that there were all these people in your midst that you now just had to kill? I don’t accept that people can just flip a switch and go from living harmoniously with their neighbors to wanting to kill them just like that.
Ahmed: And yet that’s exactly what happened.
Interrogator: But why?
Ahmed: Who knows? All I know is that we had good reason to kill them.
Interrogator: And yet one year ago such a notion would have been inconceivable to you.
Ahmed: That’s right … you’re probably right about that.
Interrogator: But how could such a mindset develop in such a short time? I can just about understand it happening in one person. But for such a large, disparate group of people to suddenly develop such intense hatred that they felt the need to go about systematically murdering their fellow countrymen? Impossible!
Ahmed: I think you’ll find that we’re living proof that it’s very possible.