James Lileks has a Roddenberry-inspired solution to the War On Terror:

As the Durban flap demonstrates: It just never ends. And it won’t. There’s too much political hay to be made undercutting the war, and the consequences be damned. If they want to defeat the war to defeat Bush, well, noted. If they truly believe that the United States is in the same group as the Nazis, the Soviets and Pol Pot, then they’ve shown they have no perspective, no judgment, no sense of nuance, shall we say. And the idea that such comparisons might be picked up in the Middle East and broadcast with glee is irrelevant; they’re parochial to a fault, and care little for anything beyond their reputation and power in Washington. * * *

I have a solution. It’s time to institute Disintegration Chambers in our major America cities.

If you recall that episode of Star Trek – and I would be rather stunned if you did not – there were two warring planets that had long ago decided against waging physical war, and started to wage a virtual one. Computers fought the war, and if your planet’s computer somehow let the other guy’s virtual cobalt bomb in, it would calculate the death toll. Those people who lived in the area hit by the virtual bomb would walk into a Disintegration Chamber and poof! Very tidy, and the infrastructure was left standing. Kirk, naturally, put a stop to it by wrecking the mainframes and snarling “now you have a real war on your hands, Chancellor.” Supposedly the planets would be so frightened by the prospect of ruptured sewer lines they would immediately sue for peace. They never did go back to that system. I would have liked to have seen if the planets stopped warring, or got together and started invading others, or just blew each other up six times over. But that was Kirk: he got the ball rolling, and that was his job.

Anyway. Here’s the deal. We decide what constitutes torture, and identify it as the following: insufficient air conditioning, excess air conditioning, sleep deprivation, being chained to the floor, and other forms of psychological stress. The United States is free to use these techniques against hardened terrorists. Those who disagree with the techniques sign a register that records their complaints. When the terrorist finally spills the details of a forthcoming attack, on, say, Chicago, the people who signed the register and live in Chicago are required to report to the Disintegration Chamber. Very simple. Everyone’s happy.

Well, no, I imagine not. The standard response would be “I want the interrogators to get the information, but not if it makes prisoners crap in their pants or pull out their hair.” Agreed. I would like them to get the information without any sort of effort whatsoever. It’s a fair cop, guv. Here’s where we’ve stored the fertilizer and here are the names of my associates. Now if you’ll show me to my cell, I’d like to get started whiling away the time until most of the networks are compromised and the Iranian government has fallen, after which we can talk about letting me return home. Jolly good!” But I don’t think that’s going to happen. Conversely, I don’t want them to beat the hell out of these people until they spit names and teeth, in no particular order. But I don’t care if they make them stay awake most of the day for a month or two. I really don’t. I’m sorry. We’re talking about people who will not be satisfied until Israel is gone and the United States crippled. I’d like to know what they know, and if they wet themselves in the process, I do not regard this is as the equivalent of uprooting several million people to Alaska to build a canal dressed only in long johns.

Incidentally: just to clarify things for the Eminiarians, Kirk told Scotty to excute General Order #24, which permitted the Enterprise to lay waste to an entire planet. Just for the record:

I think that’s rather extreme.

Although I would have loved to have heard the debate at Starfleet over that one.