Subject:
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Re: Where's Larry and Hoppy when you need 'em???
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Wed, 24 Jan 2007 22:17:16 GMT
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Viewed:
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3184 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John Neal wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John Neal wrote:
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Enemy combatants have never had a right to trial.
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But they are entitled to certain protections that, by design, are denied to
this latest batch. For example, prisoners of war are to be released at the
war’s end, but Dubya has pretty clearly stated that the War on Terror will
never be over. So when might these prisoners, in theory, be released?
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Excellent question. I don’t know. But I do know that if they are released,
they will attack us again.
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John, with due respect, you don’t know that. Many of these detainees were
simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, or they were mistaken for someone
else, or they were coerced into fighting against invading US forces. We have
only the word of the accusers as evidence in support of the detention, and that
hardly counts as objective testimony. The point is that a wide range of
circumstances led to their incarceration, so it’s only fitting that their cases
be adjudicated individually.
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If these people have committed crimes, let them stand trial and be
sentenced. If they have not committed crimes, then release them. It’s
really that simple, and artificial, self-serving designators like “enemy
combatant,” designed to subvert the intent of the Geneva convention, are
no excuse.
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This term wasn’t invented or coined by President Bush, so don’t blame him
or Gonzo.
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If you mean “enemy combatant” as a synonym for “prisoner of war,” then
you’re correct of course. But in this new context it definitely was put
forth by Bush et al as a way to do an end run around the Geneva convention.
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No, I think it was in response to a new category of enemy who isn’t
represented by a nation-state. They don’t deserve a trial by jury. Would a
trial by a military tribunal suffice? But then I suppose that the left would
scream that the trials wouldn’t be fair. Heck, the left would scream at
anything that wouldn’t include complete exoneration along with millions in
reparations.
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I’ll forgive you that crazy exaggeration because I know what you’re getting at.
By saying that they don’t deserve a jury trial, you are declaring their guilt
outright, when in fact their guilt has not been established in many cases. I
grant that a guy captured on the battlefield while shooting a rifle at a soldier
has seriously implicated himself, but what about the guy who’s grabbed on the
basis of a torture-coerced tip? This has happened.
Military tribunals consistent with POW trials would suffice, I think, provided
that the accused is allowed to see the evidence against him/her and has access
to some equivalent to an attorney.
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I’m ranting against the deliberately nebulous and beyond-the-law status of
“enemy combatant,” of which Padilla is only one example.
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The combatants themselves have created this dilemma! Okay, form a tribunal
and hold trials.
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Not all of them have created this dilemma, except by happening to live in Iraq.
But I agree that fair trials are a necessity.
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One good way is for the target nation not to invade a sovereign nation in an
act of preemptive war. By all accounts, Bush’s Iraq fiasco has made the
region and situation far less stable. If those same huge resources had been
devoted to improvements in intelligence gathering (for example), I suspect
that we’d be a lot better off.
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But what about governments like the Taliban and SH’s regime that sponsored
terrorism? These pukes don’t operate in a void. They need safe haven from
governments. Holding these governments accountable for the actions of
terrorists whom they sponsor is perfectly justified in my mind.
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Okay, but the way to hold these governments accountable is most certainly
not to invade a country, kill hundreds of thousands of civilians, and
decimate the infrastructure. If you really need to oust a dicator, send Crazy
Pat Robertson in to assassinate him. In any case, declaring all-out war on a
population (as we have done in Fallujah and elsewhere) is no different from the
communal punishment so strongly condemned when performed by Saddam Hussein.
What if a powerful foreign government attacks New York on the basis that Bush
has commited numerous and ongoing human rights violations? How many New Yorkers
can this foreign power kill with impunity? How many Iraqis can Bush kill with
impunity? It must be stated that the insurgency didn’t exist before we got to
Iraq, and it certainly wasn’t killing 1,000 civilians each month.
By the way, how many thousands of Iraqi civilians must die before we lose the
moral authority to condemn Saddam Hussein for killing thousands of Iraqi
civilians?
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That’s why Bushco’s novel interpretations of “torture” are so troubling, by
the way.
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Look, torture cuts to the chase. Haven’t you learned anything from 5+ years
of 24?
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I could point you to some lively discussions on a Certain Other Forum, wherein
I’ve been publicly attacked for admitting that I like the show. The point that
is too often missed is that torture isn’t glamorized! The bad guys do it, and
the good guys do it, and the audience sees that its practice erodes the boundary
between bad and good. There may be cases when the torturer feels justified (a
la The Ticking Time Bomb example), but torture is always shown as destructive to
the victim and the victimizer. Witness, for example, the ongoing dissolution of
Bauer’s psyche; he’s a man who’s been on both sides of the waterboard, and he’s
been deeply traumatized by it.
Dave!
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Where's Larry and Hoppy when you need 'em???
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| (...) Excellent question. I don't know. But I do know that if they are released, they will attack us again. (...) No, I think it was in response to a new category of enemy who isn't represented by a nation-state. They don't deserve a trial by jury. (...) (18 years ago, 24-Jan-07, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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