Keeping it civil instead of returning to our dark ways

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
To the extent someone kills here because of, say, the victims race, no one said that separate protests or calls for education or whatever would be improper. The only point made was that a separate crime hadn't been committed.

Yet today's points suggest that we should consider treating things like McVeigh's act as an Act of War and that apprehension and prosecution of those offenders, either here or elsewhere, should be analogous to the treatment of the yutzes now occupying a wet spot on a Yemeni highway.

My response (among others embodied in Glass Man) is that entertaining these thoughts is fun, because it allows us to dream big, but it's a bit nonsensical because the thought of calling in Marine airstrikes in Butte to wipe out the Third United Patriots of Montana, or in lower Manhattan to eradicate Mafia remnants is probably beyond what even Ashcroft could've hoped for.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
This was a hate crime. It should be treated like any other crime in Holland, right?

The circle is complete, Obi Wan.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by Gattigap
My response (among others embodied in Glass Man) is that entertaining these thoughts is fun, because it allows us to dream big, but it's a bit nonsensical because the thought of calling in Marine airstrikes in Butte to wipe out the Third United Patriots of Montana, or in lower Manhattan to eradicate Mafia remnants is probably beyond what even Ashcroft could've hoped for.

Bullshit. Everyone has to fantasize about something, and we know that for Ashcroft it's not tits.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by Gattigap
First story I've seen that discusses the extent of security in Baghdad, and its attendant costs. And to think I felt bad about my last reimbursement request for that deposition in New York!

I guess you'd be happier with Saddam back in power.


(And where is Bilmore these days, anyway?)

[Bad_Rich_Chic]

Originally posted by baltassoc
Before we wander down a random path, however, let me clarify: we're (or I'm) talking about the treatment of prisoners, not intellegence gathering and/or law enforcement. I definitely see a distinction where intellegence gathering groups maybe should not be limited by the constraints of law enforcement. And to a certain extent, I may even be willing to agree that applies to the holding of certain people by those intellegence services in ways that are extra-legal. But such holdings are not something to be proud of, and those who engage in such acts do so at their own risk (we may attempt to get them out of a jam with another government, but ultimately, we don't have much to say if the other government decides that it would rather execute our spy than deal with us). Such is the nature of spying.

OK, so we catch a terrorist plotting to bomb something or other. He is transported to the US and ... given a public trial, his lawyers have access to the intelligence information used to identify and catch him (or it can't be introduced), and if it isn't proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he did it, he is immediately released? During a time of war?

If by "treatment of prisoners" you just mean "once they are in custody and neutralized as an ongoing or future danger, don't torture them, give the red cross access, etc.," that's quite different from what I thought you meant. I could be persuaded to agree with this.

FWIW, IRA terrorists were not prosecuted as a mere "band of criminals" - there was a series of special anti-terrorism laws in the UK which treated them very differently than normal criminals, though they were not deemed enemy combatants in a war. The UK did this for a lot of reasons - one was probably to avoid effectively declaring war on one of its own provinces (and potentially on countries permitting support of the IRA), and another was that they wanted to handle the prosecution of citizens within their own justice system rather than treating them as they would a captured Hun in 1943 (which might have had the effect of legitimizing separatist claims to a national identity separate from the UK). So the UK basically tried to use an orange juicer on an apple (sorry). It is a problem that a number of european courts reviewing alleged human rights violations discussed - the UK basically splintered its justice system trying to expand it to deal with these guys, when they should have simply acknowledged them as self-proclaimed enemy combatants and applied international standards of war. When they tried to expand domestic criminal justice as necessary to handle terrorist acts, they (arguably) violated international norms for criminal prosecution. I think the IRA example illustrates exactly why criminal prosecution is inappropriate for terrorist acts.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
From a distance, he looked like OBL. Mistakes happen.

[sgtclub]

• Gray Davis is going back to work.
  
  The former California governor has been hired by the law firm Loeb and Loeb for his first job since being voted out of office in the October 2003 recall election and replaced by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...517EST0076.DTL

Interesting choice. Didn't know they were still in business.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Afghanistan and Iraq are not hard cases, because neither government was going to help us bring someone to justice. As I recall, Yemen was not so clear-cut -- the government was on our side, at least to some degree, but the cars were in a tribal area not really under the government's control.

your second and third problem still exist in Iraq and Afghanistan, didn't they? what if it wasn't OBL? What if a roofer was working on his hut when the missile hits? wouldn't that bother you Ty?

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
What is a roofer was working on his hut when the missile hits?

A beveled edge?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
your second and third problem still exist in Iraq and Afghanistan, didn't they? what if it wasn't OBL? What is a roofer was working on his hut when the missile hits? wouldn't that bother you Ty?

Yes, it would bother me. As do the deaths of so many non-combatant Iraqis who have died while we try introduce them to the wonders of democracy.

I don't understand your thinking, since you don't seem to have a principle here as much as a neat trick of turning questions back on the other side. I think our political systems evolved to favoring the rule of law over hundreds of years for good and sounds reasons, and that a "conservative" position would be to defend and respect the rule of law. I hear a lot of conservatives (but maybe not "conservatives") suggesting the war on terror demands that we place a whole lot of unbridled, unreviewable power in the hands of the executive branch, notwithstanding that when it was Janet Reno returning Elian to Cuba and Bill Clinton trying to kill OBL with a cruise missile, they professed not to trust the judgment of the executive branch at all.

[baltassoc]

Originally posted by Bad_Rich_Chic
OK, so we catch a terrorist plotting to bomb something or other. He is transported to the US and ... given a public trial, his lawyers have access to the intelligence information used to identify and catch him (or it can't be introduced), and if it isn't proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he did it, he is immediately released? During a time of war?

If by "treatment of prisoners" you just mean "once they are in custody and neutralized as an ongoing or future danger, don't torture them, give the red cross access, etc.," that's quite different from what I thought you meant. I could be persuaded to agree with this.

FWIW, IRA terrorists were not prosecuted as a mere "band of criminals" - there was a series of special anti-terrorism laws in the UK which treated them very differently than normal criminals, though they were not deemed enemy combatants in a war. The UK did this for a lot of reasons - one was probably to avoid effectively declaring war on one of its own provinces (and potentially on countries permitting support of the IRA), and another was that they wanted to handle the prosecution of citizens within their own justice system rather than treating them as they would a captured Hun in 1943 (which might have had the effect of legitimizing separatist claims to a national identity separate from the UK). So the UK basically tried to use an orange juicer on an apple (sorry). It is a problem that a number of european courts reviewing alleged human rights violations discussed - the UK basically splintered its justice system trying to expand it to deal with these guys, when they should have simply acknowledged them as self-proclaimed enemy combatants and applied international standards of war. When they tried to expand domestic criminal justice as necessary to handle terrorist acts, they (arguably) violated international norms for criminal prosecution. I think the IRA example illustrates exactly why criminal prosecution is inappropriate for terrorist acts.

Interestingly, I run the IRA analysis the other way: the debacle encountered by the British with the IRA illustrates perfectly why we don't want to have a pseudo-criminal seperate system for handling terrorists. The British did exactly what we are doing: they not only created a series of laws imposing additional penalties for terrorist activities (which I have no problem with), but they also created a special procedural system, that (not coincidentally) did not include many of the protections given criminals in common law countries.

Here's the kicker: it was the (mis)treatment of these prisoners by the British that drove up the popularity of the IRA in Northern Ireland, the Republic and ultimately the US.

The British let their short term fear of allowing a terrorist to go free to undermine their long term safety by convincing Irish Catholics that their worst fears were true, that they were second class citizens subject to a different (and harsher) set of rules. Had the British played it straight from the begining, the Catholic masses would have had less reason to move from their initial opinion of the IRA as hooligans to the IRA as freedom fighters.

Tell me that Gitmo isn't being used right this very second to convince some impressionable Muslim youth that America hates him because he loves Allah.

[SlaveNoMore]

Replaced_Texan
This was a hate crime. It should be treated like any other crime in Holland, right?

Yep.

[SlaveNoMore]

Tyrone Slothrop
As I recall, Yemen was not so clear-cut -- the government was on our side, at least to some degree, but the cars were in a tribal area not really under the government's control.

Sounds like Berkeley.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
your second and third problem still exist in Iraq and Afghanistan, didn't they? what if it wasn't OBL? What if a roofer was working on his hut when the missile hits? wouldn't that bother you Ty?

It wouldn't bother you if an innocent bystander was killed? Seriously?

Leave aside whether it would bother you enough to say that it wasn't worth killing OBL. The death wouldn't bother you at all?

(Extra points if you return with the line from Clerks responding to the critique of Return of the Jedi.)

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Sounds like Berkeley.

Yeah, and just see what happens to your car if you leave it there.