By the way, a year passed after WTC. Torturing prisoners now can hardly be self-defense, to follow your example of the intended rapist.
Hardly Zonder, IMO... The threat has not receded. In fact, having the "taste of blood" from their success on 9/11, I'm sure Al-Qaida and other militant groups are plotting even greater attacks for the US..
And if when capture the leaders of these groups, I'm of the opinion that few of us truly believe that their lives are worth more than ours...
And I'm also of the belief that their militant beliefs were not self-generated, but fostered by others, including parents and religious mentors. Thus, I don't hold such responsible parties blameless for helping to create these terrorists...
However, I would require far more evidence of their complicity in supporting such militants before approving inflioting torture upon them, or ordering their arrest as a means of "getting at" the captive militant being interrogated..
But that said, I'm not oblivious to the fine line that is being walked when we rely upon such methods to defend "civilization"..
And possibly this is what makes me despise these militants more than their own violent attacks. That civilized men find themselves forced to do uncivilized acts because of them..
>>Victims have few rights, except the right to prayer for justice.<<
I am sorry. I did not get this.
The point is that that most "civilized" legal systems spend more time worrying about the rights of the perpetrators of crime, than they do about the victims of their violence.. Victims who are told only to accept their loss/injury, and that the criminal will be removed from society for a period of time (forever in the case of capital punishment)..
But I'm more of a military mindset and not a legal one. Military folks are trained to eliminate threats before they manifest themselves, whereas police agencies are required to worry about civil rights and making legal cases beyond a reasonable doubt of guilt...
They are at odds with one another when it comes to American citizens, but fortunately the military has primary jurisdiction over non-citizens found to be engaged in military/criminal acts from outside the US.
We have created a wonderful civilized society Zonder. But it was built and defended with buckets of blood over the past several hundred years. And unfortunately, it appears that will be the case again if we don't dramatically seize the initiative.
Hawk |
