Nadine, re: "Again with the law enforcement mentality.
Go read Osama bin Laden's declaration of war on the US, and do him the credit of believing him sincere. He is not a criminal. He is an enemy. He wants to destroy the USA.
Let's understand a couple of things. First, in terms of rounding up and imprisoning possibly innocent men, it doesn't matter what scary declarations of war Bin Laden has made against the US and it doesn't matter that he wants to destroy the US. Those issues have relevance in terms of the amount of resources we utilize to combat the threats but they don't change the essential nature of the activity that he engages in. Any person can have any number of motives for criminal acts but historically and legally groups of individuals do not engage in "war," no matter what they, or we, call it.
Second, ethical and legal authority to imprison others basically derives from our right to take freedom from individuals during conflicts between nations (wars) or as a result of criminal activities. During war all that need be shown is that the imprisoned soldier is a combatant.
Those who commit crimes, conversely, can be imprisoned while their guilt or innocence is decided and for the length of their sentence if they are convicted.
The war on terror, Bin Laden notwithstanding, is not a "WAR." This is not an Alice in Wonderland nation where the words have whatever meaning you want them to have. This is a civilized nation with a long history of leading the world forward in terms of individual rights and justice. Simply being scared and calling the fight against the thing you're afraid of a "war" doesn't give a nation the right to ignore justice and the procedures that guarantee it. We cannot use the "war" rationale to justify incarceration without charges, procedures and the right to a trial.
The only remaining applicable rationale for imprisoning people is imprisonment for criminal activities. We CAN justify such imprisonment on the basis of addressing international CRIMINAL activities, including terrorism, no matter what the motives of the criminals. We should outline the criminal basis for such imprisonments, the fair procedures that we'll use to determine guilt and the fair penalties that we'll apply. The way we've been knee-jerk responding violates our own historical rhetoric on justice and also international law.
So yes, no matter how often you point to the fearfulness of "declarations" from people like Bin Laden, the real basis for locking up and "interrogating" the bad guys is grounded in their criminal activities and not their status as soldiers in some kind of tortured definition "war."
Now what that has to do with what you dismissively refer to as "law enforcement mentality" is a little cloudy. We will have to use our resources, personnel and institutions to identify, apprehend and convict such people but then we'd have to do that anyway, wouldn't we? Ed |
