Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (450127)	1/23/2009 3:15:38 PM
From: jlallen	2 Recommendations Respond to of 1574447

What Did We Expect? Andrew McCarthy Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor and author of "Willful Blindness: Memoir of the Jihad," is legal affairs editor at National Review. Said Ali al-Shihri, the jihadist enemy combatant who was foolishly released from Guantánamo, has apparently rejoined his confederates in further attacks against the United States. It is only the latest instance of a repeating pattern. One can only ask, "What on earth did you think was going to happen?" We are dealing with two ugly realities that mainstream opinion wants to wish away: (a) we are, as President Obama has taken to repeating, "a nation at war," and (b) the enemy, which means Americans mortal harm, is animated by an ideology firmly rooted in fundamentalist Islam. Unpleasant fact (a) has a corollary: you cannot convert what is in essence a national-security challenge into a mere criminal-justice issue. That is, it never has been and it never will be the case that every enemy operative in a war is going to be a person we will have sufficient evidence to convict in court. In war, it is necessary to detain people who are suspected of being enemy operatives, not always provable enemy operatives in a courtroom. The objective in peacetime is to maximize due process and put all burdens of proof on the government before liberty and privacy are infringed — we'd rather see government lose than an innocent be done an injustice. By contrast, the objective in wartime is to defeat the enemy — which calls for recognition that some injustices will be done for the greater good of safeguarding the nation. The excruciating weight of these injustices is why we resist warfare if we can do so responsibly; but once in it, our security requires that we make winning it our priority. Unpleasant fact (b) has corollaries, too. Jihadists, as those of us who have dealt with them personally can tell you, are, in the main, incorrigible. We need to try to understand our enemies, something our politically correct culture has systematically prevented by discouraging all discussion of jihadist ideology. We are challenged today by a strain of Islam (and there are many varieties of Islam) which is centuries old and has commanded the allegiance of Muslims from across ethnic, economic and educational lines, many of whom believe in it so strongly they are willing not only to kill but to die for it. The strain represents a minority of the world's 1.4 billion Muslims, but it is a vibrant and well-funded minority. While only a small percentage supports terrorist methods, many millions more support the ideological goals. The operatives trained in jihadist camps are the hardest of the hardcore. In addition to military instruction they are taught to resist interrogation and given strategies for deceiving their enemies upon capture. They are, moreover, schooled in Western (especially American) civil rights — they know how to play the system if captured. What does this all mean? First, it is the height of foolishness to believe you prevail in war and preserve safety by scandalizing the basic elements of war-fighting (like capturing, holding and interrogating prisoners) and affording protections to terrorists who flout all rules protecting civilians. Second, it is preposterous to think you can avoid the unpleasant task of detaining jihadist operatives in wartime by outsourcing the problem to countries which do not consider our security a priority — much less countries like Saudi Arabia, which is a font of jihadist ideology. Yet, we have done exactly these things. If you want to stop the fierce enemies we are fighting, you need to capture or kill them — you are not going to indict, transfer or re-educate them into submission. We need to face up to that fact. roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com