Webb on Terror Trials
Excerpting from the post on the TPM main page, Sen. Webb said, in part,
"Those who have committed acts of international terrorism are enemy combatants, just as certainly as the Japanese pilots who killed thousands of Americans at Pearl Harbor. It will be disruptive, costly, and potentially counterproductive to try them as criminals in our civilian courts. "
This drives me crazy. Terrorists are criminals, period, paragraph, the end. They should be tried as such, the only effective way to combat terrorism has always been through law enforcement methods. The military option against terrorism only works in limited SWAT-type operations. Calling terrorists "enemy combatants," is as much as calling them soldiers, which is how they want themselves to be viewed. Senator Webb and others who think about this issue the way he does, and there are many, are starting by handing the terrorists a huge PR victory by calling them soldiers, and proceeding from there to try to combat them from a framework that doesn't work.
The fact that these suspects will be tried in a civilian court, suggests that maybe the administration gets it. We can only hope, and hope that they will start making that point more explicitly.
Webb's former military; perhaps that's what colors his opinion. Plus his red face.
November 16, 2009 5:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
So --
What would you call a bunch of uniform-wearing foreigners who burn and shoot and blow up people who have never done anything to these foreigners or to their loved ones or to their neighbors or to their employers.
Combatants or criminals?
Note: Al Qaeda attacked man-made symbols of the American imperium on 9/11; the destruction of the biologic mass occupying those symbols at the time were, as we say, "collateral damage."
November 16, 2009 8:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
....Al Qaeda attacked man-made symbols of the American imperium on 9/11; the destruction of the biologic mass occupying those symbols at the time were, as we say, "collateral damage."
That is a real interesting statement Ellen. I happen to agree with you regarding 9/11, but that's neither here nor there on why I find it interesting. Seems to me by what you are pointing out that you are also getting at something that also is a problematic difference between "hate crimes" and ordinary crimes without the "hate." I.E., graffitti with your tag on the subway gets you one punishment, graffitti of swatizkas on a synagogue may get you a far harsher one.
November 17, 2009 3:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
Somewhat like one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
I'm not a supporter of hate crimes legislation, generally; however, I do appreciate their pedagogic component -- for example, teaching our barbarians (males, ages 16-25) that the crime of assault is not mitigated by the fact that the victim is gay -- whatever they may think to the contrary.
Indeed, defendant, if you believe that you're free to act remorselessly against those your particular social group characterizes as pariahs, we'll show you you're wrong by imposing a stiffer sentence.
November 17, 2009 8:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
Why do we need to try them in a civilian court?
Do you think if we had captured the Japanese admiral that bombed Pearl Harbor that we would have brought him back to Hawaii for trial? No. Instead we hunt him down and kill him. God bless FDR.
November 16, 2009 10:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Saddam is Hitler!"
Or did FDR order "Get Yamamoto" to continue highlighting the Day of Infamy by personalizing it in order to take the American people's attention away from the anti-Japanese shenanigans he'd been engaged in in the fall of 1941 ---
And at the potential cost of compromising "Magic"?
Cf. Saddam "gassed his own people"; like OBL of recent fame, the diabolical Yamamoto planned the "sneak attack" which "no one could have anticipated."
November 17, 2009 9:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Ladies and gentlemen, We Got Him!"
November 17, 2009 9:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
Saddam is not on trial here, KSM is. This trial should be in a military court, not a civilian court. The criminal justic system puts limits on the government and gives the defendant all types of access to information, because we'd rather have the government lose than unfairly convict someone. But you can't take that position with an enemy who is at war with you and trying to bring that government down.
November 17, 2009 9:39 AM | Reply | Permalink