On Mon, Jul 12, 2004 at 12:42:37PM -0700, Gautam Mukunda wrote: > Would anyone suggest we needed to try Osama bin Laden before President > Clinton made a cruise missile strike to kill him?
I would suggest that the world (or at least a global coalition of liberal democracies) should have a mechanism set up to do just that for terrorists and tyrants. In many cases, such as Osama, the trial would be in absentia. However, since Osama has freely admitted to many crimes already, I agree that a formal trial would not be necessary before striking against him. But a big part of the reason is that everyone knows about him, and everyone would know about the details of the strike. There would be accountability. > Michael Moore did suggest that, btw, but let's have a discussion > between serious people. I would argue that such a thing is absurd. Many, many Europeans object to Israel assassinating terrorist leaders. Personally, I don't have a big problem with it, but again, that is largely because it is very public. If it were done in secret, and no one knew much about the people being assassinated, then I would have a problem with it. > There's more. People _never_ think about perverse incentives. In > this situation if you were a CIA officer who had captured someone > you were _sure_ was a terrorist, but you know that he will have to > be put on trial if you hand him over to civilian custody...what > is the incentive? I'd argue that the incentive is to do one of > two things - either kill him out of hand or hand him over to the > Egyptians/Saudis/other similarly unpleasant governments. Either of > those is much, much worse than just holding him. If you were a rapist, and you just raped a girl, and she saw your face, then you have a strong incentive to kill her so that she cannot identify you to the police. But you would propose legalizing rape to remove this "perverse incentive"? > I think that it is possible to create a just system here, but it's > _only_ possible if people realistically face what's going on, and as > far as I can tell most critics of the Administration totally refuse to > do that. As far as I can tell, most people who hero-worship the Administration refuse to realistically face how untrustworthy and inept they are, and how they cannot be relied upon with any serious responsibilities. > The situation with non-American, non-allied citizen prisoners is more > complex. Unless someone wants to suggest that German POWs in WWII had > the right to file habeas corpus petitions (they didn't), I'd say the > situation is much, much more limited. Given that the prisoners we > capture in Afghanistan (for example) aren't even covered by the Geneva > Conventions (which Sure they are. You and your ilk just like to pretend so you can rationalize doing horrible things to them. Anyway, as far as the German POW reference, not treating the Afghanistan prisoners with POW rights is a big part of the problem. > I do argue, however, that saying we can't hold someone for fear of > what they might do in this situation is facile. Yes, we can. We > _have to_. We are not dealing with ordinary criminals. We're not > even dealing with mafia dons. We're dealing with people indescribably > more dangerous, and in that situation what we are willing to do has to > adjust as well. Well said. We should also imprison all people with medium or dark complexions or foreign-sounding names. We _have to_. We are not dealing with ordinary criminals. These people are indescribably dangerous. The percentage of such people who are terrorists is much higher than the percentage of terrorists among white people with good old American names. We need to be willing to take steps to protect ourselves. I need to feel safe, and those darkies with unAmerican names don't deserve any real rights anyway. -- Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
