A large part of the argument for the tribunals is dependent on precedent - the trials of Nazi spies, the tribunals during the Civil War and those during the revolution. It occurs to me that while precedent is useful as a guideline, we would become hopelessly stagnant if we allowed ourselves to be constrained by it. In my opinion, the Civil War and Revolutionary War examples have little bearing on the present. The latter was pre constitution and the former was precipitated by a civil conflict that pitted perhaps a quarter to a third of the population against the rest. That leaves the trial of the Nazis as a recent, useful precedent.
Those trials (or perhaps that trial if all the defendants were tried together) occurred well over 50 years ago so we have to ask ourselves how well it applies to the world today. The U.S. is the dominant world power and is at least loosely allied with most (if not all) of the rest of the industrialized world. Due to technological advances, the nations of the world have become a community far beyond that which existed 50 or even 25 years ago. The world has changed much since the last great war. So are secret military tribunals necessary? We have to ask ourselves how it will advance our cause - the war on terror - how it will appear to those in the international community and perhaps most importantly, what kind of precedent it will set for future generations. I have to believe that some sort of international forum would be far more constructive than the one that the Bush administration has chosen. We may not get our full measure of vengeance, but vengeance is a rather non Christian notion for a nation that claims to be Christian. I think that justice would substitute nicely for vengeance. As for the requirement for secrecy, I think that there are probably ways to conceal what must remain secret and still hold the trials. Secret International Tribunals - the transcripts of which would become available after a given period of time? I guess I just think that trials held behind closed doors by the military of one nation, whomever that nation might be and whatever the circumstances might be, don't hold to the standards of justice to which we have become accustomed. I think that there are probably reasonable alternatives and that it wouldn't be injurious to at least explore some of these. As for constitutional rights; perhaps we are not responsible for extending those rights we afford ourselves to the citizens of other countries, but we have arrested and are holding hundreds of people, with little or no evidence of guilt, that were living or visiting our country. I think that it is appropriate to extend our rights to people arrested in our country. If we think there is a possibility that some of them are involved in terrorist activities, we have the option of deporting them and alerting their country of our suspicions. So in summary, precedent is important, but I think it's more important to insure or actions are appropriate for current circumstances than to find justification for them in what has happened in the past. -- Doug email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.zo.com/~brighto Irreverence is the champion of liberty. Mark Twain - Notebook, 1888
