Here's a question for you, if you think the Declaration should guide our actions. You supported Judge Roy Moore, right? "Endowed _by their Creator_ with certain inalienable rights..." Not so good for separation of church and state, is it?
Sufficiently ambiguous. Evolution is my creator.
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If we let these people go, they will go back to killing Americans. If we try them in a fully-fledged public trial, we will destroy our ability to protect ourselves from their compatriots and distort our own justice system. If you choose the second, _then be aware that you are choosing the second_. I would respect that. I wouldn't agree, but I would respect it. When you make a choice, you choose all the consequences of that choice (Lois Bujold, I believe). So the consequence in this case will be simple. Some, perhaps many, innocents will die. That is a virtual certainty. _Are you willing to accept that?_ Maybe you are. That's an absolutist position that has no grounding in law or precedent - and I would say an honest person would admit that as well. But it's an understandable one.
I'm not even sure that a fully fledged public trial will destroy our capability to protect ourselves. I've heard this claim over and over again. If Iraq is any indication, our intelligence sucks anyway at least when it comes to the middle east. Can you substantiate the idea that trials would "destroy" our ability to protect ourselves.
Another point worth considering is that injustice causes more people to seek justice. We may be keeping a few hundred people from attacking us by imprisoning them, but how many - their friends, relatives countrymen - are inspired by their captivity, and how many would be ideologically discouraged if we released those we can not easily prove are guilty? I think that it's highly likely that we have created a greater threat by holding these people than we would have if we let them go.
This isn't going away. Children close their eyes on the world. Adults have to live with their eyes open.
Adults have to realize that the world isn't black and white. One might justify corporal punishment by saying it discourages misbehavior, but of course the answer is far more complicated than that. Many of us that have raised children or trained animals have come to the realization that negative reinforcement doesn't work very well and in some cases it works very poorly indeed. What doesn't work well with individuals in all probability, works even less well with larger groups. I believe that our actions in Guantanamo and in Iraq are breeding much greater problems than those they are designed to solve. We are breeding hate in every corner of the globe and it _will_ come back to haunt us.
So make your choice. Choose to let them go, and choose all the deaths springing from it. Choose to try them, and choose the deaths and defeats coming from that. Choose to hold them until a better solution presents itself (and note that we have already released some of the people there). Or heck, suggest a different choice - I'd love to hear it. But for God's sake admit what the choices are.
My choice would have been to treat them humanely and as prisoners of war except for those who could be tried for atrocities or other war crimes. You say the consequences would be dire, I say the consequences of suspending our principals has a much higher price.
-- Doug ROU Let Freedom Ring _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
