_In fact_ we have a problem. We have a group of
people who are immensely motivated to kill Americans
and who have attempted to do so in the past. Our
system of justice was not created with people like
that in mind.
Are you saying that the U.S. system of justice was not created with *all* people in mind? Did the founders of this country believe that there are people so evil that they are beyond redemption? I can acknowledge that they made the mistake of imagining that some people aren't really people, but we have moved beyond that error.
Are you arguing that there is a new kind of evil at work in the world, which must be eradicated? At all costs? Is that even possible, without eliminating self-aware consciousness?
Haven't people wiped out entire nations and cultures a number of times? Setting aside nationalistic concerns for a moment, has humanity's situation changed? What difference is there for our nation, today, other than being on the receiving end of a serious threat?
_If it were, our rights would be much
smaller_. As even a basic study of constitutional law
tells you, American civil rights have fluctuated over
time in response to threat. Civil rights during the
Civil War were significantly curtailed (far more so
than in any period before or since) by the man now
hailed as the greatest of all Americans - and rightly
so. During the Second World War the American press
was generally censored to prevent it from reporting
critical data to the enemy - and rightly so again. And this during a time when the press was not
adversarial to American interests. Treating
terrorists captured on the field of battle in
Afghanistan like bank robbers in the US is the fastest
way I can think of to erode civil protections in the
_American_ judicial system.
Isn't that a straw man, since there is a range of options between the treatment of those held at Gitmo and that of a U.S. bank robbery suspect?
To paraphrase you, didn't we make the choice to have a nation that regards certain human rights as inalienable, and now we must live with the consequences of *that* choice?
To be specific, I believe that never should have permitted the torturous conditions under which they're being held, nor should we ever have denied them counsel. I don't really have a problem with coming up with a burden of proof appropriate to the circumstances, just as it varies among more ordinary courts. But I don't even hear any discussion of what that standard should be, and so I imagine that our goal is to convict and "disappear" them, not to make the difficult decision about what is just.
Nick
-- Nick Arnett Phone/fax: (408) 904-7198 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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