On Thu, 18 Dec 2003, J.A. Terranson wrote: > > Why does the US military have > > to treat them as though they had US constitutional rights? They are not > > citizens or physically present in the United States. > > In a nutshell, our Constitution *recognizes* universal human rights. It does > not *establish* these rights. If we are going to be faithful to this > premise, physical location is a non-sequitor.
This is a valid and probably commendable political position. I do not believe, however, that it reflects current practice in the USA or elsewhere. I say "probably" because it seems likely that adopting this as a practice would have very high costs. How far would you have this go? Is the US government to be obligated to ensure these rights to everyone everywhere? Does this mean liberating slaves in China and Saudi Arabia, for example? Opening up Russian jails? Forcing countries everywhere to grant the vote to women, to educate children? Hmmm. Does the application of this principle mean that the US government is going to require the British government to recognize the right to keep and bear arms? ;-) -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
