Is America a Serious Nation?
by Patrick J. Buchanan
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Are we at war—or not?
For if we are at war, why is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed headed for trial in federal court in the Southern District of New York? Why is he entitled to a presumption of innocence and all of the constitutional protections of a U.S. citizen?
Is it possible we have done an injustice to this man by keeping him locked up all these years without trial? For that is what this trial implies—that he may not be guilty.
And if we must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that KSM was complicit in mass murder, by what right do we send Predators and Special Forces to kill his al-Qaida comrades wherever we find them? For none of them has been granted a fair trial.
When the Justice Department sets up a task force to wage war on a crime organization like the Mafia or MS-13, no U.S. official has a right to shoot Mafia or gang members on sight. No one has a right to bomb their homes. No one has a right to regard the possible death of their wives and children in an attack as acceptable collateral damage.
Yet that is what we do to al-Qaida, to which KSM belongs.
We conduct those strikes in good conscience because we believe we are at war. But if we are at war, what is KSM doing in a U.S. court?
Minoru Genda, who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor, a naval base on U.S. soil, when America was at peace, and killed as many Americans as the Sept. 11 hijackers, was not brought here for trial. He was an enemy combatant under the Geneva Conventions and treated as such.
When Maj. Andre, the British spy and collaborator of Benedict Arnold, was captured, he got a military tribunal, after which he was hanged. When Gen. Andrew Jackson captured two British subjects in Spanish Florida aiding renegade Indians, Jackson had both tried and hanged on the spot.
Enemy soldiers who commit atrocities are not sent to the United States for trial. Under the Geneva Conventions, soldiers who commit atrocities are shot when caught.
When and where did Khalid Sheikh Mohammed acquire his right to a trial by a jury of his peers in a U.S. court?
When John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln, alleged collaborators like Mary Surratt were tried before a military tribunal and hanged at Ft. McNair. When eight German saboteurs were caught in 1942 after being put ashore by U-boat, they were tried in secret before a military commission and executed, with the approval of the Supreme Court. What makes KSM special?
Is the Obama administration aware of what it is risking by not turning KSM over to a military tribunal in Guantanamo?
How does Justice handle a defense demand for a change of venue, far from lower Manhattan, where the jury pool was most deeply traumatized by Sept. 11? Would not KSM and his co-defendants, if a change of venue is denied, have a powerful argument for overturning any conviction on appeal?
Were not KSM’s Miranda rights impinged when he was not only not told he could have a lawyer on capture, but that his family would be killed and he would be water-boarded if he refused to talk?
And if all the evidence against the five defendants comes from other than their own testimony under duress, do not their lawyers have a right to know when, where, how and from whom Justice got the evidence to prosecute them? Does KSM have the right to confront all witnesses against him, even if they are al-Qaida turncoats or U.S. spies still transmitting information to U.S. intelligence?
There have been reports that in the trials of those convicted in the first World Trade Center bombing, sources and methods were compromised, weakening our security for the second attack on Sept. 11.
If the trial is held in lower Manhattan, how much security will be needed to protect against a car bomber who wants the world to see a mighty blow struck against the Great Satan? And if, as some suggest, the trial should be held on Governor’s Island, would that not make the United States look like a nation under siege?
What do we do if the case against KSM is thrown out because the government refuses to reveal sources or methods, or if he gets a hung jury, or is acquitted, or has his conviction overturned?
In America, trials often become games, where the prosecution, though it has truth on its side, loses because it inadvertently breaks one of the rules.
The Obamaites had best pray that does not happen, for they may be betting his presidency on the outcome of the game about to begin.
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1 Comment by Theodore M. Van Oosbree on 17 November 2009:
I don’t see how the confessions extracted from these men by torture could possibly be admissable in federal court. Then again, it may not make any difference since they are sure to face a hanging jury in New York.
2 Comment by Gordon Porter on 17 November 2009:
If United States intelligence did in fact uncover stark evidence that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is guilty of conspiring to carry out numerous terrorist attacks including those on 9/11, then why did they consider it necessary to torture?
If the basis for Mohammed’s criminal charges originate from information obtained through confessions that were extracted by torture it will be nearly impossible to convict him. America made its bed when they decided that torture was by some means an admissible form of interrogation, and as far as I am concerned they can sleep in it.
3 Comment by Chris Hewlett on 17 November 2009:
#2, I imagine they tortured KSM to obtain information about other conspirators. America … they can sleep in it. You must not be American?
4 Comment by Gordon Porter on 17 November 2009:
#3 Mr. Hewlett, I am very much American, however I will not make any efforts to defend torture nor am I surprised by the blowback that occurs when we choose to engage in it. This sort of behavior was given as the rational for the war in Iraq and is symptomatic of a rogue nation. As I recall, we were fed a constant propaganda campaign about Saddam torturing his people.
Torture is inconsistent with Constitutional law as well as what many would consider to be traditional American values. Christian morality does not endorse torture, but then again we ceased to have any semblance of being a Christian nation a long time ago. Our government and media are currently committed to the removal of whatever vestiges of Christianity remain, so perhaps my opposition to torture is null.
5 Comment by Kirt Higdon on 17 November 2009:
Is Pat Buchanan a serious commentator? When will he be able to make up his mind if he is or is not in favor of the perpetual warfare policy of the regime? Not only has the ill conceived war on terror cost thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of foreigners their lives, but it has exponentially multiplied the numbers of our enemies, nearly bankrupted the country, and raised the status of the Al Qaeda gangsters to that of a world power. A lot of damage has already been done and it may be too late to undo a lot of it, but at least treating these people as criminals may begin the process of ending the war hysteria of Americans.
6 Comment by Tom Piatak on 17 November 2009:
Pat Buchanan raises an important question. Despite what Kirt Higdon seems to think, Buchanan is not advocating waging preemptive war in the Mideast, something he forcefully opposed from the beginning. He is talking about how we should deal with men intent on murdering innocent Americans, as the Al-Qaeda terrorists demonstrably are. Giving foreign terrorists the same rights we accord American citizens is absurd.
7 Comment by Theodore M. Van Oosbree on 17 November 2009:
Mr. Buchanan has not (to his credit) advocated pre-emptive war in the Middle East; nevertheless, he is a divided man when it comes to prosecuting the wars. He recognizes the futility of our efforts but worries too much (in my estimation) about a loss of credibility if we remove our troops from these fiascos. Perhaps it is a residue of his Nixon administration experience and the dumping of South Vietnam. It reminds me of his inability to sever his emotional ties to the Republican Party which has rejected him. There’s too much stubborn Irishman and Scotsman in him to cut his losses and throw in the towel -to git while the gittin’ is good!
8 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 17 November 2009:
The problem is not law or policy towards terrorists—the problem is that the U.S. can no longer distinguish between a citizen and a foreigner. Granting citizen’s rights to these foreigners, who should never have been in the country to begin with, is repulsive. On the other hand, the denial of due process to anyone is a slippery slope since freedom consists ENTIRELY of restrictions that government has been forced to accept over a long, difficult, and uneven process of centuries. Nor can the extant U.S. regime we trusted with anybody’s right to life, liberty, and property.
Is Mr. Buchanan submitting the murder of Mrs. Surratt as an example of good policy? The Lincoln “conspirators” were bound, gagged, and hooded and executed after a secret military trial. They were not allowed to speak to anyone not approved by the evil Sec. of War Stanton, the American Himmler. A normal procedure would have been to question the people to find out as much as possible about the most important event. Instead they were held incommunicado and quickly executed. The only people who profited from this was the Radical Republican conspirators against the Union who wanted to close off any possible discovery of their involvement is Lincoln’s removal from the scene. The war was virtually over and no judicial determination had been made about the prisoners’
status. It is hard to imagine a more arbitrary and illegal act.
I fear this shows what unquestioning obedience to the U.S. government leads to.
9 Comment by RJ Rafferty on 17 November 2009:
Clyde, Clyde, Clyde! Will you ever forgive us damn yankees for drubbin’ your reb asses lo these 14 score and 4 years ago?
10 Comment by David Collins on 17 November 2009:
Rafferty @9
Score means 20 years. So 14 score would equal 280 years.
11 Comment by Kirt Higdon on 17 November 2009:
Mr. Piatak and Dr. Wilson are apparently under the impression that foreigners either do not or should not have the same legal rights as US citizens when tried by US courts. Maybe they shouldn’t, but under the Constitution they do. And this does not prevent their conviction and incarceration. Dozens of Columbian and other Latin American narcos, not to mention Islamic terrorists such a the blind sheik (Egyptian) and Ramsi Yousef (Paki) are incarcerated in US prisons.
But Dr. Wilson makes a good point, intended or not, with his reference to the cover-up following the Lincoln assassination. The dirty little secret of the CIA and the “special ops” branches of the armed forces is not that they torture. That is no secret and the majority of the American people unhappily approve. What is kept secret from most Americans is that they train and equip Islamic terrorists by the thousands, Hasan being just the most recent notorious example. Roam the world seeking monsters to destroy? No, like Dr. Frankenstein, the US rulers create their own monsters to keep their subjects in a state of terror.
12 Comment by Brock H. on 17 November 2009:
Mr. Rafferty speaks as though he were really referring to some kind of civil war between TWO factions of ONE country. No doubt this is the result of public school education he has yet to recover from. Southerners would then indeed be sore losers, if Mr. Rafferty’s interpretation of that sordid little affair was accurate. Dr. Wilson, however, is only holding the Yankee imperial establishment accountable for a war of aggression against and occupation of another nation of people.
13 Comment by Brock H. on 18 November 2009:
Higdon makes an excellent point, one I have not realized until now. The American regime doesn’t violate J.Q. Adams’s advice by going abroad searching for monsters to destroy. It merely transfers the reigns of power from one monster to another in order to perpetuate the cycle of keeping monsters abroad alive and well. Subjects of an empire must, by definition, be kept scared and submissive.
14 Comment by Brock H. on 18 November 2009:
Dr. Wilson,
There is no distinction, or possibility to distinguish, between a citizen and a foreigner in a so-called country where a centralized board of bureaucrats make the decision to declare that the latter is the former – with naught but a signature and an ink stamping.
15 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 18 November 2009:
#9. Note that RJ, RJ, RJ’s! condescending and faux-humourous style of “thinking” and argument is typical of people representing his unsupportable viewpoint. It is almost always the style of these people.
16 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 18 November 2009:
Is the Obama administration aware of what it is risking by not turning KSM over to a military tribunal in Guantanamo?
The answer is, “No.”
In fact Obama is a laughingstock all over the world except among America’s mainstream gutter press. Little Smoking Barry bows low to Arab potentates with no clue as to what American independence was all about. His handlers are aware of this and fail to clue him in on such errors of protocol. It serves the voting public right for electing a mulatto who is also half-Kenyan.
17 Comment by Chris Hewlett on 18 November 2009:
Torture is a completely secondary issue. Whether to, or not to, torture depends entirely on the nature of the conflict and the nature of the enemy. Given a defensive position (when the chips are down) I think we would be amazed at how quickly everyone here would turn into monsters. We should not have invaded Iraq and Afghanistan because they did not attack us as nations. Some of those countries’ citizens have attacked us – as well as others.
18 Comment by Tom Piatak on 18 November 2009:
Mr. Hidgon,
The whole point is that such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed should not be tried by US courts. They should be tried by military tribunals, which is indeed what we used to do, a procedure upheld by the Supreme Court in Ex parte Quirin. In fact, a case could be made that they should be tried on the battlefield, under the authority of Rule 303. (Fans of “Breaker Morant” will understand the reference).
19 Comment by Derek Leaberry on 18 November 2009:
If a terrorist is caught on the battlefield, or in the act of carrying out terror, I see no reason why the Morant policy would not be carried out. However, I do not think the American people have the stomach for that sort of thing. Think about how weak in the knees most Americans get regarding Capital Punishment, which these days must be carried out behind closed doors by, usually, lethal injection after several years of appeals.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed should never have been tortured. He should have been tried by military tribunal and, if found guilty, publicly hanged at a military base on American soil for all America and the world to see.
20 Comment by Tom Piatak on 18 November 2009:
Derek Leaberry at 19:
Yes, I believe your position is the correct one.
21 Comment by CM Collins on 18 November 2009:
“If a terrorist is caught on the battlefield….”
What battlefield?
22 Comment by Derek Leaberry on 18 November 2009:
Mr. Collins, if an Al-Qaeda was captured at, say, a Taleban base in Afghanistan in the winter of 2001-02 and not shot on site by our soldiers, I believe he ought to have been brought back to the US, tried, and if convicted, executed and his body dumped at a pauper’s grave.
23 Comment by Andrew Stanton on 18 November 2009:
The last time justice for domestic terrorism was dispensed properly was in 1859 when John Brown was handed over to the State of Virginia for trial.
24 Comment by CM Collins on 18 November 2009:
Mr. Leaberry,
The point is that for certain types, there is no battlefield, so the threshold question, which I think Buchanan was getting at, is defining who is the enemy and who is merely a bandit, criminal, brigand, murderer, clown, etc. etc. We should get rid of the word terrorist and be more precise, and thus keep clear and out-front the distinction between enemies, with whom we might, at least conceivably, strike a peace, and criminals, who can’t be afforded that dignity. Look again how Buchanan started his article: Are we at war –or not? Certain things follow depending on how you answer that question.
25 Comment by Theodore Van Oosbree on 18 November 2009:
Is Dr. Wilson a believer in the “Stanton dun it” thesis? After all, he was a Democrat and a Lincoln critic before the war (perhaps that’s where he got his “Himmler-like” attitudes).
26 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 18 November 2009:
25. I urge you to study Stanton’s behaviour closely. I do not know what happened in the Lincoln assassination and neither does anyone else. We will never know, precisely because of Stanton’s actions.
27 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 18 November 2009:
It’s my impression that most of the detainees were not captured in combat but were sold to the U.S. forces. There is a difference, especially since, juridically speaking, no war has been declared.
28 Comment by RJ Rafferty on 18 November 2009:
How dare you, suh! I’ll have you to know that my great-grandaddy fought at fust and second Molasses and was mentioned in dispatches by General Beauregard Beaupre Scruggs for his fine, discerning, unstuttering(#15)humour!
29 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 18 November 2009:
#28 QED
30 Comment by Robert on 18 November 2009:
“Is America a Serious Nation?”
Of course not. Chronicles is,so far as blogs can be serious, a relatively serious blog. Yet, even on the best of days it is often visited by some young college kid like, RJ Rafferty who uses the manners found in any bowling league across America to upbraid a venerable man and Southern historian who he does not know and cannot respect. A culture is based on its ordinary habits and every day manners, not the virtues (or even vices) of its extraordinary citizens. We have neither. The question is when, if ever, were Americans a serious people.
31 Pingback by Conservative Donnybrook » Blog Archive » Once again, a clear voice on 18 November 2009:
[...] PJB provides perspective on the trial of KSM. [...]
32 Comment by Dan Phillips on 18 November 2009:
Theoretically, an unlawful enemy combatant (as opposed to a POW) could be tried in a military tribunal either in theater or not, I believe. This would best apply, for example, to an irregular enemy combatant in Iraq or Afghanistan who was captured engaging in an illegal activity according to the Law of Arm Conflict.
The problem here is definitional. We have declared (actually not) an amorphous “war on terror” and consider terrorists unlawful enemy combatants. Any terrorist, anywhere. But this is a definition for convenience only. If the terrorist isn’t an actual enemy combatant, meaning at this time either fighting for Iraq or Afghanistan, then they aren’t really an unlawful enemy combatant, they are a criminal. Before 9/11 they were criminals. After 9/11 do they somehow magically become enemy combatants? This gets at the whole insanity of declaring war against a tactic.
I get the opposing viewpoint being articulated here by others, and I get the problem with making real policy based on slippery slope concerns, but this seems to me a potentially very slippery slope. If anyone, anywhere can be declared an unlawful enemy combatant essentially by fiat, then what is to keep them from at some point declaring all of us “anti-government” rabble rouser thought criminals to be rounded up and dragged before a military tribunal?
I think a good way to deal with these foreign terrorists would be with letters of marque and reprisal. This would authorize the military or others to strategically go after terrorists without corrupting the unlawful combatants concept.
33 Comment by Gilbert Jacobi on 18 November 2009:
Either we are at war or we are not. All other questions are secondary to this. Not why we are at war, how we conduct the war or who started it, and even less who “we” are.
To take the position that we are not at war, either one has to completely misunderstand the nature of the violence done to Americans, beginning with the first airplane hijackings of the 70s, or one has a political axe to grind.
The axe the Obamites and the Democrat party have to grind is nothing less than the weapon with which they seek to strike a powerful blow at America itself. By holding that KSM is a mere “criminal”, and, as such, innocent until proven guilty, they say before the world that America is guilty until proven innocent. By saying KSM and his accomplices have the same rights as Americans, this administration radically debases the pitiful remains of those rights for Americans. By giving this case standing in an American court, the Trotsky/Marcuse black vanguard who took over Washington in 2009 create a perfect platform for gutting what is left of the power and prestige of the race and culture that founded this country.
Like his heroes, the Weathermen and other 60s radicals, who elevated the Viet Cong, who had the blood of village elders and teachers on their hands, to folk-hero status, Islamophile Obama would elevate jihadists to similar status. Whether or not, as PJB says, Obama “may be betting his presidency on the outcome of the game”, is, again, secondary to the state of war that exists. For, as per Trotsky’s insight, that “… American Negroes …. are potentially the most revolutionary element of the population”, the Obama vanguard is about to amplify the already powerful voice of jihad in America’s prisons to multiply the ranks of D.C. snipers, etc. That is the name of the game about to begin.
34 Comment by Jeremiah Whitmoore on 18 November 2009:
Gilbert writes:
“Either we are at war or we are not. All other questions are secondary to this. Not why we are at war, how we conduct the war or who started it, and even less who “we” are.
We are not at war. All other questions? What do you mean by this?
Gilbert then writes:
“To take the position that we are not at war, either one has to completely misunderstand the nature of the violence done to Americans, beginning with the first airplane hijackings of the 70s, or one has a political axe to grind.”
Who was hijacked, when? A specific incident would be helpful. Gilbert, what do you know about the CIA involvement in the middle east? Little? Or little to nothing?
You should post on the non-existent Weekly Standard comment section that exists solely in your trifling mind.
35 Comment by Dan Phillips on 18 November 2009:
Gilbert, are we at war with who? We are at war (undeclared and hence illegal) with Iraq and Afghanistan. We are not at war with hijackers.
36 Comment by Gilbert Jacobi on 19 November 2009:
Jerry, @33
I got your trifling.
You really should stick to your crackberry. Even when you’re limited to three lines your brainpower struggles to reach, as in 15 November’s “No less than 911 was the Bush Massacre”: as if there could be an equivalence of blame between a senator who’s been shredding the constitution for multiple terms and someone who just got into office. The slap at Leahy pinch your poor little Democrat nerve?
“Who was hijacked, when?” Even an MTVidiot like you should have picked up somewhere along the line that Americans have been getting hijacked and attacked since, oh, say, at least 1985, when Navy Diver Robert Dean Stethem was beaten and shot to death aboard TWA 847 by Imad Mugniyah, mastermind of the Marine Barracks attack that killed 241 Americans. Do you think I might have been referring to the almost 200 hijackings that occurred in Europe and the Middle East between 1968 and 1970?, many of which included American victims? But no, Jerry, I doubt this information will be helpful to such as you.
Jerry then tries for a touch of mystery, asking what I “know about the CIA involvement” in the middle east, a typical lefty ploy, dropping a sinister-sounding hint about the CIA just to leave it dangling. Well, the answer is, not much, except for reading everything by Agee, Baer, Cannistraro, Helms, Gertz, Giraldi, etc. I can get my hands on. I’m sure this pales beside master sleuth Jerry’s list. And, after all, Democrats just know about these things, being so much more in tune with back-stabbing dirty work. So you tell me, Jerry; I’d love to hear your inside information on how the CIA did it, or Bush/Cheney, or anybody but the man who has begged to be executed for the act that he knows he did, and for the glory of which he believes he will be celebrated on earth and in heaven, for ever and ever.
37 Comment by Jeremiah Whitmoore on 19 November 2009:
Mr. Jacobi,
I did not intend for this discussion to turn into needless mudslinging. Perhaps my trifling barb was inopportune and unnecessary, and I apologize for that.
However, your entire response degenerated into ad hominem, smearing me as a lefty Democrat and then introducing a straw man about Bush/Cheney and the C.I.A involvement in 9/11.
You accuse me of being a Democrat and a lefty. It’s mind boggling how you are able confuse Old Right non-interventionism with lefty politics. For the record, I voted for Dr. Paul during the primaries and then Chuck Baldwin in the general election.
As for the three lines I wrote on my blackberry, I was simply applying the same logic as the poster who termed the Fort Hood Massacre “the Leahy Massacre” to help illuminate this line of reasoning would indubitably lead to 9/11 being coined the “Bush Massacre.”
I hope this clarifies things.
My remarks regarding C.I.A involvement in the Middle East should be straightforward to a someone who claims to read everything written by Phillip Giraldi. Did you miss his interview with Sibel Edmonds? If not, do you think Mrs. Edmonds is a liar?
Furthermore, is Mr. Giraldi using a “typical lefty ploy” when he criticizes the C.I.A?
Mr. Jacobi,
My main quibble is that you claim we are at war. But against whom or what? A nation, a religion, a terror group? What exactly is the war we are fighting and what are the goals? I’d appreciate clarification on this.
38 Comment by Sean Scallon on 19 November 2009:
What war? We can’t bring ourselves to even declare we are at war with simple vote of the Congress as is their Constitutional duty. If our own leaders can’t take the war effort so seriously to even do this, to make it officia;, why should anyone expect the average person to take it seriously either. War demands sacrifice and yet what did we tell people to do after 9-11? Go shopping. Not exactly a “meatless Tuesday” like in WWII.
39 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 19 November 2009:
“The whole point is that such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed should not be tried by US courts. They should be tried by military tribunals, which is indeed what we used to do, a procedure upheld by the Supreme Court in Ex parte Quirin.”
I could be wrong, but I believe Quirin determined the tribunals used in those *particular* instances, and under those *particular* circumstances (declared war) were constitutional. The defendants, however, had access to counsel and were not held incommunicado as they have been in this last “war”. More recently in Hamdan the SC found the tribunals as constructed by the Bush admin were *not* constitutional.
“In fact, a case could be made that they should be tried on the battlefield, under the authority of Rule 303.”
What “battlefield”? Many accused terrorists were captured far from any battlefield – what about them? What about innocent civilians abducted by our intelligence services – where should they be tried? Should the American government be allowed the power to abduct anyone from anywhere in the world to hold them, for years (or indefinitely, as Obama has claimed the power to do), incommunicado and with no recourse to defend themselves in a fair, open trial?
Also, what about those captured on an actual, real-life battlefield. Most of those waging war against the US in Afghanistan are not religiously motivated fanatics – they are people who have seen their countrymen and co-religionists slaughtered by an arrogant alien occupation and are understandably fighting against it. Our government considers them “terrorists”. Where should they be tried? Or more accurately – why?
I do not recall that the United States had a persistent Islamic terrorist problem before insinuating ourselves into the politics of the middle east and backing a Jewish ethno-state in the middle of the Islamic world. I’m not sure that further empowering the elites who got us into this mess in the first place is the best way to get us out. We should grant those detainees captured far from any battlefield – some of whom are inevitably innocent – fair and open civilian trials imo. If we have insufficient evidence to convict them, we set them free. For those captured on the battlefield, military courts-martial under the UCMJ.
40 Comment by Tom Piatak on 19 November 2009:
Who are we to declare war against? Al-Qaeda is not a sovereign nation, but a ragtag collection of terrorists. We did not declare war against the Barbary Pirates, nor did we declare war against Pancho Villa when we sent Pershing into Mexico after him, nor did Congress declare war against the various Indian tribes who used to massacre Americans until they were subdued. But we hanged the Indians who massacred Americans in Minnesota, after brief trials before a military tribunal, and we would have hanged Pancho Villa if we had caught him. The America that defended itself against Moslem pirates, Mexican bandits, and marauding Indians was indisputably a nation serious about protecting its citizens, and the question Buchanan poses is a relevant one.
41 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 19 November 2009:
“Who are we to declare war against?”
Against any nation we plan to conquer. Most recently, Iraq and Afghanistan.
42 Comment by Tom Piatak on 19 November 2009:
A declaration of war against Iraq or Afghanistan would not mean anything in the case of KSM. He is not an Iraqi or an Afghan, nor was he captured in the service of Iraq or Afghanistan. He is a terrorist captured in Pakistan, who has indicated a willingness to confess his guilt to conceiving terrorist actions against Americans that did in fact kill innocent Americans. We should have obliged him, and then executed him.
43 Comment by Rich on 19 November 2009:
And what of speedy trial? Apart from the hundreds of thorny due process, national security, and other Constitutional Law issues, is such a defendant not entitled to a speedy trial?
Oh, by the way, how many tens of millions will the taxpayers expend to pay for this trial, from start through appeals (if any are even necessary)?
Finally, we are in the middle of a 100 Years War. It began during WWII, at the latest, when the United States assumed all sorts of political and business entanglements in the Middle East, leading to the loss of our national soul. The War has been fairly evenly sustained throughout, thus far, and will only heat up in the coming 50 years.
When you start adding up the price of Israel, the Palestinian question, the Suez, the Arab-Israeli wars, the propping up of dictators, the tearing down of many of the same dictators, whorish swamps of arms for hostages and lives for oil, the attacks on U.S. military units (from USS LIBERTY to USS STARK to USS VINCENNES to USS COLE, the Marine Barracks, Khobar Towers), the two Iraq “Wars,” the Afghanistan “War,” and countless attacks on Americans worldwide (from Pan Am 103 to the Achille Lauro), you realize just how “hot” this war has been.
Given the clear intent of violent Islamists to fulfill the mission they believe is assigned to all Muslims by Allah, it is obvious that we are in for many more years of this War. It will only become more violent (with the use of nuclear weapons of one kind or another coming into play sooner rather than later) and more pervasive (as Islamic terrorists become more inclined to carry out violent attacks anywhere and everywhere they can). We are in for a long, difficult, deadly 50 years or more. Whether we (the West and Christianity) survive it depends upon whether we, as a people, begin to demand the leadership necessary to effectively combat our enemies. Thus far, we have been woefully inadequate to the task.
44 Comment by R. McCabe on 19 November 2009:
Yes, Mr. Piatak has tied off some loose ends in this confusing debate. We can each draw our own lines in history as to how long we’ve been at war as such, but for most citizens, 9/11 did represent a clear transition so that the average American became aware that we were in a slow motion, unconventional war, and perhaps had been for some time.
It is also useful to distinguish between terrorists like KSM acting on behalf of an organized group (with whom we’ve been fighting for some time) from a lone wolf type terrorist act (Tim McVeigh) or a non-terrorist criminal, like a tourist who kills someone in a bar fight and would be subject to our criminal laws. The fact we are not at war with a sovereign nation is extremely confusing, but it is a worse mistake to oversimplify the situation and demand the traditional rigidity of declared war. (Perhaps we are not the only nation who has let go of our own sovereign identity.)
Further disturbing in this mess to me are the comments by our president yesterday foreshadowing a conviction and execution of KSM. At best, this is like an idiot athlete guaranteeing a playoff win, at worst it speaks to the shambles in wisdom and structural division of powers our government has become.
45 Comment by Red Phillips on 19 November 2009:
The idea of declaring war is more nebulous than it seems, as Tom points out. We did not declare war against the Barbary Pirates and arguably didn’t need to as long as we were just fighting pirates in a “policing action” (which is modern terminology itself). But when we actually invaded North African countries in the process, we arguably should have.
Whether or not we could/should declare war on Al-Qaeda, which is not a nation, is an interesting question. Clearly the declaration of war vs. no declaration dichotomy doesn’t fit well with these sorts of ambiguous situations. But when we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq we unambiguously should have declared war.
If we actually declared war against Al-Qaeda then KSM might be an unlawful enemy combatant and we could proceed with a military tribunal, but as it stands now, he can’t be an unlawful enemy combatant properly defined because he was not captured fighting for the enemy in Iraq or Afghanistan. He is a criminal and should be treated as such.
The situation is ambiguous and doesn’t fit neatly in a dichotomous formula. Perhaps we should discuss the feasibility/desirability of declaring war on a non-state. Perhaps Congress needs to formulate some guidelines. But surely we can agree that it is dangerous to allow the Executive to just declare people unlawful enemy combatants without any relation to a battlefield. What is wrong with the suggestion to use Letters of Marque?
46 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 19 November 2009:
“When you start adding up the price of Israel, the Palestinian question, the Suez, the Arab-Israeli wars, the propping up of dictators, the tearing down of many of the same dictators, whorish swamps of arms for hostages and lives for oil, the attacks on U.S. military units (from USS LIBERTY to USS STARK to USS VINCENNES to USS COLE, the Marine Barracks, Khobar Towers), the two Iraq “Wars,” the Afghanistan “War,” and countless attacks on Americans worldwide (from Pan Am 103 to the Achille Lauro), you realize just how “hot” this war has been”
At whose instigation? Demanding “the leadership necessary to effectively combat our enemies” is treating the symptom – not the disease, which is U.S. intervention in a part of the globe that clearly doesn’t want us there.
“Given the clear intent of violent Islamists to fulfill the mission they believe is assigned to all Muslims by Allah”
Funny how that mission never manifested itself (against the U.S.) until we unleashed the CIA on the Islamic world.
47 Comment by Tom Piatak on 19 November 2009:
Red,
The bright line distinction that I believe is most important to preserve is not the one between enemy combatant and criminal, but between citizen and non-citizen, and that is precisely the distinction most threatened by the trial of KSM.
48 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 19 November 2009:
“But surely we can agree that it is dangerous to allow the Executive to just declare people unlawful enemy combatants without any relation to a battlefield”
One would hope! And not just that, but Obama has declared that he has the power of “preventive detention” – i.e. to abduct and cage persons the gov’t deems “dangerous” who cannot be convicted in court, either because evidence is tainted, because there is insufficient evidence, or *because they have not committed a crime yet*.
“Preventive detention” – a more Orwellian locution would be hard to concoct.
49 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 19 November 2009:
“The bright line distinction that I believe is most important to preserve is not the one between enemy combatant and criminal, but between citizen and non-citizen, and that is precisely the distinction most threatened by the trial of KSM”
So no non-citizen should ever be tried in a civilian court?
50 Comment by Tom Piatak on 19 November 2009:
Not non-citizens who wage war against the United States, as al-Qaeda has done, or as the Minnesota Sioux did, or as Pancho Villa did. What is more, if KSM is convicted in United States District Court, despite the way information was extracted from him, we may very well have laid the groundwork for the use of waterboarding on us. Earlier generations of Americans understood the importance of the distinction between citizens and non-citizens; we are so interested in granting “rights” to the whole planet that we have lost sight of it.
51 Comment by Daniel Maxwell on 19 November 2009:
I agree with Red @45. I see a military trial as nearly dignifying him and his cohorts – they are nothing but criminals, and should be treated as such. Just like if Jefferson Davis made good on his promise to hold Beast Butler for trial if caught, being that he was no better than any other murderer. Military trials are in a way, a privilege; as is executing military prisoners by firing squad.
As for distinguishing between citizen and non-citizen, how would this have been handled when the United States had more sense? I note Mr. Piatak’s example of the Minnesota Sioux, but what about truly foreign criminals, captured abroad? Off the top of my head I cannot think of an example.
52 Comment by CM Collins on 19 November 2009:
Seems the primary distinction would still be what’s waging war and what’s crime. Which is just another way of saying terrorist/non-terrorist.
53 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 19 November 2009:
“Not non-citizens who wage war against the United States, as al-Qaeda has done, or as the Minnesota Sioux did, or as Pancho Villa did”
What about an innocent civilian captured near no battlefield who is alleged, by our CIA, to be a terrorist. One abducted from a street in his hometown and held incommunicado for five years, in solitary confinement, with no access to counsel, while being tortured. Should such a person be allowed a fair and open trial, or should they be subject only to rough battlefield justice (to take place thousands of miles from any battlefield). Is there any doubt that making that official policy will only increase the resentment and hatred that breeds terrorists? For us to treat the world as a battlefield, abduct people from anywhere in the world, hold them indefinitely in brutal conditions and then subject them to harsh justice of military tribunals?
Torture chambers, gulags, kangaroo courts. America.
54 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 19 November 2009:
“Seems the primary distinction would still be what’s waging war and what’s crime. Which is just another way of saying terrorist/non-terrorist.”
I don’t think it is. It’s another way of saying “what’s a soldier and what’s a terrorist.” There’s a difference, I think.
55 Comment by CM Collins on 19 November 2009:
See how confusing the word terrorist is? Is it a soldier committing war crimes or a mere criminal deluding himself that he is waging a legitimate war? Let us execute the word.
56 Comment by R. McCabe on 19 November 2009:
@52, Mr. Collins, an act of war is probably the tougher distinction to make, but I don’t think it’s equivalent to terrorism/non-terror distinctions. If a non-citizen did what Lee Harvey Oswald did, it would not be an act of terror but might be considered an act of war, if he represented some group that was capable of conducting a war. Tim McVeigh conducted what I would consider both an act of war and a terrorist attack, but he was not part of a group against which war could be waged. So, he was subjected to criminal justice.
@51, Mr. Maxwell, I empathize with your line of thinking, but I think it is also inappropriate. The criminal justice system was designed to protect citizens by putting the burden of evidence on the state to show a crime was committed beyond a reasonable doubt. (by contrast, civil court only demands a preponderance of evidence.) I have no legal backround and don’t know how military courts are designed. But KSM seems to meet at least two criteria that warrant a military tribunal, 1) he waged an act of war against us as part of a group that can actually wage war against us, and 2) he is not a citizen.
I realize taht non-citizens who commit crimes on our soil are generally given criminal trials, (and I a apprecate Mr. Toddard’s observations), but a criminal trial for KSM seems wildly inappropriate.
@45, Mr. Philips, “But when we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq we unambiguously should have declared war.” I agree we should have been compelled to declare war on Iraq, since we attacked and invaded that country in an effort to destroy its military and government and install a new regine. Was our cause in Afghanistan not markedly different? They may be bought “allies”, but are we not working with their government? My limited understanding suggests we should have declared war (albeit unjustly) against Iraq and issued Letters of Marquee against Al-Queda, which may have led us into Afghanistan (and Pakistan).
57 Comment by Red Phillips on 19 November 2009:
Tom, I believe there is a long history for treating citizens and non-citizens differently. For example, there is a reference in the Bible to the Apostle Paul being treated differently because he was a Roman citizen. I don’t necessarily have a problem with that, I don’t think. But we shouldn’t corrupt the enemy combatant status. Maybe it is the ex-military in me and having to set through Law of Armed Conflict lectures once a year.
58 Comment by Jeremiah Whitmoore on 19 November 2009:
I can understand the inclination of paleocons to support military tribunals for foreign terrorists. It’s a decent and honest opinion held by many fine gentleman here at Chronicles.
But, when the executive branch can nominate any citizen they please, as an enemy combatant, and strip them of their rights as an American, we have crossed the Rubicon, so to speak.
As an American Citizen, Jose Padilla, however nefarious he was, deserved a trial. The fact that he wasn’t granted his right to Habeas Corpus is a damning indictment of how far we have fallen away from the rule of law in this nation.
And then after the election of President Obama we learn about the Missouri Information Analysis Center describing supporters of Bob Barr, Chuck Baldwin, and Ron Paul as “militia influenced terrorists.
Do you really trust the federal government with these powers?
59 Comment by J McKean on 19 November 2009:
Non-state groups are not capable of making war on the US. Therefore, we are not at war with “terror”. This leads me to conclude that we should treat these terrorists as criminals, not as representatives of “terror” against which we cannot actually declare war. This whole mess is a result of CIA meddling, not that I think that is an excuse for tolerating their attacks. I am all for closing this country to Muslims who favor sharia and jihad. What I don’t like is 9/11 being used as a pretext for a reduction in freedoms and an expansion in foreign wars.
60 Comment by Edmond on 20 November 2009:
Pat Buchanan’s Darling:
Washington – Sarah Palin, the failed Republican vice presidential candidate in the headlines again with a new book, disagrees with the Obama administration’s call for an end to Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories.
‘I believe the Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expanded upon, because that population of Israel is going to grow. More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead,’ she told ABC News’ doyen Barbara Walters in interview excerpts released Wednesday.
By definition, anyone who opposes these policies or the Republican party was a terrorist, from 01 – 08. Paleocons would have been included eventually in the military commissions, had Bush and Yoo, with his Korean junta style government plans, had their way. Thankfully for them, conservatives have so much wool in their heads, it’s child’s play to pull it over their eyes (to paraphrase Sir Humphrey Applebey). With the exception of Mr. Higdon and Mr. Stoddard, this is on full display here. By the way Dr. Wilson, wasn’t their a strong faction in the South that were against the Yankees because they stood in the way of southern expansion to Cuba and Mexico. It is laughable when imperialists want to incorporate foreign lands into the empire and then complain when the lands come with the people, or when the imperialist attempt fails, the collaborators with our attempt then have a claim on our country.
61 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 20 November 2009:
“See how confusing the word terrorist is? Is it a soldier committing war crimes or a mere criminal deluding himself that he is waging a legitimate war?”
A terrorist is a non-state actor committing acts of violence for the purpose of effecting political change through terror. A soldier that commits war crimes is an agent of a state – he is bound by the laws of war and has violated them.
I think another line needs to be drawn between Afghans fighting an occupation and “terrorists”. Really though, isn’t it futile – ludicrous might be a better word – to talk about what the gov’t “should” do given the role the U.S. is playing in all of this? Our country is in the midst of attempting to conquer two Muslim nations, it has slaughtered hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of them in the last decade and displaced millions more. We abduct them from all over the world, secret them away to black-site gulags, brutalize and torture them. And now we argue about how best to deny them any chance of defending themselves in court. If the lot of us put our heads together to purposely construct a plan to guarantee us the unending hatred of Muslims and the perpetual existence of anti-American Islamic terrorism, could we come up with anything more effective than exactly what we are doing now?
62 Comment by Tom Piatak on 20 November 2009:
Mr. Toddard,
Let me tell you about the Aghans who are “fighting an occupation.” Recently, a group of NATO soldiers were killed by those Afghans. This is how they died: they had their hands and feet severed and they were sodomized to death. I really am not concerned about the “rights” of such savages.
Nor am I too worked up over what the CIA does to foreign terrorists who have killed, or want to kill, Americans. Part of the job of the CIA is to protect us from such people, and I hope they do a good one. I do not approve of torturing terrorists, and I do not think the Moslem terrorists have the capacity to pose a mortal threat to the United States, but there is no doubt the jihadis want to kill as many of us as they can. Invading countries is a stupid and counterproductive way of stopping Moslem terrorists, but using our intelligence resources to find them and kill them is not.
Broadly speaking, I favor US disengagement from the Moslem world, which involves both a US disengagement from the Middle East and a prohibition or at least serious restriction of Moslem immigration to the United States. But such a policy tells us nothing about whether KSM is entitled to a trial, with all the protections of the US Constitution. Granting him such a trial sends a powerful message to his cohorts: come to America, kill as many Americans as you can, and, if you are caught, you will receive all the procedural and substantive protections an American citizen is afforded, even if those protections compromise American intelligence sources or indeed compromise our efforts to capture you. And a conviction secured in such a trial may indeed diminish our freedoms, because the precedents established in a trial with all the rights guaranteed under the Constitution will potentially apply to the rest of us, an outcome that would not be possible if we insisted on maintaining a strict distinction between the treatment of citizens and non-citizens.
63 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 20 November 2009:
“Recently, a group of NATO soldiers were killed by those Afghans. This is how they died: they had their hands and feet severed and they were sodomized to death. I really am not concerned about the “rights” of such savages.”
I am sure right now somewhere in the Islamic world one Mohammedan is telling another “they were abducted from an airport in Canada, and sent to Syria where they were tortured for months and then died. I really am not concerned about the lives of such savages.” Or “they were celebrating the wedding of their daughter. Mercenaries from the U.S. opened fire and slaughtered 40 of them.”
It is ridiculous and logically indefensible on its face to use an example like that to characterize every Afghan fighting the US occupation. Over the last decade no people on earth has shown themselves to be more savage and murderous than Americans, as no nation on earth has savagely slaughtered more human beings than America. I doubt whether it matters much to a mother whether her family was blown into bloody chunks by a United States-launched missile or chopped into bloody chunks by a machete.
“Nor am I too worked up over what the CIA does to foreign terrorists who have killed, or want to kill, Americans”
What about innocent people who have not killed, and do not want to kill, Americans.
64 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 20 November 2009:
Let me add: 1) I am not particularly worked up about what happens to terrorists who kill Americans. I am concerned, though, about what happens to innocent civilians our CIA alleges are terrorists, and about America now being a country that openly embraces gulags, torture, and rigged trials as surely as any banana republic. 2) I respect you very much, Mr. Piatak, I enjoy your writing immensely, and hope I do not appear to be overly aggressive or rude – that is not my intent.
65 Comment by Derek Leaberry on 20 November 2009:
If I could briefly meander off the main course of conversation on how to treat foreign terrorists, I would like to recommend John Mack Faragher’s biography of Daniel Boone for a study on how Americans handled the serious terror problem on the Eastern frontier in the last half of the 18th Century. Contrary to what popular culture and the Dewey schools would have us believe, the conflict between American settlers and the Indians was more blood-drenched than what happened in the Old West. It was life and death. Habeus Corpus was ignored.
66 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 20 November 2009:
“the conflict between American settlers and the Indians was more blood-drenched than what happened in the Old West. It was life and death”
…And not really analogous to what’s happening now, where the enemy is scattered all over the world, where Americans do not generally face a daily life-or-death struggle, and where the chance of any individual American being killed is infinitesimal.
67 Comment by Tom Piatak on 20 November 2009:
Mr. Toddard,
Thank you for your kind words. We have a disagreement on an important matter, and I have not found your arguments aggressive or rude, though I disagree with them.
68 Comment by Rich on 20 November 2009:
S.L.–The first paragraph you quote from my post is a laundry list that cries out for NOT becoming involved in such entanglements. I do not speak in favor of some glorious notion of America’s history in the Middle East.
The second paragraph you quote from my post is a general statement about leadership in the U.S. since WWII. That leadership, for whatever political, economic, cultural, or other reason, was elected by the American people. We get he leaders we vote for and deserve. I am advocating that we reverse that trend. Now that the U.S. has awakened the sleeping Islamic Lion, we must fight that lion or die. Our call, for now.
69 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 20 November 2009:
Rich – I apologize if I misread your post.
“Now that the U.S. has awakened the sleeping Islamic Lion, we must fight that lion or die”
That metaphorical lion cannot metaphorically kill us. To clumsily continue the metaphor, the worst it can do is scratch us as we sit in our bathtub, slitting our own wrists.
The only way, imo, to treat the problem is to change our dunderheaded foreign policy. Once we leave the savannah, the lion will scratch elsewhere.
70 Comment by Gilbert Jacobi on 22 November 2009:
Mr. R. McCabe@52,
“If a non-citizen did what Lee Harvey Oswald did, it would not be an act of terror but might be considered an act of war, if he represented some group that was capable of conducting a war.”
The way Lee Harvey Oswald and his action came to be defined and categorized is instructive as to what is at stake in the current cases. As James Piereson summarized in a February, 2008 article in The New Criterion: “…. in the hours and days after the assassination, U.S. political leaders insisted that President Kennedy’s death had to be seen within the context of the civil rights struggle, that (in other words) he had been the victim of a climate of hate, bigotry and intolerance that was expressed in opposition to the civil rights movement across the south. Every significant political leader who spoke on the assassination and every major journalistic outlet that covered it pressed this theme. Second, the worldwide left, led by the Soviet Union, asserted that Kennedy had been killed by a conspiracy arising out of the far right led by the Ku Klux Klan, the John Birch Society, or anti-communist businessmen. Together these two interpretations undermined the conclusion that Oswald – a communist – had committed the crime …. In fact, as Edward Jay Epstein and other writers have shown, President Kennedy’s assassination should be viewed as an event in the Cold War and, in particular, as an event arising out of the tense clash during the 1960s between the Kennedy administration and Fidel Castro’s communist regime in Cuba. This was plain enough at the time to national leaders like President Johnson who wished for reasons of international politics to deflect attention away from the potentially explosive Cold War aspects of the tragedy.”
I recall reading other articles, quoting Jackie Kennedy to show how she was especially active behind the scenes in the management of the story, being determined that her husband should be seen as a martyr for civil rights, and to deprive the Right and cold warriors like Nixon of the advantage that would have accrued from the correct interpretation.
I witnessed the Oswald saga unfold on the television in real time, read many of the articles on him in the following weeks, and I’m still amazed and rankled at how Americans, myself included, were hoodwinked into ignoring what was staring us in the face about his story.
How much better off America would have been in the coming years had not the left been freshly enabled, partly as a result of this historic lie, just as the air was beginning to escape from their anti-McCarthy movement, to paint opposition to the civil rights movement as a desecration of the Kennedy sacrifice, and anti-communism as a paranoid illusion, and thus to keep us for the next 20 years from playing the game to win, we’ll never know, but at least we can learn from the Oswald example to avoid similar abuses today.
KSM et al are foreigners who do indeed represent a group that was and is capable of conducting a war. Pace the commenter who had a qualm that trying them in a military court risked elevating them to a status they do not deserve, they did in fact, by attacking the Pentagon, conduct a military action, in addition to the terroristic one. The nature, intent, and results of this act alone, regardless of how the actors may be classified, demands the severity of a military trial.
71 Comment by Tarkin on 22 November 2009:
‘Is Pat Buchanan a serious commentator? When will he be able to make up his mind if he is or is not in favor of the perpetual warfare policy of the regime?’
Because Buchanan is surely a tare, and could probably be a member of some damned Masonic lodge or other grouping. And the Talkeries beat goes on and on.
72 Comment by R. McCabe on 22 November 2009:
Mr. Jacobi, I was not alive during that time to experience the events (nor have I read anything important about it), so I appreciate the information. I think you are right to draw those parallels regarding the effects that political spin for gain can have when it obscures the truth.
I agree entirely with your final paragraph, though I admit it is a complex subject.
73 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 23 November 2009:
Edmond at #60. Your remarks about the South seem to me totally irrelevant to the subject under discussion—an example of the tendency of some people to blame the South for all the troubles created by Yankees. Some Southerners talked of expansion before the War but it was a minority view squelched by public opinion. But what in the world does it have to do with the subject at hand?
The whole discussion here seems to me to be obfuscatory and confused. The terrorists are either 1)prisoners of war or 2)criminals, with the status whichever case applies. Military tribunals for civilians is foreign to the Constitution and one of many things for which the neocons love Lincoln. The military tribunal concept (and the punishment of civilians at Guatanamo bu the military) assumes that the U.S. government has some magical existence and power apart from the Constitution. A old Southerner would tell you unequivocally that the government is a creature of the consent of the people of the States in the Constitution and has no independent existence.\
However, none of this would even be an issue if we had a civilised country where we could tell the difference between a citizen and a foreigner.
74 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 23 November 2009:
Typically Edmond wants to invoke some old propaganda against the South to blame us for Yankee misbehaviour. Southern imperialists bringing in alien peoples? It was the Yankee Republican imperialists who took over Hawaii, Philippines, Puerto Rica, etc., which Southerners of the time opposed.
75 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 23 November 2009:
“The terrorists are either 1)prisoners of war or 2)criminals, with the status whichever case applies”
The neocons would argue that they (the accused terrorists) are actually in a third category, and that individuals in that category have (under US law) no rights whatsoever, and that the power the federal gov’t has over them is unlimited.
76 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 23 November 2009:
Who gave the neocons thr right to establish a category unknown to the Constitution (or do any of the other things they do)?
77 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 23 November 2009:
“Who gave the neocons thr right to establish a category unknown to the Constitution (or do any of the other things they do)?”
No one, of course.
I agree with you, I hope you understand. I was merely illustrating the neoconservative/Fox News Right “argument”. I never get used to the ability of the mainstream ‘right’ to chew, swallow and regurgitate the most illogical, self-contradictory arguments. These are people, don’t forget (and I never tire of pointing this out), who sing loudly the praises of “small government” while demanding that same government rule over, lead and police the entire world.
78 Comment by Edmond on 23 November 2009:
Mr. Wilson@74:
With all respect Sir, I apologize if I seem to “typically” invoke old propaganda against the South, however, as I advance in years, I am dubious that any geographical region has a monopoly on virtue, which includes the North. Perhaps that statement about imperialist designs by the South is old propaganda, but, as you concede, “Some Southerners talked of expansion before the War but it was a minority view squelched by public opinion.” That also seems to describe the neocons at this point in time, although their minority view has not yet been squelched, in large measure because of the efforts of Southern militarists, and you know the names. We also have them in the North; they’re called Republicans, just like in the South, as well as some Democrats oor “independents,” such as Joe Lieberman, Steny Hoyer, etc.
My point in my posts is that the biggest advantage that the neocons have are the useful idiots calling themselves conservatives whose support neocons can always count on when it comes to making war, including many so-called paleos. That is, that no matter how outrageous and incredible their anticonstitutional and socialist militarism is; they can always rally and count on the kneejerk militarists of the Republican Party, and as you must concede, who are mostly from the South, as if they’re old warhorses hearing a bugle. Senator Graham of your state is never lacking in Southern support for more and more war, at $1 billion dollars per soldier a year. And when it comes to government medical care, the public option; there are no more zealous advocates of that type of system than the military advocates, a majority of whom seem to be in the South,as you know. The public option is alive and well; it is called the VA medical system along with its feeder system, the military medical system. I’m not a defender of the current administration with all its proposed spending and other left-wing ideas but they did not set about to grow the military “public option,” as the previous one did, nor are they clamoring for more “boots on the ground” like conservative Republicans alsways do, even though militarism is the most fundamental form of socialism that there is.
You said at #8: “the U.S. can no longer distinguish between a citizen and a foreigner. Granting citizen’s rights to these foreigners, who should never have been in the country to begin with, is repulsive.”
My point was that since we have asserted jurisdiction and sovereignty over the entire world, implicitly for many years but made explicit since 911, who isn’t within our jurisdictional boundaries? We have created the conditions in which our government officials went overseas, and then effectively said: na na boo boo, our military and government is not constrained by the Constitution,” and started detaining people, citizens and noncitizens alike, innocent and guilty, as if we’re communists. And conservatives come out of the woodwork defending Dick Cheney and his neocon handlers, and the wars they started and there torture policies, taken right out of the communist’s manuals.
Consequently, we need to demand that our government cannot detain people without allowing our captives the “right” to show that the government is holding them wrongly; that is not an unrealistic or “liberal” notion when appied to people living under our military rule, which includes people living in the US. One thing conservatives always take for granted is that citizenship is self evident so if some government official detains someone and asserts that they are aliens, then they are to have no “rights,” assuming it could never happen to good American conservatives, who believe in gun rights, oppose abortion clinics, and give money to organizations that support each of those issues, even after guns are used for terrorist acts and abortion clinics are attacked. By the legal standard created by the last administration, that is “material support for terrorism,” and few conservatives recognize the risk they have been put in by their own advocacy and “allies.” Talk about useful idiots for the neocons.
You do take the position that “the denial of due process to anyone is a slippery slope since freedom consists ENTIRELY of restrictions that government has been forced to accept over a long, difficult, and uneven process of centuries.”
That is the point here; not giving “terrorists” rights but maintaining restrictions on the government to prevent unlimited tyranny. Consequently, we shouldn’t complain when some people living under our rule, regardless of what they’re accused of or where it allegedly occured (because the entire globe is under our jurisdiction now, or so we assert) is given the minimum right to contest the right of the government to detain them. It seems that is what you are saying Mary Surratt was entitled to even though Sec. Stanton said she was a terrorist, and in rebellion against the government so that she had no rights.
79 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 24 November 2009:
Edmond, I think we are in agreement about the matter, except that I disagree that “Southern militarists” are responsible “in large measure.” Unfortunately, native South Carolinians now make up only half the population and less than half of Republican voters in the State. Our State is now Florida, the dumping ground of the affluent Rust Belt. Sen. Graham’s support is based largely on the newcomers in the Christian Coalition and the suburbs.
80 Comment by Sean Scallon on 24 November 2009:
“Who are we to declare war against? Al-Qaeda is not a sovereign nation, but a ragtag collection of terrorists. We did not declare war against the Barbary Pirates, nor did we declare war against Pancho Villa when we sent Pershing into Mexico after him, nor did Congress declare war against the various Indian tribes who used to massacre Americans until they were subdued.”
Neither the Barbary Pirates nor the Indians launched attacks upon U.S. cities or large population centers and or cause thousands of deaths or millions of dollars in damage doing so. Al Qaeda did. U.S. Presidents and Congresses routinely negotiated treaties with the Indians and ratified them and treated them like sovereign nations. Ultimatlely the American continent wasn’t big enough nor would Washington tolerate other foreign nations upon the soil, whether they were European or Indian. Congress could have easily declared war on the Creek Nation or the Sioux Nation if it so wished to do so. It chose not to, probably because they assumed the nation would absorb such tribes into the nation as a whole in the future and did not want such a declaration to get in the way.
The U.S. could have declared war upon Mexico for Villa’s raid but Villa did not represent the Mexican government and the raid led by Pershing was designed to either capture him or to present such a show of force that neither Villa nor any other bandit group with ideas of raiding border communities because Mexico had fallen into anarchy at that time would try such a thing again.
So many seem to be hung up on the dictionary definition of war as being between nation states. Is it so hard to imagine a resolution drafted saying the “Congress of the United States has Declared War Upon Al Qaeda and any state that willing harbor and support Al Qaeda (which would have meant Afghanistan at that time.)? Isn’t it interesting we can unofficially declare ourselves to be at war against poverty, or war against drugs, or war against terrorism but yet find it hard to make it official through a two-thirds vote of our elected representatives? Hmmm? I’m sure the soldiers who are currently in Afghanistan and Iraq think they are at war. They’ve got the injuries to prove it. We’ve certainly spent a lot of money and a lot of lives going after this “rag-tag” group of terrorists and yet somehow have not brought them to heel.
If the argument is that the U.S. is not serious about the war, I would respond that if those who support it cannot bring themselves to call it such because of the quibble of a definition, then you’re going to have a hard time making people believe it. You can scream “Doncha know there’s a war on?” into you are blue in the face. But I assure you, if through a time warp we could bring a fellow from World War II into our own time and space and make him look around and see a nation at war, compared to own experience, he would be hard pressed to find one.
81 Comment by Edmond on 24 November 2009:
Prior to the total dumbing down of America, the US Army, borrowing from Clausewitz, noted that war, being the continuation of politics by other means, meant their was a continuum of conflict so that on a scale of 1 to 10, peace and normal competition was at the level of 1, all out nuclear war was at 10, conventional war at 8, and counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency were at 4 and 5 on this scale. Articles in journals such as that of the Command and General Staff College always noted that becasue war was so expensive and unpredictable, a prudent nation avoided it like the plague. Consequently, opeations other than war were to be preferred. This was written during the Reagan years. Then, in 2001, a faux “warrior” was elected President and he and his fellow draft dodgers began planning a series of wars, merely requiring a pretext to implement their militaristic schemes. Consequently, when a tiny band of terrorists, whom we had worked with in a number of other theaters, such as backing them in the battle against the Serbs and the Russians, attacked us with an attack that succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, the 2001 President exploited the situation with flipping the US Army’s rule on its head, and chose “war” as something to be desired rather than avoided. How else could a President claim extraordinary “war powers,” and invoke “unitary executive theory” as the legal doctrine for a veiled dictatorship? Since then, Americans found out about the unpredictabilty and expense of war. We also found out about the paradox of life and history as all this war on our part has made this tiny band of terrorists, with a home only in a backwards country, a genuine global force, even within our own borders. As anyone who has studied terrorism and the propaganda of the act; the greatest success comes when the victimized government overreacts and becomes tyrannical, within its own borders when there was such a thing as national sovereignty, and in todays global age under the control of the “world’s sole superpower,’ overreacts globally, as Dubya did. The strategy al Qaeda followed, as most terrorists, is merely the “rope a dope,” as popularized by Muhammad Ali, the former boxer. In this case, its hard to believe that al Qaeda could ever have imagined that the US had such a dope, as leader, as we did. And now we are in an accelerated decline just as the USSR was, with all of its militarism. And the Republicans (and conservatives of all stripes, with a few exceptions such as myself)are happily channeling Brezhev, et al.
82 Comment by Rich on 29 November 2009:
The sleeping giant of Islam, now stirring, might be seen by many as nothing more than a kitten, which we can control. However, what the U.S. and European nations have done is pull the tail without knowing what beast, lion or kitten, was on the other end. I maintain that it is a lion. Why? The combination of Islam, from Al Qaeda to sleeper cells in the U.S. to the hundreds of millions of potentially radical people in Pakistan, Indonesia, and throughout the Middle East, the Palestinian problem, Iran and nuclear weapons, and the terrible fact that we remain almost wholly dependent upon Islamic nations for oil to drive our economies. All of these combined with a foreign policy that has resulted in the U.S. being hated throughout most of the Islamic world, is, in fact, the lion whose tail we have pulled.
83 Comment by Gilbert Jacobi on 29 November 2009:
While the main topic here is the upcoming trials, there has been a steady undercurrent of commentary from moralists that has been derogatory of our military, who in actual fact take enormous risks to avoid harming non-combatants, and from those who consider themselves military strategists, regarding those who may have supported the wars they are engaged in. Reading terms like “kneejerk militarists”, “useful idiots”, and “savagely murderous”, I feel a need to take issue.
S.L. Toddard makes wildly inaccurate charges against U. S. armed forces, such as: “Attempting to conquer two Muslim nations, it has slaughtered hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of them ….”
Publicly available estimates of the percentage of Iraqi casualties attributable to airstrikes range from 4 to 13 per cent. Even using the disputed figures from the highest total casualty estimate, that of the Opinion Research Business survey, and the highest airstrike percentage, this would put the figure of casualties due to airstrike at around 130,000. This includes combatants as well as non-combatants, and injuries as well as deaths. All studies agree that by far the biggest cause of violent death in Iraq is gunshot, and the New England Journal Of Medicine, using verified data from the independent Iraq Body Count organization, says most of these are executions, i.e. Iraqis killing other Iraqis. I find it revealing that Toddard casually tosses off the figure “millions” that our forces have “perhaps” killed: one who bandies about such fantasy numbers, whether from laziness or malice, and who never misses a chance to characterize American actions in the worst possible light, is, to put the best face on it, not to be taken seriously.
The enemy is scattered all over the world? An American’s chances of being killed are infinitesimal? These were incredible statements to make even before Fort Hood. Now, it’s insane. This enemy is all over our own country, and our chances of becoming a victim increase daily, and will continue increasing for the foreseeable future, as Rich noted.
Why do people continually charge the U.S. with provoking the hatred and attacks against it? E. g. it’s all because we’re “in a part of the world that clearly doesn’t want us there.” Come again? We should be killed because we do what every country does, try to secure the resources vital to its economy? We should be killed because we helped implement what was the consensus of the West, that after the holocaust, a safe home should be made for the Jews, in a land in which they had historical roots? One doesn’t have to be a Zionist or dispensationalist, one only needs some of that old-time “don’t tread on me” American spirit to hate being told by a bunch of savages from the sand dunes where one can go and who we are allowed to be friends with.
“What about an innocent civilian captured near no battlefield who is alleged, by our CIA, to be a terrorist . One abducted from a street in his hometown and held incommunicado for five years, in solitary confinement, with no access to counsel, while being tortured. Is there any doubt that making that official policy will only increase the resentment and hatred that breeds terrorists?”
Any doubt this policy may make a potential terr think twice? Put a little fear in his dim brain?
What difference does it make if some of the gunmen slaughtering, to speak in Toddardian terms, American troops, are “not religiously motivated fanatics”? So they’re inbred halfwits who can’t figure out – like certain Americans – that we are NOT occupying them, and that all they have to do is not shoot at us or hide bombs in the road or give aid and comfort to the people who do, and we’ll be overjoyed to get on the next plane out? They still deserve to die, and keep on dying, until it dawns on them simply to let U. S. military personnel go about their business, which in no way concerns them (if they are indeed peaceful), and will, in fact, make their country a better place if allowed to proceed.
84 Comment by Gilbert Jacobi on 29 November 2009:
@69,
“Once we leave the savannah, the lion will scratch elsewhere.”
Allow me to bring this metaphor away from the kumbayah campfire and into the realm of reality. The image to keep in mind here is from the widely seen video from a t.v. program called something like “When pets go wild”.
It starts out with a garden variety tabby being a little aggressive, hissing, snarling, taking largely inneffective swipes at the man trying to subdue it. All of a sudden the animal turns completely feral and launches itself at the man’s crotch, sinking its fangs ferociously into the tender inner thigh muscle an then, with its hind legs ripping chunks of skin out, makes for even more tender parts.
Here kitty kitty.