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| OT Re: Hunters Point vs LIRR Round 1 (790057) | |||
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OT Re: Hunters Point vs LIRR Round 1 |
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Posted by trainsarefun on Wed May 27 20:25:07 2009, in response to Re: Hunters Point vs LIRR Round 1, posted by Nilet on Wed May 27 15:40:19 2009. This is too interesting to resist jumping into.So, Canadian citizens are "engaged in combat with our troops" and JFK airport is a "battlefield." The seizure and (I believe unlawful) "extraordinary rendition" (read: outsourcing torture to Syria) wasn't based so much on the idea that JFK airport is a battlefield as it was on the notion that Mr. Arar and other foreign travelers in our nation are subject to the President's whim. Mind you, that still didn't explain how or why the Executive simply bypassed the immigration laws. But at all events, it's not a question of the battlefield at home, despite rhetoric on many sides to that effect. If you get abducted and taken to Guantanamo, how do you expect to prove this? Or would you thank your captors for not shooting you, as you claim they have a right to? This was indeed the case for some detainees which were literally bought from bounty hunters, or people who weren't terrorists but had good looking wives, and other such things. So to this extent you are correct that Mr. Lion shoots wide by assuming without ascertaining the actual status of detainees. But of course this still leaves the question of what process detainees ought to be accorded consistent with foreign policy objectives. And you're absolutely certain that everyone who is being imprisoned without charges or oversight was "engaged in combat with our troops" on a "battlefield." Not one of them might possibly be falsely imprisoned due to mistaken identity or because he was fingered by a false confession produced through torture or just through ordinary mistakes and slip-ups. Considering the broad net originally cast, of course there was overbreadth, and so too is justice delayed justice denied. But this doesn't speak to what to do about people who we are very certain - more than enough to convict them - committed great wrongdoing, but who one doesn't want to try in a US District Court. This isn't to suggest that the military commissions supported by the Obama and Bush administrations are the best, or even the only, alternative. But it does point out the difficulties in this area. At this point, I think that the government actually knows who the terrorists in custody are, and who they're just holding for a variety of other reasons (including, but not limited to, PR). The question becomes what to do with these two groups of people. In essence then, I think that both you and Mr. Lion talk past each other, neither really appreciating the concerns of the other, and seizing on rhetorical excess. |
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