bushidomartialarts said:
the report on npr that started this threat touched on some historical precedents for what's going on down in gitmo. they made a big point of how a british lord did similar about 200 years back, and was thrown out of power for doing it.
while i understand hand sword's anger at the cowards who bombed the WTC, i believe our country is in danger of becoming what we behold. reasonable, intelligent, honorable people allow our government to do things we never would have tolerated 6 years ago. the tsa, the patriot act, laws regarding personal mobility and privacy, treatment of prisoners in gitmo and elsewhere.
it's frankly alarming what we're willing to tolerate, and even defend.
There is always the danger of those that hunt dragons becoming dragons themselves. Take a look at the way we treated the
nissei Americans during WWII.
But, at the same time, how do you treat someone that has been accused of being a member of Al-Queda? In an area where there are not much assests and little chance of getting evidence, do you throw away any lead you get because you can't get the same level of evidence you could in an American city?
And you have to realize that the rights we Americans hold important are not generally given to non-Americans overseas during times of war. That is why we have rules against the military helping the police, or letting the CIA do the same things to Americans that they do to people in other countries.
Imagine if we applied the rights we expect from the goverment to a case where a predator drone identified a senior terrorist in a car and launches a missle, killing him. That would be unthinkable in a domestic situation. No matter how terrible a crime you have to try to capture him and just can't shoot on sight. But we do that type of thing in way. We have done this exact situation in Yeman and people screamed.
I live in Japan. Have you ever heard of the damage to people here and in Germany whose only crime was to be born in a country at war with America and maybe live too close to a ball-bearing factory? The early bombers took out square kilometers to get a single factory. The people that died by the
thousands during each attempt to take out a single factory may never even have voted for their goverment, but they died horrible deaths all the same.
Americans have rules about the way the goverment can treat its
citizens because to the possibility of govermenal abuse of its powers. In my lifetime two presidents, Nixon and Clinton aquired from the FBI things on their political enemies. The idea was that in America the goverment had the upper hand and restraints were placed on that power to prevent an abuse of power. But in international relationships and wars, the US goverment did not have all the power, and so the restraints are less. In an equal match, those with the less restraints on their actions has the edge.
I am not saying that we should do whatever we want. We could turn the entire area that we think Bin Laden is hiding in into a lifeless wasteland. We don't. But you can't expect the same exact rules for the domestic US where the goverment runs things to places overseas. I would like the innocent to be found to be innocent and released as soon as possible. But compared to the way the US has killed hundreds of thousands of people in places like Hamburg and Tokyo, it does not seem to be the most horrible thing the US has done.
