Grounded for Life
I wish the right half of the Blog-brain would devote more commentary to this Washington Post report on the administration's table talk about terror suspects:
As I read it, this is at the "run it up the flagpole see if anyone salutes" stage. But the war on terrorism is a real-time event, and policy is evolving before our eyes. Granted, everything has been pushed back to inside pages this week by the Asia disaster. But a story like this one bears more attention than it's been getting. Issues like this are too important to be left to the vapid chatter of the Bush-is-Hitler people.
Instapundit gave it a look and some links. One of them was to Talkleft, where the story was greeted with a lot of Bushitler rhetoric, but also some good discussion in the comments.
The American Mind, one of the few defenders of the administration on this issue that I've read, cites this earlier article as a partial justification:
I told my European friend that this issue ties back to the Kevin Sites video of the Marine shooting the wounded Fallujah insurgent -- something that deeply offended Europeans. If you don't want more of that to happen, you have to be able to assure that Marine that (among other things) the enemies he captures will not be back on the battlefield in a month, trying to kill him again. Otherwise, he's going to take the route of self-preservation, not the moral high road.
The issue here is a particular government's dealings with non-citizens who go to war against it, in or out of uniform. But that's no reason to shrug it off. Governments have a historical tendency to eventually treat their own the way they treat others. "Law and order" are paired in our national rhetoric, but there's always an element that would trade "law" for "order" any day. What did Jefferson say was the price of liberty?
Modern terrorism is a direct challenge to democracy. A very few angry people with a relatively small stash of money can melt into an open society and unleash doom on a biblical scale. That, as far as I know, is a relatively new thing in the world. The Geneva Conventions really are antiquated when it comes to this, as creepy as it may sound to some folks to hear any Republican say that.
Governments and legal systems haven't even yet untangled knotty domestic problems that run along the same lines, such as what to do with chronic sexual predators. And you can't put an Islamist from Jablipistan under house arrest and make him wear an electronic monitoring bracelet and visit his parole officer once a week and stay away from Hot4U Co-eds Web sites.
UPDATE: While writing this, I see Instapundit is back on the story, and Andrew Sullivan is talking it up. And he points out that we're likely to have a lot of public discussion of it during the Gonzales hearings. That could be important, if it doesn't devolve into a "Embarass Bush vs. You're Soft on Terrorism" midget wrestling act.
Dad-blamed confounded flop-eared blogging fiends can crush these coals into diamonds with their bare hands faster than I can start to think about it.
***
The Bushitler obsessives see this WaPo article proof of totalitarianism in America. But to me it is a test case that shows democracy is still working. The media reports, the people debate, the other branches of government prepare to exercise their checks and balances. A phalanx of Senators from both parties on the Sunday talk shows roundly condemned the plan as a "bad idea" and probably unconstitutional.
Freedom doesn't mean everyone always has good ideas. Democracy means bad ideas get aired, exposed, stripped, and buried before they become policies or laws -- and if they do get that far, they get corrected.
My European friend is appalled by the administration's attempt to circumvent the courts. But I told him, "checks and balances" doesn't mean all the branches stay safely within their perogatives and avoid elbowing one another. The American system is built on the expectation that presidents, senators, judges will try to overreach their authority. They're expected to try, and the system is meant to rebuff them and keep its balance. The political vision in the "Federalist" is as un-romantic as they come.
During the course of debating this, my German friend made the observation that, "War is not a good environment for democracy to prosper."
I wonder, though. Democracy was born in ancient Greek city-states that always had their fists around each others' throats. War was an annual event, like sheep-shearing. The Roman Republic was constantly at war, with Carthage and other enemies. After that flowering, democracy lay dormant for centuries. The Roman Empire lived in peace for generations without a whimper of democracy. The "pax" of the Catholic church didn't bring democracy to Europe in the Middle Ages. It was born again in blood and flames during the American Revolution.
Administration officials are preparing long-range plans for indefinitely imprisoning suspected terrorists whom they do not want to set free or turn over to courts in the United States or other countries, according to intelligence, defense and diplomatic officials.
As I read it, this is at the "run it up the flagpole see if anyone salutes" stage. But the war on terrorism is a real-time event, and policy is evolving before our eyes. Granted, everything has been pushed back to inside pages this week by the Asia disaster. But a story like this one bears more attention than it's been getting. Issues like this are too important to be left to the vapid chatter of the Bush-is-Hitler people.
Instapundit gave it a look and some links. One of them was to Talkleft, where the story was greeted with a lot of Bushitler rhetoric, but also some good discussion in the comments.
The American Mind, one of the few defenders of the administration on this issue that I've read, cites this earlier article as a partial justification:
"Despite gaining their freedom by signing pledges to renounce violence, at least seven former prisoners of the United States at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have returned to terrorism, at times with deadly consequences.
At least two are believed to have died in fighting in Afghanistan, and a third was recaptured during a raid on a suspected training camp in Afghanistan, Lt. Cmdr. Flex Plexico, a Pentagon spokesman, said last week. Others are at large.
Additional former detainees have expressed a desire to rejoin the fight, be it against U.N. peacekeepers in Afghanistan, Americans in Iraq or Russian soldiers in Chechnya."
I told my European friend that this issue ties back to the Kevin Sites video of the Marine shooting the wounded Fallujah insurgent -- something that deeply offended Europeans. If you don't want more of that to happen, you have to be able to assure that Marine that (among other things) the enemies he captures will not be back on the battlefield in a month, trying to kill him again. Otherwise, he's going to take the route of self-preservation, not the moral high road.
The issue here is a particular government's dealings with non-citizens who go to war against it, in or out of uniform. But that's no reason to shrug it off. Governments have a historical tendency to eventually treat their own the way they treat others. "Law and order" are paired in our national rhetoric, but there's always an element that would trade "law" for "order" any day. What did Jefferson say was the price of liberty?
Modern terrorism is a direct challenge to democracy. A very few angry people with a relatively small stash of money can melt into an open society and unleash doom on a biblical scale. That, as far as I know, is a relatively new thing in the world. The Geneva Conventions really are antiquated when it comes to this, as creepy as it may sound to some folks to hear any Republican say that.
Governments and legal systems haven't even yet untangled knotty domestic problems that run along the same lines, such as what to do with chronic sexual predators. And you can't put an Islamist from Jablipistan under house arrest and make him wear an electronic monitoring bracelet and visit his parole officer once a week and stay away from Hot4U Co-eds Web sites.
UPDATE: While writing this, I see Instapundit is back on the story, and Andrew Sullivan is talking it up. And he points out that we're likely to have a lot of public discussion of it during the Gonzales hearings. That could be important, if it doesn't devolve into a "Embarass Bush vs. You're Soft on Terrorism" midget wrestling act.
Dad-blamed confounded flop-eared blogging fiends can crush these coals into diamonds with their bare hands faster than I can start to think about it.
***
The Bushitler obsessives see this WaPo article proof of totalitarianism in America. But to me it is a test case that shows democracy is still working. The media reports, the people debate, the other branches of government prepare to exercise their checks and balances. A phalanx of Senators from both parties on the Sunday talk shows roundly condemned the plan as a "bad idea" and probably unconstitutional.
Freedom doesn't mean everyone always has good ideas. Democracy means bad ideas get aired, exposed, stripped, and buried before they become policies or laws -- and if they do get that far, they get corrected.
My European friend is appalled by the administration's attempt to circumvent the courts. But I told him, "checks and balances" doesn't mean all the branches stay safely within their perogatives and avoid elbowing one another. The American system is built on the expectation that presidents, senators, judges will try to overreach their authority. They're expected to try, and the system is meant to rebuff them and keep its balance. The political vision in the "Federalist" is as un-romantic as they come.
During the course of debating this, my German friend made the observation that, "War is not a good environment for democracy to prosper."
I wonder, though. Democracy was born in ancient Greek city-states that always had their fists around each others' throats. War was an annual event, like sheep-shearing. The Roman Republic was constantly at war, with Carthage and other enemies. After that flowering, democracy lay dormant for centuries. The Roman Empire lived in peace for generations without a whimper of democracy. The "pax" of the Catholic church didn't bring democracy to Europe in the Middle Ages. It was born again in blood and flames during the American Revolution.
