Republicans & Conservatives Archives

Nuts? No. Navy Seals know better than to mistreat a prisoner. We are better than those people and the Seals who allegedly violated his basic human rights should have gotten into trouble and be punished for it if they are guilty.

They will get a trial, as is proper.

What is ‘nuts’ about that?

I agree with Rhinehold. Are we a nation which upholds the rule of law for the rest of the world, or, only when it feels good to do so?

A prisoner, in custody, regardless of whether it is in a theater of war or, in the parking lot of an IMAX in L.A., under OUR laws, military and civilian, is to be treated humanely. The reason for these laws was and is quite obvious to our founding fathers and American ideal lovers today. Those charged with transporting subdued and restrained prisoners, DO NOT have the where with all to judge the guilt or innocence of the prisoner, nor to act justly as executioner of retributive justice in ANY form, upon that prisoner, absent a court order.

Why is this so very hard to entertain by so many calling themselves Republican. The GOP seems to be full of folks enamored of taking the law into their own hands if the crime, not the alleged suspect, evokes anger and hatred in them. It never seems to occur to them that regardless of the heinous nature of the crime, the suspect may well be innocent. Everyone is fallible, we all make mistakes, and due process is there to insure those mistakes are minimized to greatest degree possible.

Even with due process, our system releases a number of innocently imprisoned people each year. It would be inhumane and enormously immoral to abandon such due process for heated passions of the moment. Our soldiers and police are not children allowed to throw temper tantrums upon their prisoners or suspects because the passion strikes them, for lack of yet adequate or proper civilizing.

Rule of law, John and Christine. Might want to look it up for an understanding of why it makes America great, and why abandoning it, even for a moment, diminishes us and our nation (e.g. McCarthyism, or Japanese interment at the onset of WWII, both shameful periods in American history, and shameful behavior by those with the power of agency of our government.)

Apparently you both think the Bill of Rights is there for convenience, and that the Uniform Code of Military Justice is just a facade to hide our being as brutal and inhumane as those terrorists we do battle with. I assure you, if that is what you think, and your article alludes to it, calling us nuts for following due process and imposing the rule of law, your view is not only VERY WRONG but, very UnAmerican!

Lot of that going around in Republican circles these days by the likes of Michelle Bachman, Glenn Beck, Pawlenty, and many others, whose opinions allude to the laws and Constitution being a hindrance to their political and power objectives. Just because your party’s last president and V.P. had no respect for the Constitution and rule of law, doesn’t mean its party members must ditto their failures in comprehension and appreciation of what potentially makes us better than our enemies.

I am sick of certain Americans thinking our laws and views on freedom and rights only apply to fellow Americans. I guess it goes to prove that these same people have no idea where the ideas and concepts for our country came from. They didn’t pop into the heads of our founding fathers, they came from the enlightenment, a Europeon phenomenon.

Every time Americans flaunt the belief that rights and justice only apply to Americans we just look even more like the hypocritical fools the rest of the world sees us as.

Once you capture enemy compatants they are no longer enemy compatants, they are either prisoners, or detainees, or any other term you want to use. But their lives immidietly fall under our controll and are our responsibility. If you abuse that responsibility then you deserve to be punished.

Just because you have captured an enemy doesn’t give you the right to treat them like an animal. We don’t fight wars against other animals. We fight them against other humans. We hold our enemies to a standard that we presume all humans should adhere to, and yet we think we can treat them less than human once we have them in our custody?

Wow…

Rhinehold and David

Yes. We ARE better than those people. And better than most countries (even nice ones like China, India etc) where such things are routine.

But there is or should be a threshold. In the physical world, many medicines become poisons after a certain threshold and many deadly poisons are harmless under a certain threshold. Otherwise we would all be dead.

When people worry excessively about these little things, we call them neurotic, i.e. nuts, and they cannot function properly in society.

We have become too hypertensive to “abuse” in much the same neurotic way. Mind you, the terrorist CLAIMS he was abused. There is no physical evidence and witnesses don’t back him up.

So what we have done is given terrorist, who are murderers and liar by profession, the ability to stop and our efforts and destroy the careers or anybody brave enough to face them.

Hence the threshold. The “injuries” this guy sustained were not noticeable. We may assume he was lying or wasn’t hurt very much. It just is well below a reasonable threshold for investigation beyond what might be done informally at the local level. It does not deserve to be the Federal case it has become.

When a Union wants to stop work w/o going on strike, they just follow the rules to the letter. Everybody knows that rule book can anticipate every situation and no human beings can carry them out.

We have handed the terrorist an impossible strict rule book that applies only to us and invited them to stop us.

As for the respect of the world. Our experience with the Arab world is that they just think we are nuts about this. They despise us for it (I mean that word in the disrespect not the hatred way). They don’t believe it themselves, but are more than willing to use it against us.

David, you mention our shameful activities and you are right. By the high standards of the U.S. they are bad. But in most of the world, McCarthyism would be a big step UP in human rights.

We have been living under our Constitution since 1787 and the bill of Rights since 1789. For most of that time we had a reasonable interpretation. The Greatest Generation fought WWII with that reasonable interpretation. We certainly could not have prevailed against the Nazis had we allowed individual Germans to claim abuse such instances of minor abuse and then so completely investigated and tried our own people each time.

Did you know that we abused some of the guards at concentration camps when we liberated them? We yelled at them and shoved them — really made them feel bad about themselves. A liberal would ask seriously what I ask facetiously, “Which was worse, what they did or how we treated them when we captured them?”

So, we agree in theory. We agree that America has the highest standards. But we part company when it comes to implementation.

In the very worst case scenario, a terrorist and murderer was punched in the stomach. The same thing that happens when six year old boys are playing rough. We tell them not to cry.

You would think hardened terrorists would be a little tougher than a six year old.

So we just need to have reasonable standards. We cannot let terrorist just make claims.

AND these guys get a trial. It costs us thousands and takes them out of the fight. IF they are found innocent, what is the consequence for their accusers? Is there any incentive for the terrorist NOT to lie every time?

AND even if they are acquitted, they will be under a cloud, like those Haditha Marines that ex-Marine John Murtha accused. There was no consequence for Murtha, was there?

Mike

He was not treated like an animal. Please do not extrapolate. That is the cause for much of the misunderstandings and trouble.

The terrorist’s unsubstantiated complaint says he was punched in the gut and maybe given a fat lip. That is the worst case scenario. So in the worse case, he was treated like a kid who gets pushed on a playground.

On the other hand, when our sensitive terrorist captured Americans, he beat them to death, mutilated and burned their bodies and hung them from a bridge over the Euphrates River. He didn’t treat his prisoners like animals either. Almost nobody does that kind of stuff to animals.

Are we nuts? Apparently the answer is yes, but not in the way you meant. Advocates for beating prisoners might be characterized that way.

As for Murtha, he was relaying what military investigators told him, perhaps a cloud is just. Maybe you should look closer at the details.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haditha_killings

BTW, I do think it is time for Murtha to go, not because of this, but his intransigence on spending attachments and issues with appearances of impropriety.

Christine, you can go on forever with your relativist counter-arguments and I can counter with the Mi Lai Massacre and a host of others. But, such arguments are irrelevant.

The legal misdeeds of humans as agents of government cannot be tolerated by a government which is based on the rule of law. Not if that government wishes to ACTUALLY be based on rule of law equally applied to all, and defend the claim with pride and earned leadership.

This is one of those fine points that seems to escape Pres. Obama in his pursuit of the future and deliberate ignorance of the past, which establishes two laws in America, one for the citizens in which statutes of limitations are many years long, if imposed at all, and another set of laws for politicians in high office of federal government.

So what, if Bush and Cheney threaten to reveal horrors committed by the U.S. Gov’t. no one is even aware of, or to give away national security secrets if he is tried for violating laws, treaties, and the U.S. Constitution. In the long run, that will be less damaging to our nation than this maintenance of multiple law applications for different classes of people. That is after all, one of the motives for our Revolutionary War to overthrow King George of England in the Colonies. One set of laws with immunity from them for the King, and another for his subjects.

Let’s not conflate treatment of prisoners with capture of those prisoners.

The temptation to sweep our treatment of suspects under the rug is great, in light of the wrongs done by our enemies. We must keep in mind that they often excuse their wrongs with ours. We do ourselves no favors by suggesting that it should be within our right to mistreat prisoners. We should force them to justify themselves on spurious grounds and ancient history, rather than give them fresh means to excuse their evil acts.

If a prisoner is sufficiently restrained, and not behaving in an unruly matter, we ought to keep our hands off of them. This will make it easier to punish them later, an outcome I think we can all agree is a favorable one.

I am not taking a side here against the SEALs. The man could be lying, or leaving out his own provocative acts, if he really was struck.

It may seem like weakness in the face of the terrorists to some, but to me, it is weakness to fear and hate your enemy so much that you cannot restrain yourself. It can be a strategic weakness exploited by those who try to blacken your name, or provoke unwise action.

We demonstrate far more weakness in the face of the terrorist threat when we justify doing things our principles would otherwise preclude. If we can stand up to them and win on our own terms, rather than on theirs, with our principles intact, instead of expediently tossed aside, that is the better outcome, since they are less able to force action from us, especially the kinds they turn around and blacken our names with.

I would hope our soldiers are exonerated in this case. We should show the world that our principles are not the first casualties of war.

I also hope our soldiers are exonerated too Stephen, I don’t have privy to the information but more than likely if any injuries were sustained they happened while he was being apprehended, Navy Seals are trained to take them down fast and hard and restrain quickly and exit the location very swiftly.

S.D.
For once I can whole heartedly agree with you.

Are we nuts? Yes. The individuals in the armed forces frequently end up on YOUR local police force. You’d better hope they don’t think you said something provocative or made some wrong move when they pull you over, or you’ll get a fat lip or worse.

Well many of The individuals in the armed forces ended up flying for the Airlines and that was a good thing.

Gergle

You are extrapolating. Nobody advocated beating prisoners and this prisoner was not beaten even according to his own accusation. The worst case scenario is that he was struck a couple times while being arrested.

We are arguing for a reasonable threshold that would preclude making it a Federal case every time a terrorist makes an allegation.

Re Murtha – his crime was also extrapolation. He took a little unconfirmed information and spun it up into a big deal that harmed his fellow Marines (which is why he is one of the only ex-Marines there is).

You have criticized Sarah Palin’s use of “death panels” and we agree that she EXTRAPOLATED beyond the information she had. This is precisely the problem.

David

Threshold and reasonableness.Everybody knows that a prisoner is safer in U.S. custody than a comparable one would be in China, India, not to mention any Arab country. We also know that we are not perfect and humans are not perfect. We support the rule of law and we understand that America is indeed held to higher standards.

But we need not let the pursuit of unattainable perfection destroy the good. Imagine fighting a war in a far-off country and having fewer accusations of violence than you might have in a bad part of town. This is our accomplishment. Never before in the history of the world has an army at war behaved better.

That is the context. Now let’s talk about practicalities. If your kid came home from a playground and told you that little Johnny had punched him in the stomach, but you knew your kid often lied about things and he showed no obvious signs of abuse and you also knew that your darling child had stolen little Johnny’s bike, how would you react?

Or let’s put the shoe on a different foot. An American tourist returns from China. He had been stealing from local shops. He claims a Chinese cop punched him in the stomach as they arrested him. The Chinese cops involved deny it. How big a deal is that to you? If the Chinese do not arrest the cops involved and put them on trial, what do you conclude about China?

We have defined abuse so far down that I doubt there is any human on the planet who has not engaged in it at one time or another. What ordinarily happens in the course of arresting someone who is dangerous or resisting is defined as abuse.

Our politically correct society burns good men trying to stop terrorists, while giving the benefit of the doubt to the likes of Major Hassan or that cop killer in Washington State.

Christine,

So you are saying if I punch you in the face twice, but not three times you won’t charge me with assault?

Dumb argument? Yep!

President Carter did some unusual things and I wouldn’t classify him exactly as old school, In many ways he was a maverick he had the right ideas on energy and many other things, He also started us down the path of deregulation by the deregulation of the airlines and trucking industries, I’m not trying to critique him just pointing out a fact that we had the cream of the crop in the airline industry,They made money and borrowed money from banks and invested back into their own infrastructure and were self sustaining and paid extremely well, We had three huge union airline manufactures back then now only one, Was it worth in the long term, He in essence passed the baton called deregulation forward to the next Republican and Democratic administration’s.

Gergle

First of all, there is nothing but the word of the terrorist that ANY blows were landed on him. There was no physical evidence and the witnesses said that there was nothing to indicate he had been beaten.

More importantly, however, is the circumstances. And let me put your hypothetical into the proper context. If we were scuffing and you landed one blow, it might well be dismissed as part of the scuffle, perhaps inadvertent and subject to interpretation. I don’t call the cops if someone bumps into me on the train. If you landed three, it would probably indicate your intent.

Christine,

The falseness of your argument in trying to enumerate the number of blows is plain to see.

If we we were scuffling, then it becomes an argument about who was the aggressor.

If I landed three blows in defending myself, it may speak to your toughness or my weak blows, but it says nothing about intent.

If, on the other hand, I landed 50 unanswered blows, beyond the escalation to attempted murder, it may well speak to intent.

These are common standards in court. No need to go about changing laws.

The same applies to whether there is no physical evidence or witnesses. The courts can easily handle such scenarios. There is no need to protect angry officers who decide to land a few blows in anger. They shouldn’t be in law enforcement. No need to protect prison guards this way, either. Seals have military courts.

Sometimes injustices occur, on both sides. It is usually the more powerful side that commits an injustice. Why do you want to throw out or change our justice system, based on one case?

Gergle

When apprehending a criminal, we implicitly assume that the criminal is the aggressor and the obligation is only not to escalation beyond a reasonable amount of force to apprehend him. That is why the one punch (IF it happened) is reasonable.

Our problem here is practical. You want to apply a peaceful standard applied when the police are in control of an area to a war situation.

We indeed have shown the Muslim world again and again that our standards are much higher than anything they can even imagine in their own countries. It has not really impressed the bad guys. The only lesson they learned was that they could make baseless allegations and ruin the careers of anybody who did a good job of fighting against them.

Christine,

You’re making an argument about nothing.

A defensive punch is not the allegation.

You nor I know the actual facts.

A seal having a charge made in a military court, may have some basis. I do not know the requirements for the allegation to be heard. Regardless, why do you think the tribunal is more likely to biased in favor of the terrorist?

Your leaps to conclusions are baseless.

A dismissed charge will not ruin anyone’s career.

It seems you wish to be the judge, jury and executioner.

Gergle

YOu want to give every terrorist suspect in a war zone the right to tie up our military in U.S. courts with unsubstantiated charges. I don’t. YOu are right that neither of us knows the facts.

But we know this. A terror suspect in a war zone says he was punched once in the gut and pushed so that he got a fat lip. Others deny it and there and witnesses say he didn’t look roughed up. If you want to make that a Federal case, we disagree.

No, but I don’t want to deny rights to anyone. Even accused terrorists. Some might say that’s an American tradition or value.

Some might say that reasonableness is also an American value. We have to weigh the rights of the young Americans defending our freedom with those of the terrorist trying to take them away. A trial is not a pleasant thing. It cost the accused time, money and anguish. It may be small compensation to be found not guilty after having to go through months of that. If we make the standard of taking a person to trial too low, we are destroying freedom.

If you walk into a tavern at 2 am, it is very likely that many of the men in that bar have committed crimes, some of them serious such as drunk driving, drug possession and assault. Should we just arrest all of them and let the trial decide who is innocent?

There is probably not a man alive (nor a woman for that matter) who could not be accused of the types of “crimes” alleged by the terrorist. It really is no big deal. We made it one by pandering to the opinion of people who hate us no matter what we do.

BTW - did you read how the Italians interrogated a 20 year old American girl, Amanda Knox and then convicted her on what they got her to say. Whether or not she is guilty, the Italians certainly have no cause to criticize us. I cannot think of any place in the world that has stronger protections than we do. Can you?