Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Even the Liberal Brookings Institution ...
NPR had someone from the Brookings Institution talking about the legal issues in re. Gitmo, etc. (evidently he's hawking a book he wrote on the matter). He made sure to dis the Pres. so that way the Brookings Institution could continue to be dismissed as a liberal bastion of Bush hatred so that way when we moonbats go further left of Brookings (*) we'll be met with the rejoinder "even the liberal Brookings Institution".
OTOH, his views were, in the sense in which I am conservative, rather liberal -- he indicated that Congress needs to work out new laws to deal with our new situation in the war on terror. But is that the case? What new laws (or executive procedures ... BushCO is hardly being "conservative" here) do we need?
It seems to me that we have the legal framework we need to deal with terrorists: we capture "enemy combatants" and quickly classify them as "prisoners of war" or "criminal suspects" (not subject to standard due process procedures but subject to appropriate review and classification switching later on). Those who are POWs get Geneva Conventions. Those who are "criminal suspects" get tried as criminals with appropriate legal procedures and review. I don't get what the difficulty here is ... it isn't as if we've not managed to figure out ways to prosecute international terrorists before that we need new laws under which to prosecute them ....
The issue is not that Congress needs to pass laws to guide the executive branch in how to deal with suspected terrorists. The issue is that BushCO has failed to enforce the wonderful system of laws we already have because they side with, to allude to A Man for All Seasons, Roper over More. Given BushCO more laws to guide them won't make a difference ... how could it when they, either as a matter of political convenience/nefariousness or due to a sincere ideological faith (c.f. Paul's Epistle to the Romans), don't fundamentally believe in the rule of law?
* if Brookings, which I generally respect, is liberal, that would make someone like me "very liberal", regardless of my views on the Arab/Israeli conflict, doesn't it?
OTOH, his views were, in the sense in which I am conservative, rather liberal -- he indicated that Congress needs to work out new laws to deal with our new situation in the war on terror. But is that the case? What new laws (or executive procedures ... BushCO is hardly being "conservative" here) do we need?
It seems to me that we have the legal framework we need to deal with terrorists: we capture "enemy combatants" and quickly classify them as "prisoners of war" or "criminal suspects" (not subject to standard due process procedures but subject to appropriate review and classification switching later on). Those who are POWs get Geneva Conventions. Those who are "criminal suspects" get tried as criminals with appropriate legal procedures and review. I don't get what the difficulty here is ... it isn't as if we've not managed to figure out ways to prosecute international terrorists before that we need new laws under which to prosecute them ....
The issue is not that Congress needs to pass laws to guide the executive branch in how to deal with suspected terrorists. The issue is that BushCO has failed to enforce the wonderful system of laws we already have because they side with, to allude to A Man for All Seasons, Roper over More. Given BushCO more laws to guide them won't make a difference ... how could it when they, either as a matter of political convenience/nefariousness or due to a sincere ideological faith (c.f. Paul's Epistle to the Romans), don't fundamentally believe in the rule of law?
* if Brookings, which I generally respect, is liberal, that would make someone like me "very liberal", regardless of my views on the Arab/Israeli conflict, doesn't it?
# posted by alberich @ 2:04 PM 
