no one ever said he was involved with thieves
I'm gonna try to make this as brief as I can, although if you know me you know I run wordy.
Something I've been chewing over for the past several months, ever since the Obama DOJ asserted and expanded the Bush II "state secrets" doctrine as a means of summarily blocking undesirable trials...
Trying to find the right words for it, which I haven't seen anyone do so far.
This comes up today because of Glenn Greenwald's excellent blog on Salon (subscription or consent to ad-support required), wherein he reports that the DOJ has taken further steps to turn the Bush "suspension of habeas corpus" for terrorism suspects into a permanent abolition of that fundamental right against anyone who, in the opinion of the Executive Branch, would get too fair of a trial for effective national security.
Okay, so I'll concede that it's a scary situation when Seriously Bad Guys have to go free because the people who locked them up were Seriously Bad Guys too. But it also seems to me that our whole excuse for calling ourselves the Good Guys rests on what we do when that happens. Like, if we respond to that by prosecuting our Seriously Bad Guys too, not only does it show the world that we definitely didn't deserve what "their" SBG's did to us...
(which is the part that everybody and their uncle Bill is already talking about)
...but it shows our soldiers and spooks that they need to adapt and overcome. To ditch the cheap, medieval, knucklehead Stalinist tactics and find creative, ingenious, morally upright, American methods of securing our lives and property.
But if we do like the Obama DOJ is doing and continue along this road, where the only priority is "suspected anti-American SBGs must be locked up By Any Means Necessary," what we're really saying is that it is impossible for us to protect both our national security and our ideals.
Let me expand that. This is important.
If we concede that we need to imprison people forever without evidence -- almost the definition of tyranny -- to keep ourselves safe, what we're really saying is that barbarians will always destroy free societies.
And that our two choices are: die out, or become barbarians.
Do you believe that?
Something I've been chewing over for the past several months, ever since the Obama DOJ asserted and expanded the Bush II "state secrets" doctrine as a means of summarily blocking undesirable trials...
Trying to find the right words for it, which I haven't seen anyone do so far.
This comes up today because of Glenn Greenwald's excellent blog on Salon (subscription or consent to ad-support required), wherein he reports that the DOJ has taken further steps to turn the Bush "suspension of habeas corpus" for terrorism suspects into a permanent abolition of that fundamental right against anyone who, in the opinion of the Executive Branch, would get too fair of a trial for effective national security.
Okay, so I'll concede that it's a scary situation when Seriously Bad Guys have to go free because the people who locked them up were Seriously Bad Guys too. But it also seems to me that our whole excuse for calling ourselves the Good Guys rests on what we do when that happens. Like, if we respond to that by prosecuting our Seriously Bad Guys too, not only does it show the world that we definitely didn't deserve what "their" SBG's did to us...
(which is the part that everybody and their uncle Bill is already talking about)
...but it shows our soldiers and spooks that they need to adapt and overcome. To ditch the cheap, medieval, knucklehead Stalinist tactics and find creative, ingenious, morally upright, American methods of securing our lives and property.
But if we do like the Obama DOJ is doing and continue along this road, where the only priority is "suspected anti-American SBGs must be locked up By Any Means Necessary," what we're really saying is that it is impossible for us to protect both our national security and our ideals.
Let me expand that. This is important.
If we concede that we need to imprison people forever without evidence -- almost the definition of tyranny -- to keep ourselves safe, what we're really saying is that barbarians will always destroy free societies.
And that our two choices are: die out, or become barbarians.
Do you believe that?