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  • From: tvoivozhd <tvoivozd AT infionline.net>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org, RGod2 AT aol.com
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  • Subject: [Homestead] " rights" of terrorists who kill ALL their prisoners
  • Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2005 15:08:42 -0500



tvoivozhd---"rights" of terrorists are the same as they extend to their prisoners, i.e., none.

2/21/05

Editorial
By Mortimer B. Zuckerman
New rules for a new age

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed / and everywhere the Ceremony of Innocence is drowned.


- W. B. YEATS

For several hundred years, the civilized world has been making up rules to govern the actions of states at war--states with identifiable flags, uniforms, and borders--regulating which weapons and military practices are acceptable and which are not. But today we know, to our bitter cost, that for the most part the enemies of civilization are not military branches of specific states; they are shadowy terrorist groups--Islamofascists committed to mass murder, their suicide attacks a message of uncompromising struggle unrestrained by fear of reprisal.

How far can the ceremonies of innocence be observed in protecting society from such madmen? Reporting for his first day on the job as attorney general, Alberto Gonzales told Justice Department employees that their priority was fighting terrorism but, he emphasized, in ways that are consistent with our values.

Excruciating choices between morality and expediency press daily on our nation's defenders. How are we to fight this new war against terrorists who do not fight in uniforms but dress up as civilians? They shoot from mosques, hospitals, and churches. They hide behind children. Which is more consistent with our values, shooting back in self-defense but risking the loss of innocent lives or refraining and seeing other innocents killed and maimed?

Ticking bombs. The Geneva Conventions say prisoners of war essentially cannot be interrogated but provide only their name, rank, and serial number. Are we therefore to honor our values by stopping with those questions when there's reason to believe that a detained suspect knows of an impending attack?

The answers are anything but easy.

Obviously, we cannot countenance wanton cruelty, but how much of an outrage is it if we use stress techniques, such as sleep deprivation, on someone with murder in his heart? Blowing up nightclubs, hijacking planes to fly into offices, planting bombs to blow up buses--surely such acts cannot earn those who would plan them the privilege of the protections of the Geneva Conventions, which were organized after World War II to protect civilians from states, not to protect states from civilians.

The counterargument is that if we don't treat our prisoners with respect, America's uniformed services will pay the price when its members fall into enemy hands. But what happens when American soldiers or innocent civilians are captured by al Qaeda? When the terrorists seize hostages, what we see are the horrific videos of prisoners pleading for their lives, then having their heads hacked off while the murderers yell "Allahu akbar." Surely, these killers, when caught, have forfeited any presumption to be treated as prisoners of war.

Some suggest we can get around the challenge by solving the root causes of Islamic unrest. Americans in their ceremony of innocence always think that there are root causes, that there is an explanation for the inexplicable, an explanation for the privileged young men of the Arab Muslim world who would plot to kill themselves while murdering thousands of American civilians. We look for the usual suspects--poverty, injustice, exploitation, and frustration. But the data don't fit the model. The killers of 9/11 were, without exception, from families of privilege. Indeed, revolutionary violence has been a virtual monopoly of the relatively privileged and educated. A study of 18 revolutionary groups found that terrorists were, on average, more educated and less impoverished than their peer groups and that support for terrorism was not reduced by increases in education. Indeed, researchers Charles Russell and Bowman Miller found that the vast majority of those involved, as cadres or leaders, were quite well educated, with some two thirds having some university training and over two thirds coming from the middle or upper classes.

The West cannot solve this puzzle. Islamic unrest is produced in and by the Islamic world. It is Muslims who will have to find a solution. Skillful diplomacy might reduce some of the animosity, but there will always be fanatics whose hatred of the West cannot be satisfied by diplomacy.

Browse through an archive of columns by Mortimer B. Zuckerman.

We cannot become a frightened society, crippled by political correctness and inhibited from doing what is necessary to protect ourselves. The litmus test should always be that the public is told what is being done in its name. A successful megaterrorist attack would have appalling consequences for our individual rights. In such a scenario, the pressure on the government to act would make the Patriot Act look as if it were written by the ACLU. The fight for our security is thus also a fight for liberal values and personal freedoms.






  • [Homestead] " rights" of terrorists who kill ALL their prisoners, tvoivozhd, 02/17/2005

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