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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