Quote Of The Day
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Quotes, Smart Things Said By Smart People, The War On TerrorismFor what it’s worth (to those who care) comes this catch from Andrew Sullivan:
“The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgement of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist,” - Winston Churchill, November 21, 1943, describing what is now legal and constitutional in the United States, under president Bush.
Seems like a pretty accurate description of what’s going on in Guantanamo and other secret prisons we have around the globe.
Listen, I know the arguments for and against, but I can’t help but think that holding people indefinitely without any charges is the very definition of wrong. In essence, we are holding people because we THINK they’ll commit a crime. Does that sound like a tactic that a democracy should be taking part in?
This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 19th, 2005 and is filed under Quotes, Smart Things Said By Smart People, The War On Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
October 19th, 2005 at 3:30 pm
Guess it depends on whether you think they are being held as potential criminals or because they are enemy combatants captured while they were engaged in actions against us.
It is a serious and I think unresolved distinction.
October 19th, 2005 at 3:59 pm
That’s just the problem. Not all of them were capture while engage in actions against us. However, many on the “pro” side of the enemy combatant argument seem to selectively forget this fact.
Listen, I’m in favor of holding people who we’ve fought against, but at a certain point we have to charge them. Imagine us doing this to the Nazis. We hold them because we think they’ll do some “Nazi” stuff later on. It’s ridiculous.
The situation here is that we don’t really have much on a lot of these guys (and many have been released at some point after being held for a couple years) and we’re afraid that if we let them go, they’ll go do terrorist stuff. Well, thems the brakes. But holding people indefinitely seems ridiculous to me, given we’re fighting a war against an idea. You can’t “win” wars against ideas, but you can marginalized the idea enough that it’s a nuisance instead of a grave threat. Will we release them at that time? Who knows.
October 21st, 2005 at 4:01 pm
I see them as prisoners of war. When the war is over maybe we’ll let them go.
On the other hand, I don’t want the political whirlwind of this war, from either side, brought into our judicial system. It’s loopy enough as it is.
October 21st, 2005 at 4:23 pm
This illustrates exactly why I think it’s wrong.
So when exactly is “Terror” going to be defeated?
October 21st, 2005 at 5:04 pm
As always, Churchill’s rhetoric is stirring. And as always, the political reality is a bit more gritty. In fact, Britain had its detention policy in place even before the Second World War began.
October 21st, 2005 at 5:05 pm
Here’s a primer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_Regulation_18B