Every Republican who opposes civilian trials for terrorists should hold their head in shame.

[TheBigotBasher]

In a Democracy there is no political cause that justifies terrorism. Every politician who stands by the rule of law should accept that as a basic truth. If there is a time that terrorism can ever be justified, it is when democracy has failed. When all is lost.

There are no ideas that can not be debated in America. There is no desperate cause that would morph someone from being a terrorist to a freedom fighter. Kalid Sheikh Mohammed was not leading an Army of revolutionary soldiers. To compare him to a soldier, or a revolutionary insults every American who fought against British rule to the valiant Private serving in the Army today facing gunfire in Afghanistan.

To appease terrorists is to concede victory to them and to condemn more people to lose their lives. The underpants bomber is not a freedom fighter or a political prisoner, he is a failed terrorist. A joke. A common criminal.

Felix Frankfurter said, "Limited as law is, it is all that we have standing between us and the tyranny of mere will and the cruelty of unbridled feeling".

Yet a once great Political Party, would for short term political gain hand back a Country founded to the rule of law to the baying mob.

Edmund Burke, very often quoted by the Right said "It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do: but what humanity, reason and justice tell me I ought to do".

That surely has to be to stand firm in support of your Judicial System, against those who only win by seeing you depart from Centuries of history founded on the rule of law. American values of justice pre-date America as a Nation. You share with Britain the Magna Carta and Habeas Corpus. Common Law principles are shared. Decisions of the Courts on one side of the Atlantic have standing on the other. The United States of America, through the Declaration of Independence confirmed that it is a Country founded on the rule of law.

You can not however claim to be a Party of law and order while working to undermine the courts which administer the law and the police who enforce it. Yet we see Republican politicians doing that on a daily basis, on not just National, but International tv.

You can not choose who gets a fair trial and who does not. Justice is not divisible. You do not enhance the rule of law and justice by selectively choosing who is entitled to a fair trial, in fact you smother it. The principle of a fair trial is then ended. It becomes a decision of a Politician, swayed by short term political desire and the need to catch the right headline.

Once you end that principle of fair and open trials, the baying mob rules. That mob may bay for you now. What will it bay for in the future?

If you are guilty of the Crime, let the Court establish the guilt, not the mob.

A terrorist uses force because they cannot win by democratic means.

Their aim is to induce fear in the hearts of people.

No democratic politician should resort to that.

Military tribunals are succour for the mob. You have a Judicial system built on centuries of tradition that has successfully tried criminal after criminal.

Civil societies must not use the weapons of terrorism to fight a terrorist. Law and order is not rule of the mob.

Abu Musab al Zarqawi, took hostage two Americans, Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong, and a Briton Kenneth Bigley.

They were murdered for the blood lust of those who followed and supported the kidnappers. That is mob rule.

What separates civil society from the blood lust of murderers and kidnappers is the rule of law and a fair but firm Judicial system.

It saddens me to see that the Politicians shouting the loudest about liberty are the ones who are the least of its defenders in the wake of the baying mob.

[annabanana]

1. Why can't we teach Civics in school anymore?

How will the kids know even how the system is supposed to work?

[midnight]

2. Republicans do not care for the rules, they make/break them to suite their whims.

This mob rule mentality was evident in Florida via the recount in winter 2000.

[rgbecker]

3. Thank you Bigotbasher for saying this.

Thank you forefathers for putting it in the constitution:

Article 3, Section 2: "The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed."


What doesn't Senator Scotty Brown, Dick Cheney and the rest get about this?

[TheBigotBasher]

6. They need to be called out on this.

If they are to be tried as Military Combatants, that makes them soldiers, political fighters or even freedom fighters. Why are the Republicans elevating them to that level?

If they are none of the above, they are criminals and need to be tried as criminals.

It is not a difficult concept, unless of course you are a Republican.

[Peacetrain]

4. K&R!!!! for an excellent read

:thumbsup:

[truedelphi]

5. Thank you for posting. n/t

[treestar]

7. I agree, it is amazing how "patriotic" Republicans claim to be

And then to discount our system.

[ipaint]

8. Aren't we holding some of these people indefinately and or only providing military tribunals.

I don't think it is just republicans. I wish it was. Every last one of them needs to be tried in civilian courtrooms.

[Hippo_Tron]

9. You can't try people captured on a battlefield in a civilian court

Because they haven't committed a crime, other than fighting for the other side. You also can't just release them to go back and fight against Americans while we're still there. There's also a problem in that we want to release some of these people but their home countries won't take them back.

Guantanamo is an absolute clusterfuck created by the Bush Administration that Obama is trying to fix but having immense difficulty doing so. Actually even towards the end of the Bush Administration when he was legacy shopping (or more like desperate last minute repairing) they were actually talking about closing Guantanamo themselves. But they scratched the idea pretty quickly because they realized how big of a clusterfuck they had created.