Never let it be forgotten that it’s the Republican right in America who proudly and openly surrenders to terrorism at every opportunity. Glenn Greenwald:
This is literally true: the Right’s reaction to yesterday’s announcement — we’re too afraid to allow trials and due process in our country — is the textbook definition of “surrendering to terrorists.” It’s the same fear they’ve been spewing for years. As always, the Right’s tough-guy leaders wallow in a combination of pitiful fear and cynical manipulation of the fear of their followers. Indeed, it’s hard to find any group of people on the globe who exude this sort of weakness and fear more than the American Right.
People in capitals all over the world have hosted trials of high-level terrorist suspects using their normal justice system. They didn’t allow fear to drive them to build island-prisons or create special commissions to depart from their rules of justice. Spain held an open trial in Madrid for the individuals accused of that country’s 2004 train bombings. The British put those accused of perpetrating the London subway bombings on trial right in their normal courthouse in London. Indonesia gave public trials using standard court procedures to the individuals who bombed a nightclub in Bali. India used a Mumbai courtroom to try the sole surviving terrorist who participated in the 2008 massacre of hundreds of residents. In Argentina, the Israelis captured Adolf Eichmann, one of the most notorious Nazi war criminals, and brought him to Jerusalem to stand trial for his crimes.
November 14, 2009 at 11:55 am
Spot on.
November 15, 2009 at 7:46 pm
Amen.
I take offense every time someone complains about giving terrorists a list of charges, a court date and an established set of rules, then pivots and talks about the Founding Fathers, liberty, original intent and whatnot when complaining about whatever the Democrats are doing.
The country dies if we don’t remind ourselves that Habeas Corpus and the Constitution as a whole still applies to people we don’t like a whole lot.