Thomas wrote:okie wrote: Without going into detail, Thomas, I think it should be self evident that the conditions of war do not lend themselves to the requirements of a traditional court system where evidence, witnesses, and other considerations are entered into the equation.
I was proposing to give enemy combatants court-martials, or something very similar to them. Can we agree that court-martials, a system designed for the conditions of war, lend themselves to operating under the conditions of war?
I'm not sure about that, Thomas. I will concede the point that court martials would be a far better option than a civilian court, but again, I am not sure court martials should apply to terrorists that do not fit a traditional profile of a prisoner of war under the Geneva Conventions. We are dealing with people that may be far more dangerous in terms of the damage they will cause in the future, vs the danger of individual traditional soldiers of past military conflicts. I don't have enough information concerning court marshals vs the military commission route. I think I am going to defer to the military experts on this.
Quote:okie wrote:In regard to the court martial, again, I have not gotten very far in reading about that, but it is apparent it is meant first and foremost for the members of our own military.
It is also apparent that your own source disagrees: "as explained in my first post, courts martial deal with lawful combatants,
both one's own and the enemy's, and are meant to be operating differently than military commissions, which handle unlawful enemy combatants." (Emphasis added.) While the United States has made a policy decision not to try
unlawful enemy combatants in court martials, your claim that court martials aren't for enemy combatants at all is refuted by your own source.
Maybe, but can you cite a long history of using the court marshal for people other than our own military people that break the UCMJ. Do we have alot of historical evidence that the court marshal works very well for the way you propose to use it on these types of people?
Quote:okie wrote:You make the same argument here that we are dealing with a civilian problem, not a war problem. Are our soldiers supposed to read the enemy his rights before he shoots him or gets shot? How many times does this point have to be repeated here?
You didn't address this to me; still, I'd point out that reading rights to enemy soldiers is not required by the laws of law. Failure to read them will not disqualify any evidence in a court martial.
Well, I am not going to dismiss your argument out of hand, but my gut instinct is that granting these guys more ways to elude any benefit to us simply plays into their hands, not ours. If this was a crime problem, I would agree with all of the normal constraints of a traditional court or a court martial, but we are not talking about a crime problem. We are talking about acts of war by people that swear no allegiance to a country or wear uniforms.
I am going with the military on this, what they recommend, until I think they are grossly abusing their jurisdiction. So far, I've seen no evidence of it in context with what happens with acts of war, and what has happened in history. With war, there are always effects that potentially affect innocent people, but I see no possibility of avoiding that while we do what is the best for our own survival. Again, I think idealists want to see the world in idealistic terms, but the reality is that we have Islamic jihadists that are bent on killing and maiming as many of the civilized world as they can, you included, Thomas.