Where will things stand five years from now? (or one, or ten.) Predictions please.
Mine:
1)US, supported by NATO, Aussies and some others, hit Afghan with air power and special forces, staging from Diego Garcia. Taleban essentially wiped out. ObL dead.
After that, the US will begin the task of pursuing other terrorists in other countries. And this will be far less successful.
Syria or Lebanon or someone will refuse to turn over a suspect. The US will airstrike the suspect’s base, with some civilian casualties. The UN will decry the excessive use of force.
A European country will refuse to turn over a suspect to the US, because of the death penalty, because they are not persuaded by the evidence, or because of legal complications.
There will be increasing calls for terrorism to be handled by the UN and World Court. The US will resist these calls, arguing that those bodies include terrorist-harboring states.
By mid-2002, preemptive US military action against terrorism will be supported wholeheartedly only by the UK.
Arab countries, even moderate ones, will become increasingly wary of US counterterrorism efforts as they deal with restless fundamentalist populations. US-Saudi relations will be strained.
At least one operation will be a ratfuck, with heavy civilian casualties. This will lead to a very loud international outcry that the US has gone too far.
Continued terrorist attacks, and losses to US personnel, will be seen domestically as signs that the US is losing the war.
GWB will lose the election in 2004, on the platform that “W’s War” has led to “losing the war at home;” charging that domestic issues have been neglected, and we need to improve relations with Arab countries.
Major acts of terrorism will be prevented by improved intelligence and security measures. But every six months or so, someone will explode a bomb in a mall.
And we will get used to it.
The only prediction I have is that W will use the billions allocated for reprisal as an excuse to dip into the Social Security fund, which he was going to have to do anyway but now he can blame something other than his own damn stupid tax cut.
Um, I do not think America’s death penalty is applicable to international criminals. Since different states have different laws who would try the case to sentence someone to death?
I think one thing is certain: the first few terrorists will be killed before they are captured. On purpose.
This will cause some international eyebrows to be raised, and whatever support the US has will start to dwindle. This will put the UK in a tough spot, I think.
I wonder if the “real IRA” or whatever the last extremeists call themselves now will commit a terrorist act… and what would the consequences be?
My prediction is that some terrorist will attack Israel, and no one is going to stop them from attempting to squash the Palestinians.
I suppose, in the end, many people will take sides. One side is anti-American. One side is pro-American. The third side is for a peaceful resolution. Who will fall where? I really think it is hard to say. I think for some time most countries won’t support the US, but won’t do anything to restrain us either.
Why wouldn’t it be applicable? A few thousand murders were committed in New York and Washington. Anybody who participated in those murders may be eligible for the death penalty (depending on the specifics of the laws). I believe New York has the death penalty, and the feds do as well (just ask Timothy McVeigh).
Some terrorist shoots a nuke at us, we shoot back. Cockroaches evolve and become the peaceful species, presiding over the world until a comet destroys them because they had nothing to blow it up with.
The state in which the act occurred. In the case of the WTC bombings, that would be New York. However, in this instance, the charge is not murder under state law, but rather hijacking resulting in death, a crime under federal law bearing the death penalty. The attack on the Pentagon would be tried under federal law as well because the Pentagon is a federal installation. Virginia law is preempted (as it would also be by the hijacking law). Of course, the federal prosecutor could choose to allow the prosecution to go forth under the applicable state laws, although this is unlikely.
We do have a rather coherent body of law to decide such questions. As a general rule, at least in nations which derive their law from English common law, a nation (or state) has the right to try for murder anyone who causes the death “with malice aforethought” of a person if any of the following apply:
[li]the actor was within the territorial jurisdiction of the nation (or state) at the time of the act which led to the death of the victim;[/li][li]the victim was within the territorial jurisdiction of the nation (or state) at the time of the act which led to the death of the victim; or[/li][li]the victim died within the territorial jurisdiction of the nation (or state).[/li]More complex rules apply to conspiracies. The careful thinker will note that this can lead to multiple nations (or states) having jurisdiction over the same murder. The classic case is the defendant who shoots across a state line and whose victim proceeds to flee, after having been shot, into a third state, where he dies. In this case, all three states have jurisdiction, and the three of them get to argue amongst themselves over which one gets to try the defendant.
There are also certain offenses for which the United States asserts “extraterritorial” jurisdiction, such as the offenses of genocide, torture, and biological warfare. The United States asserts the right to try any person whosoever who commits genocide, torture, or biological warfare against an American citizen wherever the offense may occur. (All of these offenses, by the way, bear the death penalty, subject to the Constitutional requirement that the death penalty may only be imposed if the death of at least one victim occured as a result of the offense.)
In any case, since the United States appears to be treating these acts as “acts of war”, the United States appears to be foreclosed from prosecuting them under its criminal law, or in fact that of any nation. Acts of war are not crimes unless they violate generally accepted law of war. The particular acts in question do in fact violate the law of war (specifically, the deliberate targeting of civilian installations and the deliberate failure to avoid civilian deaths), and the United States would be fully justified in demanding a prosecution in a war crimes tribunal for these violations.
Uh, David B, I’m assuming you have your member hat on in here, not your Mod hat, right? Okay.
It’s only a “damn stupid tax cut” if you like giving lots of your money to the government 'cause they know how to spend it better than you. For those of us who don’t like that, it’s a ‘damn good tax cut’ and I’d like you and the goverment to keep your bloody hands off. When the government can find the missing money in the Education and HUD departments, stay within a budget, remove the pork, and keep the increase in spending to inflation + a reasonable percentage, then I’d maybe, just maybe change my mind.
Thanks for listening. Back to your regularly scheduled programing.
9-11-2005
We lost, due to combination of non-support from European allies(initially France,Norway,Germany and Italy), retaliatory strikes from multiple terrorist groups coordinating and assisting each other, growing pacifism at home due to increasing American casualties, and lackluster support from Congress. As with OP, we learn to tolerate American deaths at home.
No it’s a damn stupid tax cut. It’s stupid not because it’s a tax cut, but because of the way it is organized.
It’s stupid because it assumes that the Alternative Minimum tax will not be adjusted. In fact, his cut not only doesn’t deal with alt-min, it will make it much worse in a few years. What alt-min essentially does is erase much of the cut for some of the middle class. No-one, including Bush believes that alt-min won’t be fixed in the coming years, but this tax cut doesn’t account for that expected fix.
It’s stupid because major portions of it begin in 2004 or later and then GO AWAY in 2010. The most egregious example of this is the Estate tax, which is repealed for only a year.
It’s stupid because it’s based on unrealistic growth projections that have already been shown to be dramatically wrong.
Certainly, with the surplus that we had and projections of a surplus for years to come, it was proper for there to be a tax cut. But the tax cut we ended up is a tissue of stupid come-and-go provisions and lies about the actual amount of lost revenue over time.
While its not likely to happen, Bush’s tax cut needs to be repealed and replaced with one based on realistic projections and cost estimates. A rational cut that we can leave in place for years to come rather than have the code change each year.
I read the review when it was first published last year and never followed up. Now the book seems prescient.
“Blowback” is a CIA term for unintentional consequences, btw. The basic idea is that thanks to cold war policies, the US now faces problems that it never would have had otherwise (such as bin Laden).
Here’s an excerpt:
"An eerie wind of doom gusts through Blowback, especially its final chapter, in which Johnson looks forward. We’re in for a century of crisis, he asserts. We will swim long laps in the lakes of resentment we have left behind here and here around the world. Terrorism–a strike at the innocent to reveal the sins of the invulnerable, Johnson calls it–will be as common as baseball in American life, without the seasonal breaks. At home our imperial pretensions have saddled us with a military under scant civilian control, while we have assumed a militarized consciousness we seem not even to notice in ourselves. In the end, Johnson thinks, it will be our failure to understand limits that gets us-- a fate not altogether unlike that of the Soviets. “I believe our very hubris ensures our undoing,” Johnson writes. “A classic mistake of empire managers is to come to believe that there is nowhere within their domain-- in our case, nowhere on earth-- in which their presence is not crucial. Sooner or later, it becomes psychologically imossible not to insist on involvement everywhere, which is, of course, a definition of imperial overextension.”
In realted news, President Gephardt today sent his condolences to the people of Taiwan. He expressed his sorrow that in our currently weakened state we would not be able to offer support against the recent invasion by the mainland Chinese. “It is the most difficult decision, unprecedented in our history, that we are not able to come to the aid of our allies.”
After nearly five years of protracted battle against the Muslim Alliance and the resulting loss of Israel and crucial oil supplies from the Middle East, the US and it’s European allies have committed to a full scale pull back from the lines of defense.
Negotiations for a cease fire continue around the clock in Cape Town.
Often times, they get tried in both as a catch all in case procedural problems exist in one or the other. A person can be tried for the same act in state and federal court without bring DJ into play. It isn’t the act that is prohibited by DJ it is the crime that affects that legal protection. This is why I could not see the movie by the same name even though Ashley Judd is very attractive!
Wow, thanks to KellyM for the enlightening post. I had no idea state laws would apply for international criminals-- I thought their jurisdiction was exclusively the realm of US property and protectorates.
The death penalty will indeed cause some hair-raising, but can one be sentenced to death on a conspiracy charge?
I think in the long term, North America will be safe. That is once the terrorist cells deplete their current stockpiles or they are discovered. Travel to the continent is going to be heavily regulated from now on so there will be no weapons smuggling. It is highly unlikely they will be able to build any WMD or any semi-large scale weapons in North America because there is nobody here that would harbour them (more than a couple small cells would be necessary) and there is no way they will be able to develop long-range delivery systems. I also think they wont be able to engineer any major transport tragedies as security is going to be much tighter from now on. The only way we can lose in the long term is by becoming complacent.
Australia and New Zealand should be okay for the same reasons.
This does not mean we “win”, only North America is safe. We then have the more difficult task of securing Europe, Asia and Africa. The terrorists may not have as much of a hate on for Europe as they do for the Great Satan, but I’m sure they’ll do in a pinch.
Our allies in Asia and Africa will probably be the toughest to secure as they, for the most part, do not have as advanced technology to protect themselves and are much closer to the terrorists.
To win this war we have to be willing, even after we are safe, to fight and die for our allies so they can also be safe. I’m worried we will forget about them.
Of course I am not counting the diplomatic front or any other social solutions which could make this significantly easier.
Funny, I thought only Democrats believed in deficit spending. I’m also not sure how intervening in the market will help people maintain confidence in the market. Seems to me it would help people maintain confidence in the government for knowing when to intervene and when to lay off.
As for what the world will be like five years from now, I ain’t got a clue. I am not a psychic.
