Look, if a criminal flees to New Jersey, the New York cops aren’t allowed to go in after him. What makes you think that they could go clear to another country? Regardless of what Afganistan’s status is in the community of nations, it sure as heck isn’t part of the State of New York.
Meaningless hijack:
Farsi or Dari? My understanding was that it’s the second that’s the common one in Afghanistan. Is Farsi common as well? Near the Iranian border, perhaps? Not that it matters much in this somewhat silly context 
. But minutia like this is what gives meaning to my empty, empty life 
.
- Tamerlane
Well, ever since 9-11 sales of Soldier of Fortune have skyrocketed, and I don’t think that is a coincidence. It seems plausible…
Geez, I’m even raising Chronos’s hackles.
(By the way dude, you were my favorite moderator – you used to be a moderator, right?)
Where does it say that New York cops cannot operate in New Jersey? If it’s purely a matter of New Jersey law, then it seems to me that it is just as legitimate for the NYPD to operate in Afghanistan as it is for the U.S. military.
getting killed right off the bat may be problematic
Dari is Farsi (as spoken in Afghanistan).
Happy to add some meaning to your life!
I’m warming to the idea. At the moment I can’t decide between Starsky and Hutch and Kojak as to who’d be better suited although I do wish the location of Hill Street Blues was better defined.
S & H clearly have the edge in relation to off-road driving skills, sheepskin jackets and the unkempt macho thing (goes a long way in the back streets of Kabul) but Kojak just has the knack of getting the job done – OBL would likely just put his hands up when that hat and wonky hanging-off-the-roof blue siren came into view.
Then there’s NYPD Blue. Nah, too much infighting and self-doubt. But they do have the hand held cameras (mobile, edgy, gritty…) and know their way around a little urban decay. They may be hampered by the lack of a Deli.
Choosing the right guys for this job isn’t as easy as you’d think. Time to call in the DA for a coffee holding, jackets off, shoulder holster showing, in the corridor, short-fused case conference ?
There are NO thugs on 57th and Lex (overzealous shoppers perhaps, but no thugs)
Osama’s backgrounds in his videos don’t look too much like a cave. Sometimes it looks like he is wearing US army clothes too. Maybe he is in the US. Now wouldn’t that be just brilliant?
The legal niceties of the question of extra-territoriality are best answered by a lawyer, which I am not. Perhaps Sua Sponte, Minty or Jodi would like to take a crack at it.
The practical matter is the issue of sovreignty. In general police are granted police powers over a specified territorial space. E.g. State Police of NJ or NM or CA or IN do not have police powers in another state unless that state specifically recognizes them. That’s a domestic legal question in which I have only general knowledge. I can point to the issue a few years back in New York where a cruise ship line got the idea of running ‘illegal’ gambling operations by departing from NYC and running outside of territorial waters --international waters as I recall-- and thus outside of anyone’s jurisdiction. The idea flopped of course because back-handed ways were found to shut it down, but the “crimes” committed outside jurisdiction were not chargeable.
Now the linked legal discussion above highlights the … well I will be charitable and say conflicted US legal/political position on extra-territoriality. More frankly, I will say benighted and hypocritical. To this layman, the Supreme Court opinion by Rehnquist, falls squarely in that field insofar as it takes some tortured reasoning to conclude that the abduction did not violate US international legal obligations.
You will note however that even the Rehnquist opinion notes the “the general principle of international law that one government may not `exercise its police power in the territory of another state’”
Of course, international law is something of a polite fiction. It is not law in the sense of domestic law, but the customary conventions which bind states because violating them hurts one’s own interests, either in the short run or in the long run.
As someone with long experience working overseas I have a lively sense of the risks to Americans and American assets if American jurisprudence willfully ignores the above general principle. If it is all well and fine for the US to use illegal means to extra-territorially extend its police powers, then clearly other states (a) have diminished reason to protect US citizens or not seek their own extra-territorial and illegal extensions of their police power (b) diminished reason to allow productive US investments, meaning foregone opportunities and gains for America. Why deal with the USA, who might decide to sieze your citizens at its whim, regardless of treaty and standing general principles, when you can deal with Switzerland etc who will not.
Concrete example, let us suppose I work in Oman and the US snatches an Omani from Oman against treaty and international obligations. (ignoring the unliklihood of success) Now that the US has clearly demonstrated its disregard for legal obligations, why should the Omanis not, in retaliation, sieze US citizens as hostages and US assets for compensation?
I could go on, but it would be a GD issue. As a general principle, I am against treating matters of war as matters of domestic criminal law. To do so confuses the issues and simply leads to ill-concieved policies and actions.
Finally, Tamerlane, as someone else noted, Dari is simply the Afghan dialect of Farsi. I have it on good authority from 2nd language speakers with Central Asian experience, including in Afghanistan that if you have learned Irani Farsi you can understand reasonably well most Farsi dialects in the region (they run up into the Central Asian Republics) and with some acclimatization, one can fairly quickly switch over if one has a talent for langauges.
I imagine this is rather like Arabic dialects, as the description sounds rather like my experience with Arabic, except without the over-arching MSA influence. Iran has made some important efforts at “reaching out” to its “cousins” in Central Asia --I think they’ve made efforts to promote a standardized Farsi, but I don’t recall a source on that. Rather like the Turks efforts in the same arena. Of course the issue of Shiite versus Sunni rather hampers their religious spin.
Handy, why do you post nonesense?
Thanks Collounsbury. More ignorance eradicated .
- Tamerlane