Well, as I’m sure you know, The Boss was of the Jewish persuasion. Scholars have no doubt that he was entirely typical of Jewish men of his time. I’m sure you will understand if certain…examinations… are required. As to your, uh, qualifications. Which is what these scissors are for. Should any, shall we say, alterations prove neccesary.
Now, if you will just step over here…
Fine, war against what country? The notion of war has a lot of baggage that the notion of police going about their business does not. Baggage like:
[ul]
[li]The primary and most effective action is military[/li][li]The state of being at war is temporary.[/li][li]Sacrifices and unity at home are a necessary part of prosecuting the war.[/li][/ul]
None of which is necessarily true. Conversely, if you characterize 911 correctly: As a massive criminal act, part of an ongoing criminal conspiracy. An organized crime ring, if you will. The a whole new (and much more appropriate) set of assumptions come into play.
[ul]
[li]The primary and most effective action is intelligence gathering. There will always be crime, the best we can do is reduce it to a low level of concern for the average citizen[/li][li]Sacrifices at home are likely to be permanent, and as such deserve the strictest of scrutiny.[/li][/ul]
The downside of a correct charactirization is that it doesn’t play into the ego of the President and his handlers. It’s much sexier to be a Commander in Chief, than to be the top cop.
In fact, Bush is so enamoried of the glory of that title that he had Rummy issue a directive to all theatre military commanders to stop calling themselves CiC of their various theatres Bush’s charactirization of this as war is profoundly self-serving and unserious.
If this is the case, then we need to follow all the rules of war and not just those which are convenient to us. this means properly identifying the “detainees” at Guantanemo as POW’s, as per the Geneva Convention, and treating them as such. Secretary Rum[sodomy and the lash]field has said that they cannot be considered POW’s because they do not represent a foreign country and do not wear insignia. Funny how it’s a “war” when it suits the administration’s purposes but the enemy isn’t really an enemy.
I understand where you’re coming from, but I don’t agree. Actually, I find this post of yours to be something of a strawman – although my statement of “act as though you’re in a declared war” left me wide open for your riposte.
This ongoing war/police action/campaign against terrorists (known and unknown) is really something unprecedented and it needs to be waged in unprecedented ways. I found Tejota’s dichotomy between war and police action to be useful in considering the current “effort” against terrorism. It has BOTH aspects of war AND of criminal investigation. It’s not an either-or proposition IMO – rather the current effort against terrorists is a complicated melange of activity that does not lend itself to pat definition.
Mind you, the above paragraph does not mean that I believe the U.S. should not be on a war footing domestically. Likewise, I believe any U.S. troops abroad should take their missions as seriously in this “effort” against terrorists as they would take a battle on American soil to defend their homeland. IMO, there should be no thinking: “Gee, it’s only a police action – we should hold back”.
Even as I say that, I do not believe that the U.S. needs to follow the letter of the Geneva Convention in this effort against terrorists. I agree with Rumsfeld’s reasoning here, and note that IMO, the Guantanamo detainees were and are being treated reasonably humanely.
The US just doesn’t get to decide arbitrarily which parts of the Geneva convention to follow or not follow. If they violate ANY of it, they are in violation of international law. IMO this is why Bush has not asked congress for a resolution of war. If there is no formal “war” then then he does not have to follow any rules of engagement, yet he can still exploit the word for its rhetorical value at home. He’s trying to have it both ways.
The letter of the Convention, no – not until there is a formal declaration of war. The spirit of the Convention … maybe, maybe not. I think it’s debatable.
You’re right, and here we’ll just have to agree to disagree. I have no problem with the President – indeed, our nation – having it both ways. IMO, we need to have it both ways to curtail terrorism. Exploiting the word “war” for it’s rhetorical value helps maintain domestic support for our efforts against terrorists, so I have no problem with Bush, et al doing so. This is much of what I was getting at when I wrote that the U.S. should be on a war footing domestically.
I guess this is attitude is fine–as long as you trust the president (and the US government in toto) not to abuse this kind of autonomy. Would you trust ANY administration in the same manner as this one, or do you have a specific faith in GWB?
I must retract the above statement – my understanding is that the GC applies to any combat, not just declared wars.
That’s a good question. For me, it’s not so much a specific faith in any one person (be it GWB, Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, Rumsfeld, etc.) – it’s that U.S. policy as it is currently unfolding is much to my personal liking. {shrug}
So what’s actually happening is that, on this matter, the Administration is doing what I hoped it would do. Any Administration that acts in ways I deem reasonable will get my focused support on a given topic. I certainly wouldn’t have had a problem with the Clinton Administration doing much of what’s Bush’s Administration is doing now.
This is reasonable enough, as far as it goes. Basically you’re saying “I don’t have a problem with what they’ve done so far,” which is certainly a morally defensible position, but it really leaves no recourse for an administration which may (hypothetically) start doing things you DON’T approve of. IMO it is dangerous to let the dog off the leash, so to speak, because it hasn’t bitten any good people YET. Power tends to be its own corruption, and once you let the government have extra power (speaking broadly now; Homeland Security, wiretapping, etc.) it is very difficult to get that power back, especially when the ostensibly ad hoc justification for those powers is something as nebulous as “wiping out terrorism.” How and when could such an objective ever be said to have been definitively accomplished?
I am not as comfortable as you are with granting the government an unlimited liscense to pursue an ill-defined goal by its own autonomous standards for an indefinite amount of time, especially when those standards include “preemptive” invasions of countries which MIGHT be a threat to the US. (Iraq is not the only country on this list, and is not even in the top three as far as imminent danger to the US is concerned)
I, too, have trouble with the notion that we are “at war” in any meaningful sense. We have a few thousand troops in Afghanistan, but the “war” part of that ended last winter, and winter’s almost back again. In the country at large, whatever “war footing” we’re on is indistinguishable from peace. The President is free to spend a large proportion of his time engaged in other demanding and time-consuming pursuits (campaigning and fund-raising in particular). The military’s a bit more on alert, but that’s mostly because of a war that might be coming - Iraq - rather than one we’re already in (the war on terror).
It’s like saying we were “at war” with Soviet Russia from 1945-1989. Sure, it substantially involved our military - we kept a huge deterrent force in Western Europe - but back here, our lives went on. If you’re saying something is justified by that level of war, besides a certain level of budget expenditure, I can’t see what it might be, or why.
I understand. This probably reflects a basic philosophical difference between you and I. While I largely buy the “absolute power corrupts absolutely” chestnut, I don’t worry about those with limited power, such as anyone in American government.
Also, it seems that I value civil liberties in general less than you do. For instance, I don’t see any unbearable personal threats to my individual liberty in any of the Homeland Security initiatives. I can live with the notion that my phone conversations run a risk of wiretap {shrug}, and I don’t know if there’s anything worse than that in any of the HS bills. To me, that’s a reasonable trade-off for more effective law enforcement in this nation.
“War footing” to me concerns more the Chiefs of Staff, as well as the CIA, NSA, and FBI. I’m in favor of extending the powers of the latter three for a definite period of time in the interest of reducing (not eliminating) the risk of domestic occurences of terrorism.
As for the average American going about their daily business, I don’t see where war footing means a whole lot.
We can just agree to disagree here. I trust the government less than you do. (I wouldn’t have trusted Clinton with these powers either btw)
OK, but if the President of the United States isn’t exactly on a war footing, I’m less than convinced that anyone else needs to be.
Me too, but I’d like a more thoughtful discussion of how liberty and security should be best balanced, than took place either last fall (when the White House’s Congressional toadies put a whole new “Patriot” bill into play after Congress had just about settled on a bill, and rushed it through before anyone had time to really read it) or this week (when some really bad ideas got tacked on and passed at the last minute).
I assume you’re too young to remember Vietnam.
When a war means you, or your son, or people you know, might be drafted to fight in a shooting war, that’s something a bit different from going about one’s daily business, unaffected by the ‘war’. This is how it was in Vietnam, Korea, and WWII. (In between those wars, there was a draft, but service was more routine and didn’t involve the same risks, barring Soviet invasion of Western Europe.)