The Washington Post is reporting Obama as saying a rather curious thing today. First, he excorciates Palin for mocking Democrats who supposedly want the constitution to apply to suspected terrorists:
Calling it (the writ of habeas corpus) "the foundation of Anglo-American law," he said the principle "says very simply: If the government grabs you, then you have the right to at least ask, 'Why was I grabbed?' And say, 'Maybe you've got the wrong person.'
"The safeguard is essential, Obama continued, "because we don't always have the right person."
"We don't always catch the right person," he said. "We may think it's Mohammed the terrorist, but it might be Mohammed the cab driver. You might think it's Barack the bomb-thrower, but it might be Barack the guy running for president."
We'll leave aside the wisdom of using the "Barack the bomb-thrower" line. But the article continues:
[I]f the plotters of the Sept. 11 attacks are in the government's sights, Obama went on, they should be targeted and killed.
"My position has always been clear: If you've got a terrorist, take him out," Obama said. "Anybody who was involved in 9/11, take 'em out."
So, what happens if you "take out" Mohammad the cab driver, accidentally? Or are constitutional rights somehow less crucial when you're killing people? Of course, I have a lot of sympathy for habeas rights and so on - but you've got yourself some serious contradictions if you're ok striking people you think are terrorists with missiles launched by drones, but think that imprisoning people without applying controversial rights to them is a serious betrayal of American liberties. I've no idea where I come out on this, but one would expect the hyper thoughtful Obama to have grappled with the problem.
9/09/2008
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5 comments:
How does it defy the Constitution to make war when you are on the battlefield (or to engage in airstrikes if you don't want to make the sacrifices necessary for ground combat), and to give people some form of rights when you have captured them?
There is a significant difference between the government's engaging in war and the government's engaging in detention.
You can say it's morally problematic to engage in airstrikes, which always bear some risk of killing innocent people. But there's nothing that violates the American tradition of civil rights and liberties about it.
Moreover, on a practical level it makes sense to differentiate the two. At what point can you give Mohammad who is about to get hit in the airstrike the chance to get an individualized determination as to whether he should be subject to the strike? I don't think there's any time at which you can do that. From what I understand, we use the airstrikes when we have intelligence that some baddies are in Area X, and we have to move on it before they move on.
In contrast, there shouldn't be much difficulty in giving individualized determinations to a guy who is in your custody. He ain't going anywhere.
Obama wasn't talking about war as we'd understand it. Obviously, states can bomb enemies in the field, and we all understand the bombing might kill innocents. Obama was talking about assasinating particular people when he has intelligence to believe that they're terrorists. At the very least there's tension between the idea that if you commit an elite combat team to abduct someone from Afghanistan, they get a coterie of legal rights, but if you just drone him instead, all bets are off. In fact, Obama's apparent position just incentivizes killing people before you go to all the trouble of figuring out if it's the right person or not for sure.
Is he wrong in the end? I'm not sure - there's a fair argument along the lines of your last paragraph, but it doesn't seem all that obvious to me.
So far as the incentive goes, if Obama is going to change policy and prefer shooting people on sight rather than giving them a chance to surrender, then absolutely we should be protesting his ideas. (Though still on a moral rather than Constitutional basis.) However, I haven't heard that he's planning to break international law.
He is saying that when we have captured people whom we are refusing to treat as POWs because they're not uniformed, we have to give them a fair chance to challenge their detentions. (This is logically coherent; someone in uniform can't claim that he actually is just a sheep herder or taxi driver, but non-uniformed people picked up in Afghanistan could be anyone, especially those who were delivered to us by the Northern Alliance.)
The Republican presidential campaign is exhibiting scorn for exactly the things that many people, especially outside the U.S., admire most about America: its rule of law and its 'envy of the world' universities. It is completely bizarre to my relatives in India that being a product of Ivy League schools is being deemed a drawback in this election.
Obama's not changing policy at all. I just find it funny that he can be so outraged about the admittedly shameful way we've handled detentions of potential enemies, and yet be apparently unconcerned about killing the same people he wants to assure legal rights to dispute their detention on exactly the same evidence that is insufficient to imprison them without recourse.
Obviously, I don't agree with your characterization of the republican campaign, but that's not something I'm likely to make much progress arguing about.
I'm confused; are you saying that Obama's outrage over what he considers the unconstitutional treatment of detainees is funny because he believes in strikes on terrorist enclaves? I don't think the two are in any way mutually exclusive. From what I understand, Obama isn't saying that there's something about alleged terrorists that makes them deserving of rights; he's saying that the rights are embedded in our legal system and historical tradition. We lose something fundamental to our country if we do not abide by our rules. He asserts that there is something unconstitutional and thus un-American in denying detainees their habeas rights to challenge indefinite detention. What is unconstitutional or un-American about an airstrike on bin Laden's cave?
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