Eric Holder: Osama Bin Laden Deserves the Same Rights as Charles Manson
From Weasel Zippers:
Yes, he really said that today. Both Manson and Bin Laden are despicable murderers but there's one huge difference, one is an American and the other is a Saudi hiding in a cave somewhere in Pakistan who would be snatched off the battlefield as an enemy combatant. For some reason the Obama administration can't wrap their tiny little brains around that fact....
Usama bin Laden will never be captured alive, Attorney General Eric Holder told lawmakers on Tuesday.
"The possibility of capturing him alive is infinitesimal," Holder said. "He will be killed by us, or he will be killed by his own people so that he is not captured by us. We know that. ... The possibility simply does not exist."
That assessment, which Holder said was based on "all the intelligence I have had to review," came during an often-heated hearing of a House Appropriations subcommittee.
Republicans pressed Holder over recent decisions to prosecute terrorism suspects in civilian courts, and they suggested he intends to treat terrorism suspects as "common criminals."
Holder said such suggestions tend to "get my blood boiling," calling them "anything but the truth."
He said the "apt" comparison is to mass murderers like Charles Manson, who is currently serving a life sentence for orchestrating a killing spree in the 1960s.
Trying to explain the analogy, Holder said mass murderers like Manson still reserve the right to go before a jury and have the charges against them proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
Holder was asked whether that means Usama bin Laden, if captured, would be tried in a civilian court and afforded the same rights as Charles Manson.
"In some ways I think they're comparable people, in some ways," Holder said.
Rep. John Culberson, R-Tex., called that response "incredible."
4 comments:
there is in Vancouver, Canada a professional drug-dealer named Mark Emory whoo is facing deportation to America for selling marijuana of some form. I don't have the details or the interest to dug them up; but what is interesting here is that members of parliament from all three major parties in this country are standing against his deportation to America. the man is not American or a fugitive from justice for any crime he actually committed there. but what is especially interesting is that the crime he's wanted for in America is one that here warrants a $200.00 fine, not years in prison that he will receive in America.
Reversing the situation, would we feel happy with renditions of Americans to Canada for crimes not punishable in America just because the Canadians say they want X? There must be some national sovereignty if were are to have nations at all. If not, let's forget the border and let everyone come and go in a utopian, mulitculti world.
Having made that point, let me say I have no interest in Emory selling his drugs here or anywhere else. I think I'd be properly outraged if we crossed the border into Canada to capture Emory. We have treaties dealing with these things, and we can't ignore them just because we don't like the person or what he does. I don't like Emory or what he does; but he cannot be extralegally rounded up and taken to a foreign nation just because.
Other nations, if they have such as Emory or bin Laden, might not have our treaties in order to do this legally, in which case we should do as we can, given prudence as our guide. Killing bin Laden might be more trouble for us vis a vis the Pakistanis than it's worth. But even if we could extradite bin Laden by lawful treaty, he is not a criminal. He is a terrorist from a foreign land, subject to mercenary treatment: i.e. summary execution.
I'm not making that up. The laws are clear and recognized by world lawyers and our courts. different laws for different people according to their persons is no longer law but privilege, a foundational cause of our Revolution. All men are created equal. No one has a claim to more than equality.
There are laws of long-standing that we all abide by, even if the mercenary is a rich Saudi in Pakistan; and the there are criminal laws for dope-dealers in Canada, regardless of whether the man is a low-life scum bag. We can't just amke it up as we go along, according to whether we like the man or don't. The law is Rational or its revealed or it's open or any number of alternatives. But it has to be coherent: for all.
"He will be killed by us, or he will be killed by his own people so that he is not captured by us. We know that. ... The possibility simply does not exist."
Then let's get on with it, shall we?
I feel that respect, if you will, for national sovereignty ends when you are harboring or hiding someone who has declared war on us such as Bin Laden and Co. have. This is not a drug lord but far beyond it and should be treated differently.
If the Paks -- or anyone else for that matter -- are harboring him knowingly then they are the enemy, too, and should be treated as such or turn him over to us.
That's how I see it, anyway, very George Bush you're either with us or we'll bomb the shit out of you until you're with us.
(Guess that's not quite how he would have put it. . .)
I'm with you there, M.R., that foreign nations are either with us or against us in this struggle against Islam, and that that is definitive; however, statecraft isn't so reality-based: In Israel a very clever fellow told me that I can't, and they won't, go out to win a fight because if the Israelis do win, and I mean obviously and devastatingly so, then for generations untold the Arabs will be resentful of it. Better, he said, to live with a series of small struggles so the hatred can fade over time rather than be burned into the Arabs for eternity.
Jew in Israel, often but not across the board, are sensitive to the suffering of others, and they don't like causing it in others, even when it seems to me to be necessary. This sensitivity isn't something one can write coherent blog comments about, nor even books about; this is a subject best suited for poetry. Jews, many, and in Israel, are different. There is a lack of cruelty. That might not seem significant till one knows the casualness of cruelty in the world and the profound lack of it in Jews in Israel. So they do not divide the world into a Manichean one but a Mosaic one. It's not so black and white. There is little of "us and them." there is much "Jews and non-Jews." But rather than cruelty or aggressive violence, there is pity and kindness. I'm guessing you're no more Jewish than I. I'm highly in favour of violence. Not the Israelis I met over the years there. Instead, I met men and women who did good things, like pulling over to the roadside to give me a ride in a rainstorm just because, who sang songs in broken English from American movies from the 1940s, who ran after me to save me from a car bombing, and daily anecdotes to the same effect. I'm not interested in diplomacy or niceness. When it comes to daily living, I don't care about the long-term impact of my behaviour on a nation. But I'm not a government. Nor am I a "good guy."
Our government is on the hook, needful of long-term arrangements with other nations, even evil ones that might well change character overnight with a change of regime. They make dirty deals on that basis with evil people. I don't have to. I can afford to bluster and brag and make outlandish statements against my perceived enemies abroad and at home. But if I find myself, or ourselves, in conflict with the interests of our government, then I have to prepare for the wrath of said. Citizens and nation of do not have the same interests at all times. That's the beauty of elections, and especially the beauty of our Constitution. "We the people...."
The question is, where do we end and the nation begins?
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