[Sailormon6]

Originally Posted by danjarch

To me, it boils down to some simple issues. If some one disapears in America, her territories, or any where in the world, I want to know my government is doing what it can to find them. I don't want to even begin to belive that my government is the one who may have taking him, who may be holding hold him without charges, may be turturing him without a trial or access to other men who know the laws that he is accussed of breaking.

This is what seperates America from Iraq, Russia, Cambodea, Cuba, and plenty of other countries.

Dan, if the police arrested people in this country for committing a crime, then you're absolutely right that they should have the benefit of legal counsel, they should be promptly brought before a neutral magistrate, they should be advised of the charges against them, and they should be accorded all the rights safeguarded to an accused under the Constitution and laws of the US. But, that's not the fact situation we have here.

Most of these people are not being arrested and held as criminals. They're being captured, as enemy combatants in a war. The administration's position, and I generally agree with it, is that when you capture an enemy combatant, you don't have to charge him with a crime, or read him his rights, or provide him legal counsel. You only have to put him in a POW camp, and hold him, and prevent him from returning to the battlefield to kill your countrymen, and keep him until you are able to deal with him on a more permanent basis, usually by repatriation, but occasionally by charging him with war crimes.

In WWI and WWII and other wars, it was easy to understand and apply that concept. Most enemy combatants could be easily identified, because they wore uniforms, and they generally spoke a common language, and were citizens of one or two specific nations.

In this war, the enemy doesn't wear a uniform, might be from any number of different nationalities, and might be a pregnant woman or a child with a bomb strapped to him or her. In this war, the enemy even includes some of our own countrymen! What was clear in the past is not so clear now. These factors raise all sorts of novel legal questions. Courts don't deal in hypothetical questions. In order to address a legal question, there must be a specific fact situation before the court. The only way you can create a fact situation, so as to get a decision from a court, is to take someone into custody, and let him sue you. After the court decides a legal question, and both parties have had an opportunity to appeal it, then that issue is resolved. In the future, the government knows how it must deal with all persons who are similarly situated. That doesn't mean that all possible legal issues have been resolved. Only the specific issues are resolved that are presented by the unique facts of that particular case. That's the reasoned and methodical way in which new and unique applications of law are crystallized by the courts.

We must allow our President the latitude to raise these difficult legal questions and to require court decisions.

If you could sit in on a meeting between the President and his legal advisors, you would hear him ask them how he should deal with a specific legal situation. If that situation has been addressed by a previous case, then they'll tell him "This is the law. This is how you must deal with the situation." If there is no previous precedent case in which that issue has been resolved, then they can only tell him, "I don't know what the law requires. Based on my training and experience, I think a court would resolve the matter in a certain way, but that's just my opinion. If you'll ask the same question of a number of different lawyers, you'll undoubtedly get a number of different opinions." That's not an adequate answer to meet the needs of a President in conducting important national business. The only way to get those specific answers is to let someone sue you, and fight it out in court.

You have a choice. You can either have a President who wants to know the correct answers to these difficult questions, and who is willing to accept the criticism that he knows will flow from his pursuit of those answers, or you can have a President who would rather wallow in uncertainty, while basking in the warm glow of approval by his doctrinaire supporters. For my part, I want a President who wants the correct answers, and who is willing to take the heat needed in order to get them.

Government isn't nearly as uncomplicated as many people think it is, and it's certainly not evil. That was no less true of President Clinton than it is of President Bush. Although they have different thoughts about government and life and values, their concern for the welfare of America and Americans is paramount. Officials don't go to work each day thinking, "I wonder how I can violate the human and constitutional rights of people today." Their concern is with how they can solve the problems of their nation. That's what a liberal president would think, and it's what a conservative president would think, and it's what you and I would think. The people we elect are not that different from us.

I don't expect people to stop criticising President Bush. That's human nature, and it's their right. But, when they impute evil motives to the American government and to the President, they demonstrate the lack of a mature understanding of government and they make their own credibility suspect. It would be nice to see at least the more reasonable people among us dial the venom down a bit, but I don't really expect it to happen.