Balloon Juice, a blog which is new to me but which looks like a keeper, has an entry entitled This Will Cause A Stir. Mostly I agree. The author riffs off of an article talking about former Iraqi diplomat Tariq Aziz and his letters from prison. Apparently Aziz is being held largely incommunicado and there is no apparent effort to afford him any kind of due process.
The author notes that it is exceedingly difficult to find any sympathy for Aziz and that nobody should lose any sleep if he were taken out in a public square and shot by the new Iraqi government. The problem is that the muddled world of ‘enemy combatants’ hurts our credibility and makes it harder for us to be effective in fighting against terrorists.
However, I have to pick at a nit with respect to this passage:
at some point, serious people inside our government are going to have to recognize what a muddled mess our indefinite detainment of ‘enemy combatants’ has become. Put aside the fact that it flies in the face of the fundamental sense of decency that most Americans have regarding the rights of accused as embodied in the US Constitution. I recognize that the determination has been made that they do not deserve those same Constitutional rights.
As I see it, the U.S. Government is fundamentally incapable of acting beyond the Constitution. The government simply has no life, no authority beyond the Constitution. At the point individuals employed by the Government act beyond its authority, they are simply acting as individuals and not as the U.S. Government. And in my opinion, such people should be held accountable as individuals. The fundamental question is whether holding people indefinitely as enemy combatants exceeds the authority granted to the U.S. Government by the Constitution. I believe that it does. And, whether that authority exceeds the Constitution is answere affirmatively or negatively regardless of how reprehensible the particular detainee may be.
But, as to the larger point of the blog entry, I agree.
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