Meet the new boss, same as the old boss?

[magicmethyl]

Lots of liberals have been touting Barack Obama as the Last Great Hope for progressive politics in the coming presidential election, with most of the other Democrats being long-time politicians who go out of their way to be "moderate." And yet we now have evidence of a critical flaw in this gallant knight's shining armor, namely a recent speech in

Comments

[hatikvah_42]

Don't the terrorists see it as a war? The numbers of people willing to join ranks and go to Terrorist Training Camp seem to be growing rapidly...I'm not sure regular law enforcement is capable of dealing with this kind of thing. (I'm actually not sure anyone is capable of dealing with this kind of thing).

Not that I'm saying we should declare war on everyone. That plan hasn't worked out so well recently.

[magicmethyl]

Of course al-Qaeda and their ilk see it as a war, but that doesn't mean that the rest of us have to. After all, if you look at the various crazy militia groups in the American West, they certainly see themselves as soldiers in a war. And yet, if some militia guys attack a government building, the authorities will send in law enforcement officers, not army troops, to arrest them, and it won't work for them to claim at their trial that they're protected as POWs. Come to think of it, it's usually a PR success for members of criminal groups to talk about being in a "war," because that language serves to stir up feelings of epic duty and comraderie in their underlings

[judgewargrave]

Yeah, I think there's some legitimacy, like Erica said, to the idea that it's not as simple as law enforcement. For one thing, there's no law involved except international law.

[magicmethyl]

How is that true? Most terrorist acts are murders, and you can prosecute their perpetrators for murder in whatever country they commit the crime in. After all, Zacarias Moussaoui is in prison because he was convicted in an American court, not at the Hague. Granted, the justice of his conviction is debatable, but I still don't see why you can't prosecute terrorists in regular criminal courts.