Supreme Court Rules on Hamdan
I don’t think the ruling by the Supreme Court has handed the American people and George W. Bush a defeat for wanting to try the detainees at Gitmo under military tribunals as the Dallas Morning News suggests.
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that President Bush overstepped his authority in ordering military war crimes trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees.
The ruling, a rebuke to the administration and its aggressive anti-terror policies, was written by Justice John Paul Stevens, who said the proposed trials were illegal under U.S. law and Geneva conventions.
This ruling is wrong on so many fronts. First is the fact that we are at war with terrorism. Congress voted on the war, the troops have been fighting it. We are at war. Second is these people are not US citizens. Only American citizens are afforded rights by US courts. Third, these terrorists are not a uniformed army, so the Geneva Convention does not apply. I can not help but wonder what the five Supreme Court justices were thinking when they wrote this opinion, which can be found here.
In reading the opinion of the court, the justices seem to limit their opinion only to Hamdan. The justices focused a good portion of their opinion of the fact that Hamdan was not charged with any crime therefore he could not be tried under a military tribunal.
The more liberal members of the Supreme Court have been biting at the bit for some time to try this case. While not a surprise, I am not sure this ruling is a setback. PA Pundits says the same thing, but for different reasons.
What I see is that the President needs to go to Congress to get authorization for the military commissions. I don’t see that as an issue. Congress will more than likley sit on their thumbs until after the mid term election before they do anything, leaving the current “in-mates” at GITMO in limbo until some time later this year.
This is by no means a get out of jail free card for the guys at GITMO. If it does anything, it increases the amount of time that many of the prisioners will stay at GITMO until both Congress and the President can work to get a plan agreed upon on how to deal with them.
In some cases, I just think we should shoot them and have it over with.
I absolutely agree with the last statement. In fact I predict this ruling will lead to just such a thing. When our soldiers are faced with the choice of either risking themselves to capture a terrorist only to have US courts try them, or save everyone a lot of time and just shoot them, I say shoot them. Either that or turn these terrorists over to their own governments. Don’t miss understand me, if a terrorist is giving up, then take him prisoner. But we don’t need to wait our court system with a terrorist who is fighting against us. Many times their own country can do a far better job of taking care of them than we can.
The ACLU will most likely call turning them over to their home countries as ‘cruel and unusual punishment.’ Then again the ACLU most likely considers living in the US cruel and unusual punishment.
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It’s sad really that this has become a war of semantics. Merely calling the detainees Prisoners of War has led us down this path. Enemy combatants, as you indicated, are not covered by the Geneva Conventions, and the Supreme Court would do well to actually read them.
Where’s the outcry about their flagrant violations of not only the Geneva Conventions, but also of basic human rights?
We’re never going to win this war unless we take off the padded gloves and start slapping these people around a bit. I say, if they’re captured in arms against our forces, shoot them on the spot. If they surrender, they’re subject to tribunals.
It’s as simple as that. If either of those potential outcomes is not palatable, they’ll learn not to fight in short order. They’re emboldened by our restraint, but they shouldn’t mistake that for inability to slug it out when the gloves come off.
Give our field commanders and front-line troops a little more flexibility and a little less policy and see what happens.
The term “Enemy combatants” may have been a poor choice of words. It was never intended to be political, but merely a descriptive term.
As far as shooting the terrorists, I could not agree more.