I fear for what a Left-wing Congress might do armed with such a precedent, but it’s not clear how else the balance might be redressed.

If one is to survive in a world filled with cruel and amoral people, one must be prepared to act with lethal and decisive force. The person who can do so is not the person who needs the approval of his fellows before he can kill the burglar in his bedroom, the mugger in the alley, or the rapist in the night, much less the pirate or the slave-taker and his army. The person whom you will trust as a leader will take those actions for himself or his friends without hesitation. (Machiavelli says it much better than I do.)

Legal due process under those circumstances looks feckless because it is feckless. Deliberation may be appropriate outside the heat of battle, but civilian standards of guilt and innocence are not. A process that allows a participant in warlike acts to go free because of a non-substantive procedural error, as the civilian courts do, simply does not weigh the risks properly. It holds them to a standard based on the wrong assumptions. See the lengthy discussion above for details.

You dont pay much attention to the world do you ?

Well it’s obvious you don’t. Your sneering condescending attitude betrays how profoundly ignorant you are of what our enemy thinks.

Go back to your college and stay in your little bubble. You know how stupid you look when you come out of your echo chamber and think that your ignorant-but-supreme attitude is impressive to people.

Who, neo? Who are the many others that find it “a ridiculous, stupid, and laughable sign of a weak and cowardly society”? That wouldn’t be you, would it?

neo finds it hard to agree with one’s right to defend themselves. She thinks those that do are weak. She knows. You don’t.

Just to say a huge Congratulations! on a really excellent job: You’ve outdone yourself, and that ain’t easy; and an even huger Thank You!! for the very same reason.

I wish more people understood that moral excellence can only be achieved in the real world by accepting that trade-offs are one of the givens of life. To quote me (!): Life is an engineering discipline, not an exercise in abstract mathematics.

I ‘ll register one slight quibble. You write, “Another possible real-world consequence [is that] … since these are illegal enemy combatants and not covered by the Geneva Convention, to avoid these matters in the future the military might instead summarily execute such people on the battlefield, in keeping with hoary tradition and, by the way, with the traditional law of war. That would lead to far “dirtier” hands, and far less moral purity.”

That’s not obvious to me. I do not think it is particularly moral to risk sacrificing the lives of those one is sworn to defend–who are in fact the very carriers or vectors of the values we aim to preserve–to the principle of “innocent until proven guilty,” important though that principle is. The principle will cease to exist if those who believe and practice it are dead.

In fact, it seems to me that your argument is (in part) that sometimes one must choose between moral goods. That is part of the genius of this article, one of your very best.

Gratefully,

Julie

Protection from bandits, warlords, and “competitors for the claim of government” is one of the foundations of a government’s legitimacy. (See Sun-Tzu, Machiavelli, Hobbs, and Philip Bobbitt.) Bolsheviks and Maoists attack this directly by proving that the government can provide no protection against them, and forcing people to ally themselves with the usurpers. This is government of the cruelest, and it can win when civilization loses its ability to enlist its most virtuous to oppose them. (Does this mean that a government that loses that ability, as Rome did and the USA is perilously close to doing, is no longer fully legitimate?)

This analogy , while helpful in explaining your view, is not helpful in explaining the reality of the situation. Your scenario does not scale up to the size of international relations.
…It’s because they can’t trust us. It’s because they know that the people in our system who undermine our efforts (Leftists/disgrunted leaking things to the press) is a danger to whoever cooperates with us.

Perhaps …just for example, to give a different perspective, if an American in Beijing witnessed what he suspects is a political protest, given what he knows about the Chinese government (we’ll assume he is not completely ignorant of foreign affairs) does this not give pause to whether he, if asked might assist government officials if they indicated they’d like to know where some people might have fled to?

The American does not help the Chinese government primarily because he considers them unjust. (perhaps he fears them to, but I think this is not the primary reason)

Now put that American in London, and again protesters. What he might see here is a JUST government response versus some rowdy anarchists for example.