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Tuesday, November 17, 2009

We cannot see the burkas for the trees

Wow! Typically, I scan the news wires each morning and if I'm lucky, one good article stands out from the rest (IMHO) and I'll post it to see if there is discussion on it. Today there are several but I've narrowed it down to two that have similar implications. First, the article who's title appears up above by Mychal Massie contains the following.....

""Political correctness," I once wrote, "obscures clear thinking and does damage to the very people and causes that it claims to benefit. … [B]esides being pretentious and dishonest, PCers give no thought to the collateral damage they cause, because the only agenda is theirs" ("Politically correct may not be correct"; The Reporter; Jan. 3, 2002). In October 2002, I wrote: "One of the things we should have learned from the Feb. 26, 1993, bombing of New York's World Trade Center is that there are people in the world who hate our collective guts – sex, color, creed notwithstanding. [And] one of the things we should have learned from Timothy McVeigh is that there are Americans, born here and living here, who are as passionate in their hatred of America as those living continents away" ("Terror at home grows among us"; The Reporter; Oct. 31, 2002). Nidal Malik Hasan proves that America continues to be a nation under attack, as she has been since 1993. But those responsible for our national security cannot see the burkas for the trees because of political correctness.... It's not the Baptists, Presbyterians, Catholics or congregants of other denominations committing these acts of terror – it is Muslims. And until we have leaders who are willing to do the unpopular, Fort Hood, Jose Padilla, the Portland Six and Najibullah Zazi are just the tip of the iceberg."

While Massie will never be described as one who pulls punches, I concur. PC madness is running amok in this country and never more so when liberals are in charge. The worst example of this was when Chicago mayor Richard Daley blamed the slaughter at Ft Hood on America's love for guns. This while attending an event announcing the city's expansion of it's Arabic language services.
All of this segues neatly into today's article by Thomas Sowell entitled Bowing to "World Opinion", in which we find......

"In the string of amazing decisions made during the first year of the Obama administration, nothing seems more like sheer insanity than the decision to try foreign terrorists, who have committed acts of war against the United States, in federal court, as if they were American citizens accused of crimes. Terrorists are not even entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention, much less the Constitution of the United States. Terrorists have never observed, nor even claimed to have observed, the Geneva Convention, nor are they among those covered by it. But over and above the utter inconsistency of what is being done is the utter recklessness it represents. The last time an attack on the World Trade Center was treated as a matter of domestic criminal justice was after a bomb was exploded there in 1993. Under the rules of American criminal law, the prosecution had to turn over all sorts of information to the defense-- information that told the Al Qaeda international terrorist network what we knew about them and how we knew it. This was nothing more and nothing less than giving away military secrets to an enemy in wartime-- something for which people have been executed, as they should have been."

This is just one guy's humble opinion, however it strains credulity to think that all of this is somehow mere stupidity and lack of knowledge rather than a part of a greater, overall plan who's implications are devastating.

5 comments:

Tracy said...

The fact that trying foreign terrorists means that the defense gets information about what we knew about the terrorists and how we knew it - is a huge part of why we have not in the past tried these sorts of people this way. It's so, as Sowell states, insane. Why would Obama want to chang the precedent of how this works? I'm reminded of a favorite fairy tale of mine - The Emperors New Clothes; sometimes I feel like we're operating like that in America today. We're so busy being politically correct that we fail to see the naked truth.

J Curtis said...

I've thought about it Tracy and all I can come up with is that it will provide a very public forum for obvious radicals to broadcast their hatred and poison to the world. Great. Thanks O. There's no upside to this.

GCT said...

The upside is that we observe our own rules of law and live by our principles. And, it doesn't matter if they are covered by the Geneva Conventions or our Constitution. That doesn't absolve us from doing what is morally right. It might be easier for us to do what Bush did, which was just throw people in prison with no hope for trial or chance to prove their innocence (Padilla, for example was treated this way) but it makes us into hypocrites and gives away any moral high ground that we might think we have. I'm sure that you wouldn't be arguing for moral relativity, would you?

BTW, McVeigh was a Xian, so for the author to claim that it's not Xians doing this? Kinda strains credulity.

J Curtis said...

GCT, this is the part that concerns me most.....(Thomas Sowell) "Under the rules of American criminal law, the prosecution had to turn over all sorts of information to the defense-- information that told the Al Qaeda international terrorist network what we knew about them and how we knew it. This was nothing more and nothing less than giving away military secrets to an enemy in wartime..."

BTW, McVeigh was a Xian

Odd, it is my understanding that he was a science-fetishist. McVeigh said that "Throughout his childhood, he and his father were Roman Catholic and regularly attended daily Mass at Good Shepherd Church in Pendleton, New York. In a recorded interview with Time magazine[14] McVeigh professed his belief in "a God", although he said he had "sort of lost touch with" Catholicism and "I never really picked it up, however I do maintain core beliefs." The Guardian reported that McVeigh wrote a letter to them claiming to be an agnostic. McVeigh once said that he believed the universe was guided by natural law, energized by some universal higher power that showed each person right from wrong if they paid attention to what was going on inside them. He had also said, "Science is my religion."" Link

GCT said...

I stand corrected on McVeigh. Touche.

As for the information we have, it's a tough thing to deal with, but the way we handled it is worse. We held people without any due course, no rights, etc. We could set up special courts where the defendant and attorney would have the ability to see the evidence but not share it with others. This preserves our intelligence and gives the defendant a chance to have due process.