When calm heads are swept aside and jingoism or prejudice and racism takes hold, you end up with the sort of situation which Juan Cole, in his latest posting on his Informed Comment, highlights. As you read Cole's comments reflect on the fact that the USA may go down the track of following the more than suspect practices of countries like Egypt or Bahrain.
"Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain (or as I refer to them, LindJohn) have demanded that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev be charged as an enemy combatant rather than tried as an American civilian.
This attempt to sidestep the US Constitution by creating an alternative jurisdiction, and to try civilians in military courts, is a stride toward dictatorship. It is precisely the tactic used by Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, and the demand that the military stop arresting and trying civilians has been central to the country’s revolutionary reform movement.
Likewise, Bahrain has started trying civilians in military courts, as part of its authoritarian crackdown on its protest movement.
That exemplar of human rights, the Uganda regime, also resorts to this practice. So LindJohn want to put us in some pretty classy company.
We who already have some of the liberties that youth Egyptians yearn for should not be so quick to surrender them. Tsarnaev is an American citizen and a civilian who killed and injured people on American soil. He is a murderer, and should be tried in the courts like a whole host of others who committed or plotted murder as a means to terrorizing the public.
The point seems obvious to anyone to the left of Attila the Hun. Those who point to the Civil War are confusing ordinary times with times of martial law. We’re not having a civil war and there is no martial law."
"Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain (or as I refer to them, LindJohn) have demanded that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev be charged as an enemy combatant rather than tried as an American civilian.
This attempt to sidestep the US Constitution by creating an alternative jurisdiction, and to try civilians in military courts, is a stride toward dictatorship. It is precisely the tactic used by Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, and the demand that the military stop arresting and trying civilians has been central to the country’s revolutionary reform movement.
Likewise, Bahrain has started trying civilians in military courts, as part of its authoritarian crackdown on its protest movement.
That exemplar of human rights, the Uganda regime, also resorts to this practice. So LindJohn want to put us in some pretty classy company.
We who already have some of the liberties that youth Egyptians yearn for should not be so quick to surrender them. Tsarnaev is an American citizen and a civilian who killed and injured people on American soil. He is a murderer, and should be tried in the courts like a whole host of others who committed or plotted murder as a means to terrorizing the public.
The point seems obvious to anyone to the left of Attila the Hun. Those who point to the Civil War are confusing ordinary times with times of martial law. We’re not having a civil war and there is no martial law."
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