Zooey:
OK, let me set a case…I would like to know what you all think of this person, & what should be done to him:
He is a terrorist, pure & simple. His life is devoted to hunting down & killing people who do not agree with his religious ideas.
He personally kills, or has killed, hundreds, even thousands of men, women, & children.
He stands by, watching & sneering, egging on those who are torturing and/or murdering others…He has been doing this for years, moving from place to place. Because of a corrupt legal system, & his own political clout, he is able to get away with this for all this time.
OK, what are you going to do with him; you are a judge with the ability to give whatever punishment you may, when he comes before you in the courtroom.
I would like to hear what you all, on all sides would think of this kind of a case & how to decide it…
Consider that we do not live in a monarchy or a dictatorship and neither of us is a king or a dictator.
Our society has evolved a standard of justice based on legal codes that are written up formally. Over the centuries, the legal codes have become quite extensive.
And voluminous.
Correct me if I am wrong, but the word “terrorist” is not a defined term in the law codes.
There are offenses that are “civil” in nature and there are offenses that are “military” in nature. And then there are some that fall outside either “nature”.
All people who commit offenses know instinctively where they fall.
Civil offenses include capital murder. You have something; I want it; I kill you and take it. Capital murder. I get caught and get put through a bureaucratic system of laws and receive some kind of separation from society so I don’t kill or steal again.
Military offenses involve events that happen on a battlefield between uniformed combatants owing allegiance to a soverign state engaged in "regulated’ combat. If you are wounded and captured, then I am obligated to provide you with humane treatment until eventually you are repatriated. If you “pretend” to surrender and when my guard is down, you shoot me, then both you and your compatriots lose your credibility as opponents and are unlikely to be given any second chances. It’s complicated.
But then there are offenses that fall into a middle ground. They are not “military / combat” and they are not “civil” offenses.
A gang of pirates, for example, sneak or trick their way onto a ship or a boat. They kill the occupants and / or rape the women and then kill them or sell them for slavery. The ship or boat is looted and sunk. Or taken someplace, has a new name painted on it and is sold. The pirates are outside the law. Traditionally, when they are caught, they are summarily executed, on the spot. No trial. No “Miranda rights”.
Even more important, there are no judges and no courtrooms… this is neither a civil nor a military offense… it falls outside the norms of society and is not covered by either civil or military written law codes.
Piracy is actually very common - mostly around Thailand /Indonesia / Straits of Malacca and in the Caribbean. By the way, there is an excellent Web site on maritime law and events that has a section on piracy. Visit
www.cargolaw.com .
During World War II, a number of German soldiers snuck behind Allied lines wearing American uniforms and caused a lot of mayhem and sabotage. When they were caught, they were interrogated and then shot. Their executions were photographed for the record; these were “formal proceedings”. They had committed offenses that were outside both the civil and military codes; they were on their own. In a sense, there was an informal contract. They knew what they were doing. They got caught and they paid for it.
In the present, so-called “terrorists” are “gaming the system”. We have handicapped ourselves by adopting a code of “political correctness”. They are prevailing on our good nature and our desire to be “good guys”, good Christians, and our desire to “fight fair”.
At some point we have to wake up and realize what they are doing to us, what their goals are, that they know full well what they are doing, and what we are doing to handicap ourselves. Our goal should be to discourage their compatriots from continuing the “terror”. The methods probably would be harsh. You can read about the campaign against Muslim insurgents in the Philippines in the early 1900’s.
None of this is new. You can read “Jefferson’s War” about the war(s) against the Barbary Pirates in North Africa and the Mediterranean in 1805. Jefferson didn’t do very well. Nelson did it better. Read the book.
The alternative is no more death penalty, just regular old prison. Do you think that will drive the crime rate up? What other kind of alternative could there be?
