Food For Thought
Liberals have taken a lot of criticism from conservatives over opposition to some terrorism policies, mainly indefinite detention without trial and torture. Balkinization does a thought experiment: what if we treated domestic terrorists like Roeder the same way we have treated international terrorism?
In particular, consider the following questions:
(1) Should the United States be able to hold Roeder without trial in order to prevent him from returning to society to kill more abortion providers? If we believe that Roeder and other domestic terrorists will plan further attacks on abortion providers and abortion clinics if we let them free, can we subject them to indefinite detention?
(2) The Obama Administration is currently considering a national security court to make decisions about the detention of suspected terrorists, with the power to order continued preventive detention. Should this court be able to hear cases involving U.S. citizens, whether they are Muslim or Christian?
(3) The U.S. government has argued that at least some terrorists should not be tried through the criminal process with its various Bill of Rights protections but instead can and should be tried through military commissions, where the standards of proof and various procedural protections are lowered. If Roeder is a domestic terrorist, can the U.S. government subject him to trial by a military commission instead of a criminal prosecution? Although the current version of the 2006 Military Commission Act does not bestow jurisdiction to try citizens, could we or should we amend it to include citizens who we believe are likely to commit or have committed terrorist acts?
(4) One of the most important reasons for detaining terrorists (suspected or otherwise) is to obtain information about future terrorist attacks that may save lives and prevent future bombings. To procure this information, can the government dispense with the usual constitutional and legal safeguards against coercive interrogation? Should it be able to subject Roeder to enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding and other methods, to determine whether Roeder knows of any other persons who are likely to commit violence against abortion clinics or against abortion providers in the future? Would your answer change if you believed that an attack on an abortion provider or a bombing of an abortion clinic was imminent?
(5) Terrorists and terrorist organizations need money and resources to operate effectively. Often the only way to stop them is to dry up their sources of financial and logistical support. Can the U.S. government freeze the assets of pro-life organizations and make it illegal to contribute money to a pro-life charity that it believes might funnel money or provide material support to persons like Roeder or to organizations that practice violence against abortion providers? Can the government arrest, detain, and seize the property of anti-abortion activists who helped Roeder in any way in the months leading up to his crime, for example by giving him rides or allowing him to stay in their homes?
What say you? Why should domestic terrorists be exempt for these rules? If you don’t support applying these rules to terrorists like Roeder, what about someone like Tim McVeigh?
Tags: Abortion, domestic terrorism, Scott Roeder
To procure this information, can the government dispense with the usual constitutional and legal safeguards against coercive interrogation?
If we wanted this Scott Roeder to:
– make up a bunch of shit about his domestic terror cell’s future operations,
-implicate scores of other people in terror plots, and
-create a phony pretext for rolling up Church basement conspirators,
Bush and Cheney have clearly put the tools in place to do that.
Talk about absurd comparisons! No wonder you guys can’t fight terrorism. First this guy is an accused murderer not a terrorist. He was not attempting to gain concessions from the government or create a widespread sense of fear in the culture to gain a political objective. If this guy indeed is the guilty party, then we know that he was an anarchist. He rejected political operations.
To compare pro-life organizations to Hamas or Al Qaeda is beyond reason. Let’s look at the facts. Did this man have any association with these groups? No, he reject them because they were too moderate and not aggressive. Did he get financing like the groups that fund Hamas which have their assets frozen? No, they did not fund him.
Was this guy on the battlefield and part of an organization which formally declared war on us? No, he was a loner.
As for church, the guy invaded a church to shoot his target. Maybe we should be investigating atheists and their organizations by your substitute for logic. If the Freemen had bank accounts, then you could freeze them. They don’t go that route. They don’t believe in the evil banks or just about anything else.
As Mike would say, have a nice day.
Protest much?
David’s comment shows that there is a very clear comparison to be made here.
And this…
No wonder you guys can’t fight terrorism.
Is would be funny if not for the fact that David thinks George Bush was good at fighting terrorism.
Was this guy on the battlefield and part of an organization which formally declared war on us?
Yes he was.
No, he was a loner.
That remains to be seen. It seems unlikely.
As for church, the guy invaded a church to shoot his target.
This is a no true Scotsman fallacy. Since he shot in a church he can’t possibly be a Christian, right?
A – Is Roeder an American citizen?
B – Do we know that Roeder is guilty?
C – Is there any reason to believe that Roeder has information upon which the lives of tens of thousands of Americans, and the outcome of two wars, depend?
Your comparison is dimwitted, at best.
“He was not attempting to gain concessions from the government or create a widespread sense of fear in the culture to gain a political objective.”
I disagree. Just because he didn’t issue a formal statement doesn’t get him off the hook — violent anti-abortion people clearly are trying to spread a sense of fear among the targeted population of abortion providers and patients.
“an organization which formally declared war on us”
A non-state actor cannot “formally declare war” on anything. It can declare war, but there is nothing formal about it, since it is not a nation in the first place.
I would be against any of these measures because I am against using any of these measures on anyone.
“Your comparison is dimwitted, at best.”
Takes one to know one.
Jose Padilla was a U.S. citizen captured on U.S. soil (Chicago). He was held for 5 years without charges in extralegal limbo. The comparison isn’t so absurd.
and then that was ruled unconstitutional….
Yes, like we’d been saying all along. Did you support it Tom? Is it o.k. for one type of terrorist but not another?
David wrote He was not attempting to gain concessions from the government or create a widespread sense of fear in the culture to gain a political objective.
David is a liar.
I wonder if he spent any time in training camps that we can bomb the hell out of?
“Anon-state actor cannot “formally declare war” on anything. It can declare war, but there is nothing formal about it, since it is not a nation in the first place.” Is that why you guys ignored the declarations?
Any organized group with weapons can wage war and by making a formal public declaration…. They defeated the Russians, annoy the Chinese, wreck the Philippines, and killed thousands of Americans. As the 9/11 commission said, they were at war with us, but we were not at war with them. On this blog, we still aren’t and the thousands of Americans who died in the war on terror are a figment of Bush’s imagination.
Statistically, it is safer to be an abortionist than a convenience store operator. There have only been 9 abortionists killed in 35 years. That is about 9 too many, but it hardly equals some organized terrorism on a par with the war on terror. I know that you guys venerate abortionists but get some perspective.
It was a murder and a suspect was arrested. Let the system work.
David remains a liar and an apologist for terrorists.
Go to your happy place.
“Any organized group with weapons can wage war and by making a formal public declaration…”
No, they can’t, and the fact that the 9/11 commission is ignorant doesn’t change that fact.
I’m really sick and tired of having to do your homework for you just because you’re a lazy, ignorant ass.
A declaration of war is a formal performative speech act or signing of a document by an authorized party of a government in order to initiate a state of war between two or more nations. The legality of who can declare war varies between nations and forms of government. In many nations power is given to the head of state or sovereign. In other cases something short of a full declaration of war, such as a letter of marque or a covert operation may be executed by privateers or mercenaries.”
Here’s what you’re talking about:
“In addition to this, non-state or terrorist organisations may claim to or be described as “declaring war” when engaging in violent acts.These declarations may have no legal standing in themselves, but may still act as a call to arms for supporters of these organisations.”
Since you’re such a stupid fuck, I’ll further explain this: When a child acts out to get attention, the worst thing a parent can do is reward the behavior by giving the child attention. And so it is with terrorists. The goal of terrorism is to provoke reaction. Which group is giving the terrorists what they want — you chumps, who by insisting this is war have elevated al Qaeda to a level equal with the U.S., or us, who argue that the best thing to do is treat them as the mosquitoes they are?
Never mind. You give the wrong answer to every question.