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First there was Johnny "Taliban" Walker. Captured in Afghanistan bearing arms against U.S. soldiers, he readily admitted his "sins" in conversations both with CNN and, apparently, the FBI. In all previous wars, such irregular soldiers were simply stood up against the nearest wall and shot. Indeed, the "rules of war"...an oxymoron if ever there were one...suggest that this is exactly the right and proper thing to do!
On the other hand, for reasons that are not entirely clear, the Bush administration has decided to try Mr. Walker as a criminal, thus bringing into play all his legal rights as an American citizen. Never mind that what he did was arguably treason and that it could have resulted in his citizenship being summarily removed...not to mention being shot on the spot...the minute it became known that he was an American. There is certainly no dearth of talking head lawyers appearing on TV and finding potential legal defenses for this man.
Then there is the case of the Massachusetts man convicted of involuntary manslaughter for beating another man to death in a fight over hockey practice and sentenced to six to ten years in prison. During the trial, the prosecution focused on how much larger the accused was to the victim and brought testimony from a number of people...all women and children who had never before, by their own admission, witnessed a serious fight between two grown men. They all testified that they were horrified and tried...unsuccessfully...to stop the fight. The defense, on the other hand, brought a few male witnesses who testified that it was "just a fight" between two men, that both were equally involved, and that the victim attacked first...started it.
Now, common sense would suggest that the outcome was reasonable on the grounds that, since both fighters were culpable, and the dead person has already been "punished," it remains to punish the survivor. This would send a message to parents and fans of sporting events that violence will not be tolerated. On the other hand, since one of the families was deprived, permanently, of a supporting parent...the dead man had just recently gained custody of his children from an estranged wife...it makes more sense...both for the families and for society...for the survivor to assume responsibility for supporting these children in the future, at least until they become adults.
The judge however, used no such reasoning in coming to his conclusion. Apparently listening only to the claims of the prosecution...and disallowing ANY evidence that suggested that the victim was in any way responsible for the fight...he framed the decision as a result of "justice" and "guidelines" (which he decided to ignore).
We won't even begin to get into the endless whining and gnashing of teeth going on over the rights" of the murderous nuts being incarcerated in Guantanamo. The usual suspects are crowing over and over that "we" must not become like "them," forgetting that we ARE just exactly like them. Our terrorism my come wrapped in all the multihued flags of patriotism and national sovereignty, but it is no less terrifying to its victims...innocent as well as guilty.
So it is with a lot of American jurisprudence. So convoluted has our system become, so devoid of common sense, that hardly anybody really respects it any more. Based loosely upon the British model of a combination of common law and statutory law, the former has long since been nearly entirely purged from the system leaving nothing but an enormous mass of rules and regulations, all but tying the hands of the judiciary. The man on the street reasons...correctly...that the rich, the powerful...politicians and other professional criminals...readily use the technicalities in these regulations to enrich themselves or to excuse themselves from accusations of wrongdoing.
The War on Terrorism itself is filled with contradictions. Furthermore, every petty or not so petty governmental tyrant in the world is using our unilateral actions as justification for eliminating THEIR enemies. From Chechnya to Israel, everybody is calling upon everybody else to "stop the terrorism." If these aren't games, what are?
So, what's the solution? For starters, we can put a cork in our declarations of righteousness and start negotiating...seriously...with the rest of the world to put a permanent end to this nonsense. As outlined in our previous columns, we are fans of American imperialism, but not STUPID imperialism. Our feeling is that we can export our ideals first by living them, next by portraying them honestly in the media we control. Right now, all we are exporting is WAR! As Colin Powell said in a truly remarkable moment of honesty, "We don't do peace!" So, step one is to stop acting like the Mafia, offering "protection" to favored clients who do as we command.
Finally, we MUST re-introduce common sense into both our legal system and our political culture. Nor can this be done by the government alone. It must FIRST be done by us, the people. We must demand that the executive and legislative branches restore the ability of the judiciary to exercise JUDGEMENT rather than simply acting as administrators to a tangled pile of ambiguous and contradictory regulations. We need Solomon's and Gandhi's, not ever more nit picking bureaucrats.
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