Palin on Justice

[beamjockey]

I heard Governor Palin's speech at the Republican National Convention last night.

At one point, she listed contrasts between Senator McCain and "our opponent."

Victory in Iraq is finally in sight ... he wants to forfeit.

Terrorist states are seeking nuclear weapons without delay ... he wants to meet them without preconditions.

And then she said:

Al-Qaida terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America ... he's worried that someone won't read them their rights.

This was met with cheers from the assembled Republicans.

I was disturbed.

Is Gov. Palin opposed to reading criminals their rights? Is McCain?

Comments

[hradzka.livejournal.com]

My impression was that she was expressing opposition to funneling prisoners of war into the criminal justice system. You don't have to think that the Miranda ruling was a mistake to think that, say, extending those protections to terrorists picked up on the battlefield is a bad idea.

(Of course, as David Simon points out in his book HOMICIDE, it's downright amazing how many people get read their Miranda rights, acknowledge they understand them, and proceed to tell the cops everything anyway.)

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

"Terrorists picked up on the battlefield", eh? Nothing about that phrase strikes you as strange? Self-contradictory?

As I understand it, terrorists don't operate on the battlefield. They operate in the civilian population.

[hradzka.livejournal.com]

When combatants don't wear uniforms, use civilians as meat shields and civilian infrastructure as bases from which to conduct military operations (sometimes coercing or killing the civilians who own said infrastructure), calling them terrorists doesn't strike me as strange or self-contradictory, no. Terrorists turn civilian areas into battlefields. That's kind of a large part of the idea.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

When a few people are moving through thousands of civilians to do damage, the army is not the right response! Military action will kill many more innocent civilians than terrorists, and will unavoidably result in revulsion against the military and the authority that ordered the strike -- radicalizing the population against people they see as attacking them.

Hiding some weapons in a basement does not make a civilian area into a battlefield. Attacking that basement with military aircraft makes the civilian area into a battlefield.