Dead suspects

ADKbrown · **Posted:** Tue Nov 05, 2002 9:19 am

Perhaps this isn't a copy-editing issue, but I was bothered by the AP and NYT stories (on Web) on the CIA's incineration of an al-Qaeda honcho and four underlings in Yemen. Both failed to address the ethical and political questions raised by such an attack. Do we have a free hand to kill anybody associated with al-Qaeda?

KfitzR · **Posted:** Tue Nov 05, 2002 9:41 am

To be as clear as possible, no.
Democracies with legal systems based on the British Common Law presume innocence until guilt is proved. If one wants respect for the system, one is well advised to model it.

ADKbrown · **Posted:** Tue Nov 05, 2002 2:26 pm

Of course, the Bush team would say this is a military matter, not a legal one. That's been their position right along. People more or less accepted this when we were fighting a war in Afghanistan, where there was a battlefield with combatants, but I wonder if Americans are ready to condone assassinations. And even if they are, that doesn't make it right. Why didn't we just arrest this guy?

Guest · **Posted:** Tue Nov 05, 2002 2:27 pm

I'm not taking a side here, but what I've been hearing a lot of lately on talk radio, in print commentaries, on the street, etc., is the idea that to win a war against anti-American terrorists and their sneak-attack strategies, you have to fight on the same level -- i.e., the Russian troops who were willing to kill hostages in order to defuse the recent Chechen building-seizure crisis in Moscow. Holding to "the moral high ground" and fighting an "honorable war" will only result in lots of TV news camera shots of weepy relatives standing by at mass funerals, these people say. I find some logical merit in that idea, but I'm also troubled by the possibility that a) we didn't know for sure that terrorists were in that car; b) we didn't try to arrest them first; c) we may have killed innocent people along with the "guilty"; and d) conceding the moral high ground may reduce us to low ground in global opinion ... which, we have demonstrated over and over, does matter to America -- the idea that we are really only as strong as the size and strength of our allies and our coalitions.<p>I don't know. I sometimes think I'm ideally suited to be a journalist precisely because I never come to a conclusion on anything like this -- I always feel I need more information and newer perspectives. That's why I can't vote -- I study the issues and the candidates, I listen carefully to all sides, and I go into the booth, stare at the ballot, and after several frustrating minutes, wind up shaking my head and leaving with an untouched piece of paper. A hanging chad in its entirety, as it were.

KfitzR · **Posted:** Wed Nov 06, 2002 10:06 am

To me, if you are trying to convince someone that your way is better, you have to do it "your way." If you do it "their way" - in this case by using guerilla, terrorist tactics - they have won the argument hands down.
The entire "war on terrorism" to my mind should have been a police action with people tried in legitimate courts of law. Open, above board, honourable.
It makes no sense to me at all to create more grieving families on the "other" side who will send more "martyrs" into action to avenge a very real wrong done to them.

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