Story Published:
May 6, 2010 at 6:13 PM CST
Story Updated:
May 6, 2010 at 6:13 PM CST
PART 3 OF 4 PARTS
Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted provided the following credit line is used: "Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College."
The following is adapted from a speech delivered in Washington, D.C., on March 5, 2010, in the "First Principles on First Fridays" lecture series sponsored by Hillsdale College's Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship.
These protocols are the laws of war, and they are older than the U.S. itself.
They include requiring combatants to wear uniforms, to carry their weapons openly, to be part of a regular armed force, and, most importantly, to refrain from intentionally targeting civilians.
They also define wartime powers and priviliges. Enemy combatants, for example, may be captured and detained until the conclusion of hostilities.
Fighters who adhere to the laws of war are entitled to various protections upon capture.
By contrast, fighters who flout the laws of war--such as non-uniformed terrorists who target civilians--are unlawful combatants and may be prosecuted by a military commission for war crimes.
This is not a judicial system, and it is not intended to be. But it is every bit a legal system.
And throughout our history--at least until recently--this has been understood.
Since 9/11, however, anti-war lawyers have challenged the idea of a separate legal status for unlawful combatants. Here they are up against not only common sense but history.
How do we get to the Obama administration's stunning mishandling of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab?
Recall that this terrorist tried to detonate a chemical bomb on an airplane--an attack that would have killed all 288 innocents onboard and an untold number of Americans on the ground.
Recall that he was a trained operative of al Qaeda--a transational terrorist network with which we are at war.
Recall tht he was a Nigerian national sent from Yeman to attack us, and had no claim whatsoever on the protections of civilian due process.
What's more our intelligence community tells us that Yemen is now one of the prime launch points of Islamist terror. Abdulmutallab had spent four months there.
He knew the training camps, the trainers, and the identities of other terrorists (evidently, scores of them).
In light of these facts, his capture alive should have been one of the great intelligence coups of the war.
Instead he was questioned for a mere 50 minutes before being given Miranda warnings and a lawyer--at which point he invoked his supposed right to remain silent, was consigned to the civilian justice system, and was charged in an indictment that gave him plea-bargaining leverage in any further negotiations over what he would tell us.
