I can hardly believe it. It is in the water in Manhattan? Is it a secret memo? Whatever it is, certainly there is more reasonable stuff in the pages of the New York Times!
First, as promised, here is the article advocating the bombing of North Korea. I agree. I would have warned the North Koreans that direct threats on the USA (when accompanied by the power to carry them out) will result in serious consequences. Then you carry them out! If necessary, you bomb the missile site to take out the threat. I may be a non-interventionist but I am ready to advocate military action when there is a threat. NK is a threat to the USA. Here is what should be done:
Destroying the North Korean missile before it is launched is the best of bad options on the Korean Peninsula. A prolonged crisis would undermine regional security and global efforts to stop nuclear proliferation. And a future war would be much worse. The most prudent move is to eliminate the most imminent military threat in self-defense, establish clear and reasonable limits on future belligerence, and maintain allied unity for stability — not forced regime change — in the region. This is the kind of pre-emptive action that would save lives and maybe even preserve the uneasy peace on the Korean Peninsula.
Now, I support our President on things like this. He is the President. But he has a pattern of passivity in foreign policy that is disturbing. I am ready to give President Obama the benefit of the doubt but if people get killed as a result of a NK attack, the President will have explaining to do and ought to simply resign or be impeached/removed from office absent a sound explanation. There is no excuse for this kind of passivity.
Second, the NYT condemns as it should the ridiculous call by Senator Lindsey Graham that the surviving Boston Marathon bomber be treated as an enemy combatant. I invite Senator Graham to read Ex parte Milligan. That is the 1866 US Supreme Court case that clearly says that as long as the courts are open, US citizens must be tried in them, not in a military tribunal. That means no enemy combatant status.
Fortunately the Obama administration has ignored the posturing and declared that Mr. Tsarnaev, like all citizens and even alien terrorists captured on American soil, will be tried in the federal courts. He will soon be charged with terrorism under federal statutes, and will be represented by the federal public defender’s office.
Now I am not a bleeding heart here. I think there should be some tough interrogation (without Miranda) to find out if there are other threats. Not torture but to me torture means pulling out fingernails or doing unmentionable things to private parts. No deliberate infliction of pain. And this suspect gets tried in civilian courts just like every other citizen. My concern is not the obviously guilty but the future situation where a terrorism suspect might be the product of a rush to judgment. The case here ought to be precedent-setting. I almost wish I could help out.
Article written by: Elwood "Sandy" Sanders
