Naming Our Enemies

TCS Daily ^ | 9/6/2006 | Arnold Kling

[Jane2005]

"Ideally, in the case of a right (for example, the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures) that could be asserted against government measures for protecting national security, one would like to locate the point at which a slight expansion in the scope of the right would subtract more from public safety than it would add to personal liberty and [conversely]. That is the point of balance, that determines the optimal scope of the right." -- Richard A. Posner, Not a Suicide Pact: The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency, p. 31

Judge Richard Posner's new book on the relationship between anti-terrorist tactics and civil liberties, is larded with the language of economics. It is filled with discussions of trade-offs, costs and benefits, marginal decision-making, and other economic concepts. Ironically, given my background in economics, the results left me longing for a more clear-cut, legalistic statement.

For Posner, a central problem is that terrorism is, in his words sui generis (now there's something that's not in the economic vocabulary), meaning that it does not fall neatly under the heading of either crime or war. The way I would put this is that terrorists are neither suspects nor soldiers. Until someone commits an act of terrorism, there is no crime, and hence no suspect. And because they act to conceal their status as combatants (as opposed to a combatant who merely tries to conceal himself by camouflage or hiding), terrorists are not soldiers.

[Publius6961]

It might be more difficult to classify Hamas or Hezbollah, but my initial thinking would be to designate them only as terrorist organizations, without declaring them enemies of the United States. I recognize that this is a debatable point.

This guy is a judge?
Scary.

Both those groups have already killed Americans wholesale, by their own admission. How does that create a bar to calling them what they are: our enemies?

[Lorianne]

One thing the author fails to clarify is to be a TRAITOR of the US you first have to be a citizen of the US.