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Why Obama’s Abandonment Of ‘Enemy Combatant’ Is So Wrong
Start Thinking Right ^ | March 16, 2009 | Michael Eden

Posted on 03/16/2009 3:14:43 PM PDT by Michael Eden

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1 posted on 03/16/2009 3:14:44 PM PDT by Michael Eden
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To: Michael Eden

Since they were clearly combatants they must not be an enemy to him.


2 posted on 03/16/2009 3:19:39 PM PDT by Natural Law
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To: Michael Eden

Besides being wrong, Obama is just wrong. Did I mention that he’s wrong?


3 posted on 03/16/2009 3:20:51 PM PDT by BuckeyeTexan
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To: Michael Eden

If an organized army of people target your nation, your citizens, your interests all over the planet, if they bomb, shoot, and otherwise slaugther your citizens,if their stated goal is the destruction of yiou yiour nation and civilization what would you call these people?
Misguided youth?
Criminals ?
no good sob’s?
How about ENEMY COMBATANTs
Our current President is a MORON..........


4 posted on 03/16/2009 3:22:16 PM PDT by SECURE AMERICA (Coming to You From the Front Lines of Occupied America)
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To: Michael Eden

We have to be politically correct. The term “enemy combatant” hurts the self-esteem of terrorists. The term is loaded with innuendo and assumptions about their behavior. We have to prove that we aren’t discriminating against those who would destroy us, because as Obama says, we have to live up to our highest ideas and ideals. We have to do all that to prove to the terrorists that we won’t put underwear on their heads anymore, as happened at Abu Grahib(sp?).

Did they read the dudes at Gitmo their Miranda rights before they picked them up off the battle field and put them there?

God Forbid anything like Sept. 11th happens again. I wonder what Obama would do in response to an event like that. I hope and pray we don’t find out.


5 posted on 03/16/2009 3:22:20 PM PDT by Dilbert San Diego
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To: Michael Eden

Obama has ordered that they be called Undocumented Guest Democrats.


6 posted on 03/16/2009 3:25:23 PM PDT by pabianice
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To: Michael Eden
Don't worry, be happy. Obambi has been taking lessons from the Clinton book of "what is, is."

Obama says he will close Gitmo. So, they change the name of Gitmo. No more enemy combatants? They'll just invent another name for them too. End the "War in Iraq" by calling the U.S. forces there by another name. See a pattern yet?

7 posted on 03/16/2009 3:27:01 PM PDT by NautiNurse (Blagojevich: a mediocre megalomaniac)
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To: SECURE AMERICA

I guess you don’t like Michelle Malkin’s alternative suggestion: “undocumented protagonists”


8 posted on 03/16/2009 3:28:30 PM PDT by Michael Eden
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To: Michael Eden
The proper term is "unlawful combatant" and in fact it was widely used (even in the media!) for a good many months after 9/11, until some kind of insidious and mendacious media meme took place to change it to an ambiguous "enemy combatant" (ambiguity being the friend of sissy journalists), which means nothing. Even the article above states the Geneva Conventions term is "unlawful combatant" and there is in fact no legal term "enemy combatant", unless it's the guys in uniform. Jihadis are always "unlawful combatants"!

Big red rant off!

9 posted on 03/16/2009 3:32:12 PM PDT by angkor
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To: NautiNurse

Don’t worry, be happy. Obambi has been taking lessons from the Clinton book of “what is, is.”

Obama says he will close Gitmo. So, they change the name of Gitmo. No more enemy combatants? They’ll just invent another name for them too. End the “War in Iraq” by calling the U.S. forces there by another name. See a pattern yet?
- - - - - -

This view kind of indicates that Obama is largely continuing the Bush policies (because they work) while changing the language (because a lot of liberals are truly stupid and redefinitions work if the people who tell them what to think are willing to go along).

And this is partially true.

But I also fear that Obama is genuinely making changes that will undermine us and expose us to another attack.


10 posted on 03/16/2009 3:32:38 PM PDT by Michael Eden
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To: Michael Eden

It would be wrong of the president to critizise his muslim bretheren.


11 posted on 03/16/2009 3:35:07 PM PDT by Anti-Kenyan
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To: angkor

Angkor,

I noted the original Geneva Convention term “unlawful combatant” without going to any lengths to explain the difference between it and “enemy combatant” because I frankly didn’t see any.

It is possible that liberal journalists used the term “enemy combatant” so they could then pursue the idea that it was a Bush creation rather than a long-accepted international principle.

Since my purpose was to simply put the overall term (whether “unlawful” or “enemy” combatant) into proper context, rather than to attempt to demonstrate that someone created the term “enemy combatant” to undermine the concept of “unlawful combatant,” I didn’t go into that analysis. But I’m glad you brought it up.

In any event, I hope your “big red rant” is not with me.


12 posted on 03/16/2009 3:38:03 PM PDT by Michael Eden
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To: Michael Eden

>>>>> In any event, I hope your “big red rant” is not with me. <<<<<

Nope, not one iota.

The media took extreme liberties with the terminology just as you say, and “undermine” is the perfect term although IMO they had some obscure journo agenda (being sissies) of not being “too judgmental” about the validity of terrorism (they are “objective journalists” after all) and so the ambiguous, redundant, and meaningless term “enemy combatant” served their multiple obtuse purposes ideally.


13 posted on 03/16/2009 3:45:45 PM PDT by angkor
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To: Dilbert San Diego

>God Forbid anything like Sept. 11th happens again. I wonder what Obama would do in response to an event like that.<

I wonder if he’ll call it “Friendly Fire” since they are no longer “Enemy Combatants”?


14 posted on 03/16/2009 3:48:39 PM PDT by Califreak (1/20/13-Sunrise in America)
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To: Michael Eden

Obama’s pretty much taking a dump on the very thing people were whining about us violating in the first place (Geneva Convention) by essentially saying what it says doesn’t matter.

By the terms of the Geneva Convention, these people are enemy combatants and not subject to protection of the Convention. By removing that term, Obama has pretty much voided the entire thing; if one part isn’t to be followed, why should any of it?


15 posted on 03/16/2009 3:51:29 PM PDT by RWB Patriot ("Let 'em learn the hard way, 'cause teaching them is more trouble than they're worth,")
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To: Dilbert San Diego

“I wonder what Obama would do in response to an event like that.”

Depends on when it happened.


16 posted on 03/16/2009 3:55:17 PM PDT by RWB Patriot ("Let 'em learn the hard way, 'cause teaching them is more trouble than they're worth,")
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To: angkor

Angkor,

That might be an interesting article to write.

What one would need would be to show that it was the MEDIA or liberals who coined the term “enemy combatant” rather than the Bush admin, and that (a MUCH easier task, I imagine) the media then used the term “enemy combatant” in a pejorative rather than historically accurate sense.

I think Democrats are truly dangerous. But the media is even worse.

If the shoe were on the other foot, and it was conservatives who were benefiting from all the media propaganda, I imagine conservatives would be happy with it and use it. So the fact that “Democrats are using the media to their own advantage” isn’t the thing that burns my butt.

What DOES burn it - and scorchingly so - is that the media is dishonest, biased, and corrupt. And that they continually advance a blatant ideological agenda all the while claiming to be “objective.”

No democracy can long survive such a media. People cannot vote intelligently when they are continually denied the truth.


17 posted on 03/16/2009 3:59:45 PM PDT by Michael Eden
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To: RWB Patriot
Obama’s pretty much taking a dump on the very thing people were whining about us violating in the first place (Geneva Convention) by essentially saying what it says doesn’t matter. By the terms of the Geneva Convention, these people are enemy combatants and not subject to protection of the Convention. By removing that term, Obama has pretty much voided the entire thing; if one part isn’t to be followed, why should any of it?

I've really got nothing to add to this. But it expresses the point of my article so well that I figured I'd bump it along the comments.

18 posted on 03/16/2009 4:02:02 PM PDT by Michael Eden
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To: Michael Eden; angkor
I noted the original Geneva Convention term “unlawful combatant” without going to any lengths to explain the difference between it and “enemy combatant” because I frankly didn’t see any.

Angkor is correct and there is a huge and critical difference. Under international law, enemy combatants are legitimate soldiers and have a right to be treated as such if captured. Unlawful combatants have no such rights and are subject to execution.

19 posted on 03/16/2009 4:06:07 PM PDT by LTCJ (God Save the Constitution - Tar & Feathers, The New Look for Spring '09)
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To: LTCJ

“I noted the original Geneva Convention term “unlawful combatant” without going to any lengths to explain the difference between it and “enemy combatant” because I frankly didn’t see any.”

Angkor is correct and there is a huge and critical difference. Under international law, enemy combatants are legitimate soldiers and have a right to be treated as such if captured. Unlawful combatants have no such rights and are subject to execution.
- - - - - -

You MIGHT be right, but I think that the technical term is “lawful combatant,” as opposed to the other two terms: unlawful combatant and noncombatant (or civilian). And that there are only these three terms in the Geneva language.

If I’m right on the three terms above, then “enemy combatant” is merely another way of saying “unlawful combatant.” And in my discussion with Angkor, we both wonder if there’s a conspiracy on the part of the media to disassociate “enemy combatant” from it’s historic/Geneva Convention root [aka “unlawful combatant].

I know for a fact that the Geneva Convention uses those three terms: lawful combatant, noncombatant, and unlawful combatant. If it uses the term “enemy combatant” as a FOURTH term to mean something different from the other three terms, it is news to me.


20 posted on 03/16/2009 4:33:08 PM PDT by Michael Eden
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