Posted on 10/31/2002 7:35:27 PM PST by Another Galt
WHEN THE events of 9/11 occurred, I recall wondering how long the American resolve to fight our enemies would last.
Now I know the answer. A growing number of us seem to have lost our resolve.
Want proof? Just take a look at the hand-wringing and legal wrangling over the detention of Yasser Esam Hamdi, the Taliban terrorist who was captured in Afghanistan.
On Monday, his detainment as an enemy combatant in a Virginia Navy brig without access to a lawyer was the subject of argument before a federal appellate court in Washington. The case has energized the crowd that would watch our country crumble while clutching their copies of the Constitution. Their memory of 9/11 must be fading fast.
Eighteen civil liberties groups and 139 law professors have come to his defense. So, too, has the American Bar Association. They claim Hamdi should have a lawyer - paid for, of course, by American taxpayers. I, too, am an attorney, but not the kind who frets over the plight of a guy like Hamdi. Quite frankly, I care more about what Ellen Saracini thinks about this than I do about the pronouncements of these pin-striped eggheads.
Ellen Saracini is the widow of Bucks County's Victor Saracini, the captain of United Flight 175, which crashed into the South Tower at 9:03 a.m. on Sept. 11.
I asked her about the legal debate over Hamdi. She answered my question with an appropriate inquiry: What rights were afforded to her husband on the last day of his life?
The cold, cruel answer: None.
And that should be the driving force of our treatment of Hamdi, Lindh, Moussaoui and Padilla.
The only mistake being made with this crew by the administration is treating them any differently from those held at Guantanamo Bay.
Somebody needs to remind the do-gooders upset about Hamdi that Victor Saracini isn't here to watch his 13- and 15-year-old daughters play softball.
He won't be present for their proms. And he isn't going to walk them down the aisle, either. That's what matters most in this debate. The rights of victims - not the rights of perpetrators.
Others claim that Hamdi is an American deserving of American legal protection. Hardly. Sure, he was born in Baton Rouge, La., but he hasn't stepped foot in this country since he was 3. Ever since, he's been a resident of Saudi Arabia.
The closest he's come to contact with anyone from "home" was shooting at U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Listen to the so-called legal scholars, and you'd think this is a debate over whether to Mirandize a crack dealer in the Badlands.
But this is far more serious. This is war time, and it has to be recognized that Hamdi was captured not on a street corner, but on a battlefield fighting against the United States. Against men like Victor Saracini.
I've heard this referred to as the only case in modern American jurisprudence where an American citizen has been indefinitely detained without charges and without access to a lawyer. That's a joke.
Hamdi renounced his citizenship the moment he put on a uniform for an enemy of the United States and strapped on an AK-47.
It's time for a gut check. We're not engaged in some esoteric debate sitting around a bong at Berkeley. We're at war. So let's get back to winning it.
While I want to nail terrorists to the wall as much as anyone here, I have to question how we can maintain our Republic if we so willingly toss out the Constition and the rights recognised by the first ten amendments merely because of a bunch of lunatics who see other people's lives as nothing more than pawns to be expended at their leisure.
Personally, I think we're watching our country crumble because not enough people have even read the Constitution, much less own a copy.
I would think that they (lawyers crying about this) would actually want him to be considered as a POW (or detainee or whatever they call them.) As a POW it would be much harder to execute him. However, as an American citizen- we could give him a fair trial(for TREASON)then hang him...(this one has my vote.)
Either way, this guy loses (and rightfully so)
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