volks,
The recent incidents, with regards to the 'detention' of John Walker
in Afghanistan, and the revelation of his status as an American in
the Taliban Armed Forces, leads me to an interesting set of quanderies
that I put forth in more depth at:
http://www.wetware.com/drieux/PPandE/TWAT/John_Walker_Problem.html
It came as a bit of a shock to me that the current administration is
of the position that we have detained on 'illegal combatants' - rather
than that we are extending the status of POW's to the Taliban Forces
that have been 'captured' in the current operations.
I can personally empathise with the young man's plight of doing what
he believed needed to be done - having myself told my father that I
was going to run off to America - and do what had to be done, and then
finding myself subsequently IN the American Armed Forces - to I have
this, 'been there, done that, buff the car with the T-Shirt' gut
reaction to his current situation.
So while for most persons the notion of 'the military' as being
a 'profession' or a 'trade union' may sound like one of those 'military
intelligence' oxymorons - it is a data model that allows for a reasonable
distinction between 'the card carrying members' and merely 'being armed
and dangerous'. As those who are aware of such work as Jonathan Shay's
'Achilles in Vietnam' the long term effects of Warfare on the Psychology
of the participants is still not well understood - and it would be best
if we could limit participation to those who are appropirately trained.
As I have retorted with my WarMongerBabyKiller Buds, the standards that
we raise in this regards, should be such as do not come back to haunt
us in later times. Ashcroft has listed the 'Anthrax Hoaxer' to the level
of a Top Ten fugitive from justice - given the level of 'proPatria'
rhetoric free floating, would it be appropriate to drag out the whole
"aiding and abetting" kvetch and prosecute this Clayton Lee Waagner -
recaptured
on 12/05/2001 - for aligning with the Al Queda Faction.
As such we have some interesting times as Americans to go about the
process of defining what we mean by 'justice'.
ciao
drieux
---
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon Dec 10 2001 - 18:41:42 EST