Question: "John, given how treating terrorism like a criminal offense hurt us greatly in the 90's and ultimately gave us 9/11, why do you think liberals want to go back to adopting that strategy?" -- decypher
"As a follow up to that....How is treating terrorism (as long as we are talking about individuals as opposed to networks) as something more than a criminal offense any different than adding additional punishment for something deemed a hate crime?" -- Tom_pinko_Delay
Answer: First off, trying to deal with international terrorism as a criminal offense simply doesn't work.
How could it?
For one thing, it's a reactive strategy instead of a pro-active strategy. You wait for the terrorists to kill a lot of Americans and then you try to take action -- instead of trying to stop them in the first place. When you consider how large our country is, how many high value targets there are here, and how minimal the security restrictions are compared to a nation like Israel, it becomes obvious that playing defense is a losing strategy. So, strictly defensive measures are doomed to failure. That means the only way to stop the terrorists from killing people here is to go after them where they live. A strict law enforcement approach makes that impossible.
So, if let's say Al-Qaeda is brewing up weaponized anthrax in the wilds of Pakistan, the "law enforcement" approach would be to say, "Ok, let them, but if they use it on Americans, then we'll try to capture them and take them back for trial." Does that make sense in an age when biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons are becoming more common? Does it make sense given the damage a single day of terrorism, like 9/11, can do to our economy?
In addition, how can the law enforcement approach possibly be effective in a situation where the government of the country the terrorists are in is either unwilling or unable to cooperate in apprehending them?
Heck, even if you do capture a terrorist: it's extraordinarily difficult to try them in our court system. They may be caught using intelligence measures we can't divulge. If some third party or Marine captures a terrorist in Somalia, are we going to expect them to adhere to the stringent evidence standards we have in America? Are we going to let them go if they weren't read their Miranda rights? Are we going to fly in witnesses who are citizens of other countries to testify and let the terrorist go if they won't do it? Please -- it's ridiculous.
As to the "hate crime" question, I'm going to assume that what you are driving at is that we use a law enforcement approach to ELF, ALF, and the KKK, so why should Al-Qaeda be treated differently?
There are two primary reasons for that.
The first is the scope of the threat. The KKK probably has more in common with the God Hates F*gs losers than they do with a terrorist group these days and although every member of ELF and ALF deserve to spend the rest of their lives in prison, they're chiefly targeting property, not people. There is just no comparison -- at least not so far -- to the threat posed by Al-Qaeda and the threat posed by these groups.
Secondly, the members of ELF, ALF, and the KKK are Americans and have constitutional rights that terrorists from other countries simply shouldn't have. I have zero qualms about throwing a member of Al-Qaeda from Saudi Arabia in a prison cell until the war is over, with or without a trial, even if that means that he spends the rest of his life there. I have no problem whatsoever with waterboarding the terrorist in question, keeping him up for 24 plus hours at a stretch, or threatening him with dogs to get information. The same things can't -- and shouldn't -- be done to Americans.
Granted, you can get into a gray area with Jose Padilla types, who are members of Al-Qaeda, but are also American citizens. However, seeing as the number of people in that category have been very small, I think the narrow exceptions the Bush Administration carved out to deal with them were responsible and just.
