Rule of law
Sep. 19th, 2006 09:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumGlenn Greenwald has a post up about the furor in places like M. Malkin's blog about the conviction of a group of terrorists in Indonesia.
Seems they were convicted of killing some 200 hundred people, sentenced to death and the date of the execution has been set. Malkin finds such an outcome outrageous.
Why? The only reason I can see, in her blog, is this one, "Julia Duin has background on the long history of Christian persecution in Indonesia," since she's an vehement advocate of holding people without so much as a charge, since silence = assent, and this shows no demurrer, much less any sense of outrage that the principles of normal jurisprudence aren't being followed.
She does, however, note; with approbation, that lawyers for the condemned are appealing the verdict to the International Criminal Court, to which Jakarta is a signatory. You may rest assured however, she makes no argument the U.S. joining that convention is a good idea.
In a nutshell, she seems to think these guys can't have done it, because Christians just don't do that. That's the most charitable spin I can put on it, because the least charitable is that it's justrified for Christians to kill Muslims. Somewhere in the middle is the hypocrisy that the rule of law only applies when other countries arrest people on charges of terrorism.
Seems they were convicted of killing some 200 hundred people, sentenced to death and the date of the execution has been set. Malkin finds such an outcome outrageous.
Why? The only reason I can see, in her blog, is this one, "Julia Duin has background on the long history of Christian persecution in Indonesia," since she's an vehement advocate of holding people without so much as a charge, since silence = assent, and this shows no demurrer, much less any sense of outrage that the principles of normal jurisprudence aren't being followed.
She does, however, note; with approbation, that lawyers for the condemned are appealing the verdict to the International Criminal Court, to which Jakarta is a signatory. You may rest assured however, she makes no argument the U.S. joining that convention is a good idea.
In a nutshell, she seems to think these guys can't have done it, because Christians just don't do that. That's the most charitable spin I can put on it, because the least charitable is that it's justrified for Christians to kill Muslims. Somewhere in the middle is the hypocrisy that the rule of law only applies when other countries arrest people on charges of terrorism.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-09-20 06:15 am (UTC)I'm not the bigest fan of various Indonesian governments or of the way that Indonesian law works(on account of the whole East Timor thing) but then I don't have any stupid statements about holding prisoners without trial to live down.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-20 10:22 am (UTC)But try and convict people? What a novel thought. I wonder if that would catch on here.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060917/ap_on_re_mi_ea/in_american_hands
I would not want to begin to try to estimate the number of people that have been killed or molested in the name of Christianity. Wasn't there a little thing in Eastern Europe about that a few yeas ago? Or maybe that was just rumors.
The most charitable spin
Date: 2006-09-20 07:46 pm (UTC)A couple of questions...
Date: 2006-09-20 08:19 pm (UTC)My impression was that her outrage was over "grave doubts raised over the fairness of the trial."
My basis for this reading?
What are these doubts? Follow the link.
Are they reasonable doubts? I don't know. I'd like to hear the other side of the story.
If there is one.
The Christian News Wire version makes it sound like the kind of "fair trial" afforded Blacks who were accused of raping white women in the 50s. If it wasn't OK then, why is it OK now?
(Or, having made mistakes in our past, do we forfeit any right to say "don't repeat our mistakes"?)
Re: A couple of questions...
Date: 2006-09-20 08:47 pm (UTC)Re: A couple of questions...
Date: 2006-09-21 01:46 am (UTC)Does that make it right when Indonesia does it?
Or turn it around...
Is the fact that lots of other countries and groups do things at least as bad as what we're doing make it OK?
That's what you seem to be arguing.
Re: A couple of questions...
Date: 2006-09-21 02:06 am (UTC)As you say let's turn it around, do you think Michele Malkin would listen to a lecture from Indonesia on how wrong it is for America to outsource its torturing?
no subject
Date: 2006-09-21 03:33 pm (UTC)CEMyers
no subject
Date: 2006-09-21 03:57 pm (UTC)What, you thought I was going to be inconsistent?
Do I think the law in Lybia is wrong, probably. Certainly as the story has been unfolding for the past few years, I think the case trumped up, and mostly a means of squeezing Bulgaria for for money, but in the constraints you posed the question, the only answer is yes.
The point here is, and always has been, that Ms. Malkin, and her fellow travellers, are all for throwing "terrorists" into prison, and keeping them forever; without trial.
Were these trials flawed? I don't know. I know how those who are opposed to it present it. I know people who think OJ got the wrong verdict too (and independent of his guilt/innoncence, the evidence presented failed to meet the burden of proof), and will go on at length. Unless one looks at the entire trial, compares it to the system in Indonesia; to see if it measure up to the norms, and a whole lot of other things, then one can't pass judgement.
That there are witnesses now who are not being listened to... well we have a Supreme Court which has said incontrovertable proof of innocence doesn't mandate a person being released from prison, if the trial met the standards to be considered, "fair,", so we aren't in much of a position to protest that.
Malkin, et al, are engaging in hypocrisy, bare and bald-faced. Her linking to all the other history of "Islamic persection of Christians" is indicative of motive.
Her flip-flopping on the idea of fair, and open trials, and the ICC, seem to be linked to that (since her belief in the rule of law is plastic; as evidenced by her, at least, tacit, support of rounding up Muslims and locking them up, a la the internment of the Japanese in WW2).
Until we have a single gov't for all the world, then each country gets to make it's own laws.
TK