Reply #98: Hear hear

[AliceWonderland]

Hell Hath No Fury. Well put. Some of the posts on this thread are unbelievable. Stage an illegal invasion, pick a brute at random in the world and a brute whose social structure was in part propped up on my taxpayer dime, carry out an assassination, ignore international law and due process, create a fearsome precedent... and tell me I must be pleased if I am a good feminist?? That is a laughable argument, and I am repulsed by media blowhards trumpeting this as a great victory when not a one amongst them could care less about the brutes of this world. Either we choose to support a world ruled by anarchy, state and non-state terrorism, unaccountable power, and rule by military might, or we don't.

There is due process for criminal behaviour -- not that due process would mean anything at this stage of the game. It does not exist only for people who are nice. Due process is due process precisely because it exists for the sickest and most violent among us, as well as for the wrongly accused. Due process says we value law and human rights, and that we believe that power MUST be accountable. This alleged assassination -- this entire War on Terra -- says that power is unaccountable. Read your Constitution lately? Noticed your Bill of Rights? Heard of the International Declation of Human Rights, the UN Charter? It's the saddest strawman imaginable -- "oh, who cares what we do anyway, they were bad men, you apologist for evildoer rapists you." Hm. I knew a guy who once broke a restraining order on my roommate. I'm curious -- at what point is he so evil that I can ignore due process, get a gun, and kill him with impunity? Was my friend's fracture enough, or do I need a little more? After all, punishment is my prerogative if there is no accountability and no due process, right?

SyracuseDemocrat, if you care about the raped women of the world, there are countless organizations you could support that have countless policy recommendations for eliminating sexual violence and its causes. They'd love a donation, I'm sure. Maybe a few hours of your time. I doubt, however, that many want international law to be further eroded. Any development or human rights group will tell you that war causes conditions that destroy women's lives in many ways.

As a side not, one of the many dirty little ironies here is that we've had hundreds of threads vis-a-vis the Niger scandal, saying that the Bush adminstration is filled with corrupt liars who use military force for personal and economic gain. So why should I even believe this report to be true?