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Because by doing so they legitimize them. By labeling them as soldiers they recognize that they are part of some legitimate army against which
the United States are currently at war with. Thus, any acts these people commit are acts of war. Warcrimes perhaps, in the event that such acts target primarily civilians, but for one the United States are not in a position to decry warcrimes after starting two illegal wars, and second, targeting civilian targets is not necessarily a warcrime if it serves some strategic purpose. Or rather: it has not necessarily been treated as a warcrime in the past. If blowing up a plane is a warcrime then dropping a nuke on a city certainly is, for instance.
I don't understand the right wings reluctance to treat terrorists as common criminals. For instance during the election John McCain was complaining that Obama would grant Osama bin Laden habeus corpus rights.
What utter nonsense. All that habeus corpus means, as far as I understand it, is that you must press charges at some point. How is granting him habeus corpus rights going to keep him from getting punished? The charges are very clear. He is charged with doing 9/11.
The rule of law is stragegically the best way to deal with terrorism. Terrorists want to be treated as soldiers.
If they treat the plane bomber as a common criminal he will probably get the death penalty (which I think should be abolished but that is another story). If the treat him as a soldier, he might be
set free in exchange for captives that the enemy is holding.
I get the impression the right wing will use any means they can come up with to destroy the rule of law in the United States.
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