Unused and Probably Unusable

To my disappointment, the Heinlein Friday for this Friday wasn't done yet - not even half done yet, which would have let me post Part 1, to be followed next Friday by part 2.

So, mea culpa, and let me just leave a few good links here as a taste of what I'm going for. The real HF will be posted... but not before midnight. Maybe not even before next Wednesday. :)

• Wikipedia "Laws of War"


• Fred (Slacktivist) on "You're Not Allowed to Kill Civilians"
  
  
  
  • the Title post
  
  
  • YNATKC continued (for those who didn't get the message after part 1)
  
  
  • Nagasaki - for those still unclear on the concept
  
  
  • Perverse Arithmetic - for those who eagerly look for permission from the prohibition
  
  
  • Terrorists are Bad - for those eager to hide behind labels, particularly when they are unfamiliar with history, war, or both
  
  


• Some links at my del.icio.us page on the Global War on Terror, starting at p.2, which includes some goodies. Of note: Neat Katyal's plea to finally start where we should have, and try courts-martialing detainees; Fafblog's biting satirical comment on the coordinated suicide of three Guantanamo detainees "6/10 changed everything!"; a guest post at Concurring Opinions about how a law clerk grew up, got appointed to the Supreme Court, and turned his former judge's great dissent into the law of the land, eviscerating a terrible precedent, in "Who's the Greatest Law Clerk Ever?" (referring to the recent Hamdan decision).


• The first page of same, which includes the intriguing comment by Prof. Gerber at Intel Dump that perhaps not trying detainees at all would be the right way to go. Why go with kangaroo courts, when you can just decline to try (or punish) them at all? I need to review this, see what he's basing his argument on.

There's lots to say - including about ongoing events, including political ones such as the defeat in Connecticut of a certain formerly Democratic Senator by Democratic nominee Ned Lamont, a rich progressive liberal who won because the primary voters were sick and tired of the incumbent's refusal to vote or talk like a Democrat on a wide range of issues. The first and foremost being the need to show skepticism towards whether the Administration should be credited with competence and good will in the war in Iraq, neither of which it has actually demonstrated. And, of course, the War In Iraq (is it Civil yet? Is it Accomplished yet?) is not really a front in the GWOT - until our leaders turned it into one. "Come on," he taunted.

The Vice President talks as if Iraq were part of the War on Terror. The Senator (soon to be former Senator) talks as if "terrorists" (meaning guerilla warriors, or meaning terrorists? Does he even know?) will take heart if we stop fighting the wrong war and begin fighting the right ones. Both ignore the reality that Saddam was not behind 9/11. Saddam cheered when Americans bled, but that's not enough; many of our enemies did. Anarchist fanatical theocrats have remarkably little in common with westernized despotic secular tyrants. And just where did Saddam purchase that poison gas he used on the Kurds?

Much, much more when I get around to it.