Saturday, May 23, 2009
The Group Five problem, part deux
Christopher Caldwell's op-ed in the Financial Times, aptly titled "The Gordian knot of Guantánamo Bay," addresses more eloquently the problem we blogged about and that President Obama tried to deal with in his speech this week. Caldwell concludes:
"Bringing Guantánamo prisoners to the US is safe only if you assume they will not receive a fair trial. In a system that guarantees due process, if you cannot charge a person or if a judge finds his interrogation unconstitutional, you release him. Mr Obama’s constitutionalism is underwritten by the Bush war on terror.Read the whole thing.
"That is why Mr Cheney’s big push has been successful. It confronts Mr Obama with a Gordian knot that he dare not cut. A constitution that enshrines rights is an asset, but it does not come free. If it did, every country would have one. Eight years ago, Americans reckoned that some rights were worth trading for security. If they want those rights back, they will probably have to trade some security. That is the bargain. Until Mr Obama admits it he will be tangled up in an illogic from which no oratory can extract him."
Tom Maguire over at JustOneMinute picked up on our question and nicely "squared the circle," and in doing so, made reference to a theme from a Clint Eastwood movie, Dirty Harry. In that movie (indisputably a key listing in the Canon of Eastwood films), Detective Callahan delivers ransom money to the demented serial killer Scorpio, who is holding a girl hostage in an underground spider hole; Scorpio takes the money and then decides he is going to kill the girl anyway, and is in the process of doing significant harm to Callahan, when of course the tables are turned and a chase ensues -- taking us to the old Kezar Stadium (where the 49ers used to play), and Callahan uses his .44 Magnum ("the most powerful handgun in the world") from extreme distance and gets off a wounding shot, then proceeds to step on Scorpio's wound site to get him to give up information regarding the girl's location. Naturally, all of the information he gathers as a result of this technique is inadmissable in court (and the fact that he had no warrant to search Scorpio's residence, where a rifle used in other killings was found), as Detective Callahan learns in the next scene. By amazing coincidence, I happen to have a clip of that next scene, uploaded to YouTube for your viewing pleasure:
I think my favorite line in that scene is, "I'm all broken up about that man's rights."
Clint Eastwood was sensitive to the fact that a number of critics of the film saw him as being favorably predisposed to vigilantism, so the sequel -- Magnum Force -- had him eliminating a rogue group of young motorcycle cops (including officers portrayed by David Soul, the late Robert Urich, and Tim Matheson) who have been whacking bad guys without any due process, in true vigilante fashion, and doing so at the direction of Lt. Briggs, played by Hal Holbrook.
Clearly, Clint knows where that bright line is between exigent circumstances and trashing the Constitution. Maybe he can take time away from his movie career (and I confess that I have yet to see Gran Torino) to become a special advisor to President Obama on such matters.
3 Comments:
By 
, at
Sat May 23, 06:35:00 PM:
Gran Torino is a gem, don't miss it.
By 
AmPowerBlog, at
Sat May 23, 10:17:00 PM:
You're all linked up. See, "Full Metal Saturday: Marisa Miller"!
By SR, at
Sat May 23, 10:36:00 PM:
It is clear that the answer lies in rehabilitating Gitmo's reputation. This should be an easy task for the One and his spin meisters. Try them in Gitmo, but do not give them a boat or any means of exit. Certainly not to this country. Geraldo had an idea. Let the prisoners vote whether to stay in Gitmo or move underground in Colorado.
