Where’s Charlie Sheen when you need him?
Nov 24th 2009Bull MooseWar on Terror
Shit like this has to stop:
Ahmed Hashim Abed, whom the military code-named “Objective Amber,” told investigators he was punched by his captors — and he had the bloody lip to prove it. Now, instead of being lauded for bringing to justice a high-value target, three of the SEAL commandos, all enlisted, face assault charges and have retained lawyers.
It wasn’t too long ago that a paragraph like that would have been bizarre.
Look, either we’re fighting a war, or we need to leave. Frankly, I’m OK with either right now. And that goes for both Iraq and Afghanistan. What I’m not OK with is putting our forces in this weird, pussy no-man’s land they are in now, where special forces can capture a non-uniformed combatant, terrorist, insurgent, whatever you want to call him, and be put on trial because he has a bloody lip.
When I started law school, I had an eye on possibly entering the reserves as a JAG when I was done. Then I talked to a disgruntled ex-JAG who told me there was a good chance I’d end up sitting in a command center somewhere telling soldiers in the field in Iraq or Afghanistan that they couldn’t shoot. I figured it wouldn’t take long for me to end up in jail when I said, “Sure, go ahead and kill all those guys.”
And that was during the “cowboy” Bush years. I can’t imagine how paranoid everyone must be now.
2 Comments »
Jeff on 25 Nov 2009 at 4:07 pm #
I think that this is actually a smart move on the part of the US to allow this to go on and publicize it. I had the initial-knee jerk also, but then realized a highly publicized case like this might give us some good PR. This certainly could give the perception of us being fair and just to someone in Pakistan or France.
Or, maybe I’m just giving the Govt’s PR department too much credit…..
Bull Moose on 25 Nov 2009 at 4:22 pm #
I had another take on it, too: The SEALs might think that putting themselves in a position to speak out might bring some attention to the fact that the US is allowing terrorists to use our own system against us.
They passed on an Admiral’s Mast, I wonder if that is the reason.