This is the stupidest part of a very, very stupid week:
After saying emphatically that trying Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in a federal civilian court is the only option because the 19-year-old bombing suspect is a U.S. citizen, White House press secretary Jay Carney on Monday added that President Barack Obama’s inner-circle has his back on the decision.
“The entire national security team is in agreement on this approach,” Carney said during a press briefing, after noting that it’s a “matter that’s decided by the Department of Justice.”
Republicans, notably Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and John McCain (R-AZ), have argued that Tsarnaev should be treated as an enemy combatant.
WHY? God Almighty, why? If he’s an enemy combatant, then there’s an enemy, which I guess in this case would be Chechnya, another shitless place for us to kick the shit out of? Except a) they’re American so we bomb ourselves now? and b) Russia probably is jonesing for something to do and so us blowing up stuff on their continent is not going to be taken well.
I do not GET this. We already have a system to deal with enemy combatants who are US citizens who do stupid shit, and it’s called the justice system, because they’re called CRIMINALS. Not everybody who does something heinous gets a special name, even if the news has seen fit to give them a theme song.
A.
Don’t know about Lindsey and can’t find anything after a quick search, but I suspected — correctly, according to Wikipedia — that McCain was a bit soft on the Chechen rebels, though I doubt anyone’s going to call him out on that.
Athenae — thank you for getting it.
The Boston Marathon bombing arose out of a criminal conspiracy to commit murder.
Of US Citizens and of US visitors from around the world.
That the criminals partly succeeded represents no absolution of the rest of us from abiding by our laws. To think or act otherwise is to bring back the Bush League Nation that ruled us from 2000 to 2008.
Terrorism?
Terrorism is blowing up buses in Israel.
Terrorism is stealing aircraft over NYC.
Terrorism is blowing up trains in India or hotels in Mumbai.
Terrorism is blowing up the Murrah Building.
This was murder, and cop murder, and conspiracy to commit more murder.
This was nothing special. This was a common criminal conspiracy.
Try this 19-year-old for murder, and attempted murder, and conspiracy to commit murder.
If he’s convicted jail him.
But — try each charge separately. He was involved in no fewer than four murders.
Why did it take until Monday for the preznit to figure this out? And what the hell did the “special interrogation unit” do to Tsarnaev in the meantime before reading him his fricking rights? This country disgusts me sometimes at how far we’ve drifted from the Constitution.