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Entry: Who Guards the Guardians? Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/who_guards_the_guardians#29835 Post contents: Al Qaeda sure has many advocates here. They don't get either civilian or military treatment. They are unlawful combatatns. They don't get POW protections--which are variable even for otherwise legitimate combatants--and they certainly have no right to civilian trials. They can accordingly (a) be held for length of hostilities and (b) executed for the war crime of being an unlawful combatant and belonging to al Qaeda whenever we choose to have trials, so long as they are sometime before the end of hostilites or shortly thereafter. So what if they're denied access to a court? Not everyone gets a court? Not every right has a remedy? Some issues are nojusticiable? Some rights only apply to citizens or within national borders. You do realize that you don't get a court on battlefield, do you? Your only process is kill or be killed and stick with your team and don't look too much like the enemy or you're dead. Not very fair, is it, but that's war. You can slice combatants throats in their sleep, you know, and ther'es no requirement for "fear of one's life" or exigency or necessity. That's how it is. But no uniform, no chain of command, and no nation-state sponsor, you can be shot on site as an unlawful combatant. Read the Hostage Case from Nuremberg if you don't believe me. Our internal processes of declaring war or not are of no moment to whether a war is lawful and whether a group can deviate from the law of war. These guys don't have a right to attack us, and we still have a right to kill them all until they surrender, with or without their adherence to the law of war. You should just commit suicide if you have so little righteous indignation and sense of connectedness to your fellow citizens who were murdered by these al Qaeda scumbags. Sent at: 2008 12 02