Thursday, July 03, 2008

Calling Andy McCarthy (Again)   [Peter Robinson]

Mea culpa:  We got our segments out of order in the Uncommon Knowledge, and I first put up this post yesterday, when I should have waited until today.  Anyway, in today’s segment—and this time I really do mean "today's segment"—I have an exchange with Philip Bobbitt, author of Terror and Consent:  The Wars for the Twenty-First Century, that goes like this:

First Bobbitt argued that the war on terror means the U.S. government must obey the law more scrupulously, not less so, holding this country up as the very model of a society based on the consent of the governed.

Do you approve of the President’s decision to detain alien combattants at Gitmo? I asked.  Bobbitt indicated that he most certainly did not.  Well then, I countered, suppose that the President had some four or more years ago made a dual announcment, letting Americans know, a) that he intended to go right on sequestering enemy combatants at Gitmo until someone came up with a better idea, but that, b) he was also appointing a panel of distinguished jurists in the hope that they would do just that.  He would instruct the jurists to study the matter, consulting the finest legal minds in the nation, and then to recommend new laws for dealing with enemy combatants—that would both respect the demands of national security and comport with American norms of fairness, including our devotion to habeas corpus.  What about it? I asked.  Would you have supported the President if he had given a speech like that?

Why, said Philip Bobbitt, I wish you’d written the speech yourself.

Andy McCarthy, would you take a look at this segment?  You know the law, and you know the war on terror.  Do you agree with Bobbitt?  Or did I let the man off too easy?

07/03 01:05 PMShare