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Journal pudge's Journal: Catching Up on Colbert 10

Journal by pudge

Watching Colbert from last week. Neal Katyal is on. He represented a Gitmo detainee in the Supreme Court. He made two fatal errors.

First, he is not a professional comedian, and he tried to make jokes. He simply wasn't funny.

Second, his arguments were extremely weak. He kept bringing up the nonsensical retort of the left, "this isn't what our country was founded on," which is, of course, begging the question.

Even worse, and incredibly, he said that he gets letters from soldiers who thank him for defending the Geneva Conventions, because if they get captured, they want to be protected by the Geneva Conventions too. Except, well, no. Our soldiers, if captured, get no such protections, not from anyone we're currently fighting. The people we're fighting behead our troops or burn them alive. That's the whole point.

Does anyone honestly think Madison, Adams, Washington, and so on would really defend the right of al Qaeda to get the same legal protections as any other troops? They'd do what Bush has been doing. They'd lock the captured enemies up and hold on to them as long as they felt like it. Maybe even hang a few. Maybe even without a trial.

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Catching Up on Colbert More

Catching Up on Colbert

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  • Many early americans saw the indians as uncivilized savages and brutes and slaughtered them wholesale. Now uncivilized savages and brutes and apparently viewed by too many as somehow noble and superior and worthy of being enshrined and protected at all costs rather than exterminated like vermin.

    So sad.
  • Your argument above hinges primarily on the fact that the enemy and historical figures acted in certain ways, and so you should act in kind. You don't necessarily say that right out. In fact, you didn't actually say anything of any consequence if you want to boil your words down to the strictest interpretation (wtf are you, some sort of politician?), but I think that the intent was fairly clear.

    Okay. So why do you draw the line at the treatment of prisoners when drawing from history? Why shouldn't you go ba
    • Wow. Just Wow. Your whole reply is a big straw man attack on a view I neither expressed, nor implied. I do not hold to such a view. You're entirely full of it.

      I stated a fact: that the lawyer was clearly and blatantly mischaracterizing the founding principles of this nation by stating that it is somehow outside of those principles to hold, indefinitely and without charge or warrant, prisoners of groups who operate outside of the normal rules of war. He was simply making shit up when he said that.

      I did
      • Nah. I stand by every bit of my original post. You didn't change my mind on anything involved in it, especially not with obtuse insults about my perceived intelligence sprinkled into your rant.
        • Wow. You stand by blatantly false accusations about what I believe, things I never expressed nor implied. You stand by obviously false statements about people in the U.S. without land having no rights.

          You stand by being a liar.

          Nice.

          You're foe'd, ne'er to post in this journal again. I see several other users I respect have already foe'd you, so I now join their esteemed company. Later, troll.
  • What I think doesn't amount to a hill of beans, but here it is anyway:
    • The Geneva Convention have NO APPLICATION in the "war on terrorism". None at all. If they did, then we could easily shoot the terrorists on sight-- GC rules stipulate that spies (ie combatants not wearing a uniform to set themselves apart from the populace) can be put to death. One cannot have it both ways. Either it applies, or it doesn't.
    • The terrorist pigs (take that for all it's worth) do not abide by the GC. I defy anyone to pr
  • We have fought and probably will fight other wars besides this one. Soldiers understand this (as you may recall, my father is a career retired soldier) and maybe that's why they thank him...
    • True enough, but that doesn't change the fact that we've not fought any such enemy in a long time, and chances are, we won't fight any such enemy any time soon.

      I am not saying the argument is totally bogus, just that it was juxtaposed oddly in light of the current conflict. The bogus argument was the thing about the founding principles of the nation.

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