Well, Ben, much as I look forward to dining with you to discuss these issues further, I won't take that bet, because I tend to agree with you that al-Marwalah could be detained under the laws of war themselves, if the evidence could fairly be read, as you suggest, to indicate that he was engaged in combat against coalition forces...
A quick note on the two latest case examples on the table in our ongoing detention debate. First, Mr. Al-Marwallah’s case is a prime example of why we shouldn’t make broad new detention policy based on the problems of Gitmo alone. Mr. Al-Marwallah may not be prosecutable for taking terrorist training pre-2001 since the criminal material support statute in...
Let me start by saying that I don't think I've substantially narrowed my detention criteria between the book and this discussion--though I am potentially amenable to doing so. The book is written for a general-interest audience and, consequently, at a higher-level of altitude than this discussion is taking place. Precisely to preserve the ability to have this discussion sort of...
Deborah poses what I think is really the pivotal question in the whole detention debate: If you design the detention regime reasonable and fairly--as I propose to do--isn't your detainable class limited to people who are actually criminals and, if so, why not just try them as criminals? I believe, largley based on Bobby's excellent work on this subject, that...
I'm tentatively encouraged by Ben's new articulated test for detainability, which is not everything I'd hope for (especially if the "impracticability of criminal trial" prong is read broadly), but begins to bridge the gap. Ben's proposal in his book, however, is much more troubling. My premise, and that of the judges in al-Marri, is that the detention authority Congress conferred in the...
I'd like to explore a bit further the question of what stands in the way of reliance upon domestic criminal prosecution as the primary detention mechanism. First, however, I want to be clear that I do not think that we should entirely forgo military detention with respect to persons captured in connection with the two, relatively conventional armed conflicts currently underway in Afghanistan...
There seems to be something like consensus among us that the toughest remaining unanswered question relates not so much to procedure, but to the substance of who may be detained. And we have two very instructive approaches to this question – either asking who may be detained under current law (below, Marty calls our attention to Judge Wilkinson’s take,...
There has been excellent dialogue and debate on this difficult issue over the past day or so. One thing is clear, whoever wins the next Presidential election will be forced to confront the issue of "preventative detention" almost immediately upon taking office on January 20, 2009. Unlike my erudite colleagues, my simple mind sees the answer this way: try the detainees,...
I have been away from DC, isolated in an office at the Hoover Institution with the internet mostly turned off, completing a short book on US-UN relations. So I have not been participating in - from the posts I have managed to read - the quite marvelous Wittes Long War discussion. But I surfaced long enough to find out that...
I have no idea what you people are talking about. Congress has no intention of standing on the sidelines while the Supreme Court micromanages Guantanamo Bay, as Rep. Lewis Gohmert (R-Tex)'s new H.R. 6615 proves beyond even the smallest shadow of a doubt. Here is the title: To provide for the transport of the enemy combatants detained in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba...
There have been a bunch of challenging and thoughtful posts on detention since yesterday evening, and there are a lot of issues to address. So once again, I beg everyone's indulgence to bunch posts and arguments together. If I'm skipping over important points in doing so, just call me on it and I'll try to circle back. Let me start with...
Procedural safeguards and substantive detention criteria exist in a dynamic relationship. One can ramp up procedural safeguards, for example, but this may have little effect on the government's capacity to detain if the substantive detention grounds are defined sufficiently broadly. And by the same token, an unduly strict definition of who may be detained will limit the utility of a...
