The Common Defense - Part 2

The second great external challenge to the Common Defense is from the nut jobs that follow a religion that considers everyone else an infidel who should be killed or converted. Here the arguments are more subtle and so more dangerous.

The current Administration is simply not fighting this war. Of course, there is military action in Afganistan and Iraq. Whether is goes far enough or too far is a subject for a different debate. The subject here is whether the Administration gets understands what it is fighting.

There are organizations of nuts who clearly want to do as much harm to this country and its citizens as possible. The idea of promoting the common defense is that he government needs to do whatever is necessary to stop it and protect people. And do they? No. This Administration's primary concern is whether these nuts get the proper legal treatment. The international conventions on the subject clearly define that the people captured as part of these movements are not subject to the conventions covering captured soldiers. The vast majority of them are not US citizens and in no way need to be afforded the protections of the US Constitution that they are trying to destroy. Those that are US citizens are guilty of treaon and can be legally shot in time of war. In the face of all of this, the debate is about whether these guys were properly given the Miranda rights that they are not eligible for in the first place. The administration is putting their responsibility to provide for the common defense at the bottom of thgeir priority list.

Perhaps the Administration's problem in seeing this comes from an inability to realize what they are fighting. These are self proclaimed religious warriors fighting according to their interpretation of the tenants of their religion. (Whether this is what the religion really dictates is another debate for later.) But this Administration does not get the religion thing. They don’t do the religion thing at all so just can’t understand what the big deal is. To them, these nuts are just another group clinging to their guns and Bible but this time it’s a Koran and not a Bible.

Until this Administration figure out what its responsibilites are they have no chance to do what is necessary.