{"id":1860,"date":"2008-02-04T09:27:38","date_gmt":"2008-02-04T14:27:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2008\/02\/04\/not-a-terror-su\/"},"modified":"2012-06-26T14:28:41","modified_gmt":"2012-06-26T18:28:41","slug":"not-a-terror-su","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2008\/02\/04\/not-a-terror-su\/","title":{"rendered":"Not a “terror suspect”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Michael Melia of the Associated Press reports<\/a> today that:<\/p>\n

A U.S. military tribunal convening Monday at Guantanamo will hear challenges from attorneys for a Canadian terror suspect accused of killing an American soldier when he was 15 \u2014 an age they say should disqualify him from trial.<\/p>\n

Lawyers for Toronto-born Omar Khadr, who is now 21, argue in a motion on the hearings\u2019 agenda that the judge would be the first in Western history to preside over a trial for war crimes allegedly committed by a child. \u2026<\/p>\n

Khadr is accused of hurling the grenade that killed Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer, a Special Forces commando, during a July 2002 firefight at an al-Qaida compound in Afghanistan.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Set aside the whole question of Khadr\u2019s age here. Just consider that he is, in the above reports and elsewhere, being referred to as a \u201cterror suspect.\u201d And just what act of \u201cterrorism\u201d is he accused of committing? He threw a grenade during a firefight.<\/p>\n

This is not complicated. Throwing a grenade at an opposing soldier during a firefight is not \u201cterrorism.\u201d That\u2019s war.<\/p>\n

(Lying troll prophylactic: Spare me the feigned outrage of pretending that this simple tautology is somehow a celebration or defense of Khadr. Nor do you or could<\/i> you possibly really believe that this self-evident statement is in any way disrespectful of Khadr\u2019s victim, the late Sgt. Speer. He was a soldier and he died in battle. Pretending that he wasn\u2019t and that he didn\u2019t \u2014 pretending, as this tribunal is doing, that he was not a soldier at all, but merely a victim of violent crime \u2014 strikes me as immensely disrespectful.)<\/p>\n

Khadr is accused of fighting against American soldiers in battle. That would make him the enemy. It would make him a Bad Guy. But it would not, by any stretch, make him a terrorist. That\u2019s not what \u201cterrorist\u201d means, nor is it something that \u201cterrorist\u201d can be twisted into meaning. Omar Khadr is not a terror suspect. He is either a prisoner of war or else he falls into the dubious category of \u201cunlawful enemy combatant,\u201d but the tribunal is not accusing him of committing an act of terrorism so let\u2019s stop calling him a \u201cterror suspect.\u201d<\/p>\n

This distinction matters.<\/i> A grenade in a marketplace is terrorism. A grenade in a firefight is combat. To assert that throwing a grenade during battle is criminal is to assert that all war is a war crime and every soldier is a criminal. I cannot see any way of eliminating that distinction for the enemy without also eliminating it for ourselves and for our allies. That is not something we want to do.<\/p>\n

And yet we\u2019re already beginning to do just that. This post \u2014 like every post that even hints at the existence of any such rules or distinctions or criteria \u2014 will inevitably produce the complaint that I am arguing that America must fight \u201cwith one hand tied behind our back.\u201d That phrase \u2014 \u201cI refuse to fight with one hand tied behind my back!\u201d \u2014 is apparently taken from Page 1 of The Nihilist\u2019s Rulebook. (Nihilists, of course, shouldn\u2019t have<\/i> a rulebook, but that\u2019s another distinction they\u2019re proud not to understand.)<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Melia of the Associated Press reports today that: A U.S. military tribunal convening Monday at Guantanamo will hear challenges from attorneys for a Canadian terror suspect accused of killing an American soldier when he was 15 \u2014 an age they say should disqualify him from trial. Lawyers for Toronto-born Omar Khadr, who is now […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[55],"class_list":["post-1860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-just-war"],"yoast_head":"\nNot a "terror suspect"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Michael Melia of the Associated Press reports today that: A U.S. military tribunal convening Monday at Guantanamo will hear challenges from attorneys for\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2008\/02\/04\/not-a-terror-su\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Not a "terror suspect"\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Michael Melia of the Associated Press reports today that: A U.S. military tribunal convening Monday at Guantanamo will hear challenges from attorneys for\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2008\/02\/04\/not-a-terror-su\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"slacktivist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-02-04T14:27:38+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2012-06-26T18:28:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2008\/02\/04\/not-a-terror-su\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2008\/02\/04\/not-a-terror-su\/\",\"name\":\"Not a \\\"terror suspect\\\"\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2008-02-04T14:27:38+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-06-26T18:28:41+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/0173c85e46e7e0951fef5752bed78b6e\"},\"description\":\"Michael Melia of the Associated Press reports today that: A U.S. military tribunal convening Monday at Guantanamo will hear challenges from attorneys for\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2008\/02\/04\/not-a-terror-su\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2008\/02\/04\/not-a-terror-su\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2008\/02\/04\/not-a-terror-su\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Not a “terror suspect”\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/\",\"name\":\"slacktivist\",\"description\":\""Test everything; hold fast to what is good."\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/0173c85e46e7e0951fef5752bed78b6e\",\"name\":\"Fred Clark\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/e23731809f5a2c785d0416fc4211a51e?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/e23731809f5a2c785d0416fc4211a51e?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg\",\"caption\":\"Fred Clark\"},\"description\":\"Fred Clark is a graduate of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary (now called Palmer Seminary), of Eastern College (now called Eastern University) and of the fundamentalist Timothy Christian High School (still fundamentalist and still called Timothy Christian High School, but not really thrilled to have a snarky, liberal, tree-hugging, pro-choice, pro-GLBT, peacenik, commie, evolutionist as such a vocal alumnus). A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1860\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}