http://www.unconfirmedsources.com/index.php?itemid=3200
I found this article online, about Jimmy Carter bring arrested. I thought this would be a good article to share with the class since we talked about it the other day in class. In this article I read that it said the former president was arrested because he was trying to meet with members of Fatah. The suspect was a 83 year old white male. It said that the former president will be transfer to Guantanamo Bay.
[Note: President Carter is not going to Gitmo. Unconfirmed Sources is a joke news site like The Onion. --Prof. Payne]
This article was made me think of several things that came to mind. One was what happens if a president supports an opposing terrorist group? Would we do whatever we could to bring them to power? The only things that I can think of the PLO, but that was in a time when the threat of WMD's was not as large. Every other thing that I can think of deals with gurrilla (spelled wrong sorry) fighters that have overthrown governments. I aslo question if we discovered a president of another state supporting terrorism would be try and detain them and send them to Guantanamo Bay or just have them excuted? Let me know what you guys think about this article and the questions that I posed.
THanks
Austin Conners
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4 comments:
this article i thought i was funny and the class would enjoy, but i did think of some serious questions for it.
In the past our presidents have supported terrorist/guerrillas in Nicaragua, and perhaps even now with the PLO. However, what is most important is how the group is perceived at the time the President, or our government supports it. We supported the contras because we hoped they would keep communism at bay, and we did not see them, nor should we, see them as terrorists. The PLO, has now been legitimized as a party that helps run the (eventual) state of Palestine, so although it was a terrorist group, it has promised to change its ways in exchange for legitimacy and the eventually sovereignty and creation of Palestine.
If the President were to support a terrorist group outright, like al Qaeda or the Tamil Tigers, he would be impeached, tried and jailed. I'm not however, concerned that that will ever happen.
The difficulties facing counter-terrorism is the fact that one policy can't work in all situations. If we sent a President of a country to gitmo, they would be justified in sending our President to a dirty-cell in Iraq. It doesn't work that way. We wouldn't let it work that way.
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