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I hate the governments expanded terrorism powers too, but the "we should treat it as a crime" policy is either a naive statement or one where it's non-obvious
by anologwintermut 13y ago
I hate the governments expanded terrorism powers too, but the "we should treat it as a crime" policy is either a naive statement or one where it's non-obvious how to go about it. The criminal justice system is used to punish criminals and through that deter crime. This has little effect on a suicide bomber (nor does the ability to detain people for 9 hours for that matter).
At the same time, treating terrorism prevention as a police mater appears to militarize the police.
- regularfry 13y agoIt's not aimed at the suicide bomber. It's aimed at the person convincing them to strap the vest on. As any organisation, you don't survive very long by detonating your leadership class.
- anologwintermut 13y agoOk, but the leadership class is usually in a foreign country. Historically, hostile foreign countries or ones where you can't trust the local government. So to get people in those countries, you need a militarized police force. We could have sent in police to arrest OBL in Pakistan, but they would have looked a lot like seal team 6 ( or maybe we could have had the Pakistanis do it, but that doesn't work in all cases. For example, the Taliban in 2001 would not have helped us) Also, the leadership may not care about their consequences too much either, other than preferably living to fight another day.