Preemptive Indefinite Detentions

[DNK]

Incorrect.

Concise and accurate imo

Show how AQ wants the world to end and everyone to go with them and I'll recant. Go read some OBL transcripts and cherry pick a passage to prove it at the very least.

 

[GoodGame]

Didn't Lincoln suspend habeas corpus during the Civil War and Reconstruction?

Yes, and it's a right of the POTUS, but the catch is that it has to be a period of crisis.

 

[Masada]

Show how AQ wants the world to end and everyone to go with them and I'll recant. Go read some OBL transcripts and cherry pick a passage to prove it at the very least.

There's a big difference between being the Mahdi's vanguard and paving the way for his inevitable (and sometimes imminent arrival) and actually trying to bring it on. The first is acceptable; the second presupposes that Allah can be influenced and is heresy by any measure you care to examine it from (that isn't to say that AQ doesn't hold heretical or questionable interpretations but that it hasn't thus far strayed into outright heresy by just about every Sunni sects understanding).

Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders

World Islamic Front Statement

23 February 1998

Shaykh Usamah Bin-Muhammad Bin-Ladin
Ayman al-Zawahiri, amir of the Jihad Group in Egypt
Abu-Yasir Rifa'i Ahmad Taha, Egyptian Islamic Group
Shaykh Mir Hamzah, secretary of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Pakistan
Fazlur Rahman, amir of the Jihad Movement in Bangladesh

Praise be to Allah, who revealed the Book, controls the clouds, defeats factionalism, and says in His Book: "But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)"; and peace be upon our Prophet, Muhammad Bin-'Abdallah, who said: I have been sent with the sword between my hands to ensure that no one but Allah is worshipped, Allah who put my livelihood under the shadow of my spear and who inflicts humiliation and scorn on those who disobey my orders.

The Arabian Peninsula has never -- since Allah made it flat, created its desert, and encircled it with seas -- been stormed by any forces like the crusader armies spreading in it like locusts, eating its riches and wiping out its plantations. All this is happening at a time in which nations are attacking Muslims like people fighting over a plate of food. In the light of the grave situation and the lack of support, we and you are obliged to discuss current events, and we should all agree on how to settle the matter.

No one argues today about three facts that are known to everyone; we will list them, in order to remind everyone:

First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.

If some people have in the past argued about the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it. The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, but they are helpless.

Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million... despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.

So here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors.

Third, if the Americans' aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula.

All these crimes and sins committed by the Americans are a clear declaration of war on Allah, his messenger, and Muslims. And ulema have throughout Islamic history unanimously agreed that the jihad is an individual duty if the enemy destroys the Muslim countries. This was revealed by Imam Bin-Qadamah in "Al- Mughni," Imam al-Kisa'i in "Al-Bada'i," al-Qurtubi in his interpretation, and the shaykh of al-Islam in his books, where he said: "As for the fighting to repulse [an enemy], it is aimed at defending sanctity and religion, and it is a duty as agreed [by the ulema]. Nothing is more sacred than belief except repulsing an enemy who is attacking religion and life."

On that basis, and in compliance with Allah's order, we issue the following fatwa to all Muslims:

The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies -- civilians and military -- is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty Allah, "and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together," and "fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah."

This is in addition to the words of Almighty Allah: "And why should ye not fight in the cause of Allah and of those who, being weak, are ill-treated (and oppressed)? -- women and children, whose cry is: 'Our Lord, rescue us from this town, whose people are oppressors; and raise for us from thee one who will help!'"

We -- with Allah's help -- call on every Muslim who believes in Allah and wishes to be rewarded to comply with Allah's order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it. We also call on Muslim ulema, leaders, youths, and soldiers to launch the raid on Satan's U.S. troops and the devil's supporters allying with them, and to displace those who are behind them so that they may learn a lesson.

Almighty Allah said: "O ye who believe, give your response to Allah and His Apostle, when He calleth you to that which will give you life. And know that Allah cometh between a man and his heart, and that it is He to whom ye shall all be gathered."

Almighty Allah also says: "O ye who believe, what is the matter with you, that when ye are asked to go forth in the cause of Allah, ye cling so heavily to the earth! Do ye prefer the life of this world to the hereafter? But little is the comfort of this life, as compared with the hereafter. Unless ye go forth, He will punish you with a grievous penalty, and put others in your place; but Him ye would not harm in the least. For Allah hath power over all things."

Almighty Allah also says: "So lose no heart, nor fall into despair. For ye must gain mastery if ye are true in faith."

I don't see any mention of doomsday or the arrival of the Mahdi... it seems like a fairly practical "these are our reasons for fighting" backed up with Hadith and Koran - and ultimately Allah's word and these are our goals. Simple. I don't even see an endorsement of trying to kill everyone civilian or soldier I see a simple "kill them if and when you can" which is the essence of Jihad in the old sense of the word. All of which is for a particular limited political goal which has screw all to do with anything except driving you out of the Islamic World.

So good job you've managed to confuse a decidedly Christian fetish - doomsday - with Islam which doesn't quite have the same hangups - it goes as far as saying "when Allah wills it and not a whit before".

 

[Kraznaya]

Masada, I thought the Mahdi was predominantly a Shi'a concept, not that of the AQ.

 

[Masada]

Masada, I thought the Mahdi was predominantly a Shi'a concept, not that of the AQ.

Nope. Both believe in the Mahdi (although some Sunni's don't; AQ has been willing to appropriate the imagery when it feels like). The difference is that the Twelvers have already put a name to the Mahdi and the rest haven't. I also gather that the notion of the Madhi is entwined with some of the other manifestations in mainstream Sunni of the "End Times". I guess the key difference is the that Twelvers have essentially invested the Mahdi with quasi-godlike powers and prerogatives and have actually personified the figure... while Sunni's haven't and are more willing to "wait till it happens" or something along those lines (even then it varies heavily inside the broader Sunni community).

 

[MobBoss]

Welcome to Post 9/11 Orwellian America.

Which you voted for...

 

[Formaldehyde]

Al Qaeda is not an existential threat for the US, so why is the US sacrificing fundamental values to fight it?

Because they don't know what else to do against common criminals whom they can't invade and occupy as they normally would do with any other similar 'threat'?

That's the real problem with terrorism. Unless you are willing to become terrorists yourself, there is really not all that much you can do to fight or stop it other than to stop engaging in activities which directly cause it.

Which you voted for...

GWB created this mess by illegally detaining and torturing anybody he thought might possibly be a terrorist. And now the next administration is supposed to clean up his stinking pile of detrius without getting their hands dirty...

We now know a neoconservative is someone who sets his house on fire then boasts six years later that nobody can put it out. Bill Moyers

 

[Theige]

German POWs? WWII? Were they granted trials?

They're not POW's. They're criminals really.

Calling them POW's gives their "organization" far more credibility than they deserve.

Welcome to Post 9/11 Orwellian America.

Don't be overly dramatic. The whole thing is a diplomatic nightmare, and the only reason they won't be released right away is because of the huge propaganda victory it would be for the Taliban, at a time when Pakistan is in a tenuous situation fighting against them.

And its precisely because we live in such a world, completely the opposite of "Orwellian," that this issue is so hotly debated.

 

[Death_Machine]

Yes, and it's a right of the POTUS, but the catch is that it has to be a period of crisis.

Kind of scary isn't it? Who determines the period of crisis or when/if it ends?

That's the real problem with terrorism. Unless you are willing to become terrorists yourself, there is really not all that much you can do to fight or stop it other than to stop engaging in activities which directly cause it.

GWB created this mess by illegally detaining and torturing anybody he thought might possibly be a terrorist. And now the next administration is supposed to clean up his stinking pile of detrius without getting their hands dirty...

1. Where does water boarding fit into your first statement?
2. Stop making excuses for Obama. He smear campaigned on this issue & now he has done a hard U turn.

 

[Souron]

It's like the Japanese Internment, except this time we have better reason to believe letting these people go will endanger national security.

That should suggest that detention like this is at least Constitutional.

 

[DNK]

Because they don't know what else to do against common criminals whom they can't invade and occupy as they normally would do with any other similar 'threat'?

That's the real problem with terrorism. Unless you are willing to become terrorists yourself, there is really not all that much you can do to fight or stop it other than to stop engaging in activities which directly cause it.

CIA + SF ops. EZ game. But instead the US invaded a country with an entire army and then subsequently got bogged down in a mess of a nation-building exercise. If the US government wasn't tangled up in fixing Afghanistan, it would have the proper resources to direct against the actual threat.

 

[Death_Machine]

CIA + SF ops. EZ game. But instead the US invaded a country with an entire army and then subsequently got bogged down in a mess of a nation-building exercise. If the US government wasn't tangled up in fixing Afghanistan, it would have the proper resources to direct against the actual threat.

Pull out your liberal playbook & read it again. We're bogged down in Iraq while the actual threat is in Afghanistan.......................... that's what y'all are saying this week, right?

 

[DNK]

Pull out your liberal playbook & read it again. We're bogged down in Iraq while the actual threat is in Afghanistan.......................... that's what y'all are saying this week, right?

I'm not a liberal so I wouldn't know.