Enemy Combatant

From Morning Edition comes this report (9/14/06 - 4:46) on British-born Moazzam Begg (@ Wikipedia), a man who spent two years incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay as an enemy combatant (@ Wikipedia) of the United States, before being released in 2005. There's a brief follow-up interview (1:03) with NPR's correspondent Jackie Northam.

Like most enemy combatants, Begg was never charged with a crime during his time in prison, and now in a new book Begg claims that he was "never ever was a threat to the security of the United States of America." The Pentagon, disagrees, claiming that Begg is still a dangerous man.

Musings

• Part of the problem is what to do with people (mostly soldier-aged males) who clearly do not like us and hence, given the right opportunity, might conceivably act violently against the U.S. or our interests. The old-fashioned solution was basically two-fold: (1) to make each country responsible for policing its own citizens, and (2), at least in the U.S. and most democracies, not to arrest or otherwise detain people until or unless they have actually committed a crime. In other words, we did not arrest people on the likelihood that they would commit a crime, that someone like Begg is potentially dangerous. What's different today?
  
  
• A related issue is our use of the language of war. Again, the old-fashioned notion of war was between states. When one state was defeated, a new government was put in place that then had the task of policing its citizens. We now seem to be at war, not with governments, but with individuals and groups, and do not seem to have solved the problem of what to do with the people we fight against and do not kill. What do you think of what has been our short-term solution of our creating a global prison system?