If this were a movie we could just attach a bomb to him that's set off if any witnesses die.
But seriously at some point I find myself asking why we must have a trial with witnesses. If you have so much accrued evidence that you know these steps are necessary to protect witnesses that should be sufficient to give you life in prison/death penalty.
Which is kind of gross, but if someone has clearly so much disregard for the law, why should they get to abuse it?
I think that is because we conflate the concept of justice with the process of justice. Justice is getting what you deserve for your actions. We came up with the process of justice for example trials, witnesses, juries, etc to help us as a society more reliably achieve justice the concept. However, these two things are disctinct.
I think this a fair, populist point. I have the same struggles surrounding policing and justice. There are categories of society that act so clearly outside the societal norm that clear and present danger is easily established (say terrorists actively plotting). Still we hold to our procedural law. The killing squads of Duterte are an obvious example why you wouldn't want 00-style justice. But I do wonder if there is a middle ground. I presume not. So that would be my current answer: we hold to procedural law for anyone and everyone because any deviance from that is on a very short, slippery slope to fascism and dictatorship. (I use the term fascism loosely, but the Latin origin is appropriate.)
We are clearly living outside the norm right now. Any cursory examination of history shows that slope to be insanely slippery. Even the subject of this article is the product state-run tyranny on its own people.
Probably best to fight for those civil liberties we take for granted.
My intended meaning is that if you end the War on Drugs, powerful, murderous cartel bosses would no longer exist.
So even now, in times where we don't think of ourselves as living in tyranny, our state is creating it. The War on Drugd has always been a war on people, not a pro-humanity experiment.
Maybe I'm playing semantic games, but I think words like "extrajudicial" hint at a solution to the paradox of how a political system can address existential threats.
A political system encompasses both a legal process and a system of allocating power. Extrajudicial means not authorized, but it doesn't imply the power exercised was illegitimate. Rather, it suggests the power was legitimate. Contrast that with a murderer, who never possessed any legitimate power to take a life, let alone take one according to some legal right. Cold comfort but in principle a meaningful distinction, especially if you agree that power is principally defined and circumscribed by the office, and only secondarily by the rules for executing that office.
For the sake of argument, let's say the drug scourge was truly an immediate and existential threat to the Philippine polity. Duterte's mistake wasn't to unleash vigilante death squads, it was to admit to and purport to authorize the death squads. If he had (1) quietly unleashed the death squads, (2) creating plausible deniability and permitting the existence of the fiction that the state wasn't involved, and crucially (3) left himself and the vigilantes exposed in principal to punishment for exercising power without legal right, then there would have been no substantial injury to the rule of law.
It's like civil disobedience--it nominally violates the law but as long as you're willingtoaccept the legal consequences the rule of law isn't injured. You're putting yourself at the mercy of the law in service to the law.
It's why I absolutely opposed the Bush-era and Obama-era strategies to "legalize" various tactics in the War on Terror, and would have preferred the status quo ante where the president exercised unchecked powers. Both Bush (notwithstanding "Unitary Executive" advisers) and Obama argued Congressional authorization made the executive more accountable. But it made the executive less accountable because now it had both the power (slightly diminished, maybe) and the legal right where once it only had the power. Legalization corrupted our law and our morality by authorizing behaviors that should never be authorized, merely tolerated as a practical matter.
Previously, as long as both Congress and the People believed an exigency legitimate they had the option of looking the other way, especially if the President never admitted it and maintained enough restraint to maintain the polite fiction. By leaving themselves exposed to punishment the President and his agents are incentivized to restrain themselves and as a practical matter limited to exercising their powers in situations and in a manner that doesn't openly flout the rule of law--in other words, precisely those contexts where the rule of law is already inoperable or under existential threat.
As with civil disobedience, however, the solution to the paradox requires selflessness and credible risk of self-sacrifice. The existence of such leadership seems as scare as it ever has been.
The parallels with Socrates' trial and death are not coincidental, though it was by putting together the above theory that led me to a fuller understanding (I think) and greater appreciation of the story.
How might this work with El Chapo, presuming reasonable necessity? From a position of legitimate power (President, General), arrange and permit his extrajudicial assassination by an otherwise respectable citizen (i.e. not a rival, though perhaps a victim if public sympathy is important) willing to face public prosecution (not to mention cartel reprisal) for the promise (not guarantee) of a commuted sentence. It's risky--how do you know when the rule of law is existentially threatened, or that an act is reasonably necessary in defense?
But at least the risk of punishment faced by all parties serves to sharpen judgement and, if necessary, is available to remedy any harm to th...
Because if you make the process optional in a case as extreme as this, you will have to reevaluate that decision for EVERY case. No matter how small. And you know there will always be people arguing that the process should be abandoned.
Roper: So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law!
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you — where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast — man's laws, not God's — and if you cut them down — and you're just the man to do it — d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.
With the benefit of hindsight they appear to have done more harm than good in that they played into the Republican strategy of making NI ungovernable by normal means.
I don’t think it is so much a matter of the defendant’s regard to the law, but whether above a certain threshold of power, the opposing force is still of the domain of common law. You won’t conduct a civil war with judges and policemen. If a drug cartel has become so powerful that you end up having to take extreme measures just to do a trial, I think asking wether this becomes the realm of the military is a fair question.
Ok so this comment weirdly oscillates. I’m really interested in just how many votes it’s received now.
Anyway I agree with the many people who have said variations on “slippery slope”, only i think it’s more of a cliff.
But I also think that we do need to develop some system for managing defendants who directly attack the legal system and the people involved. Clearly the current approach has a weakness when dealing with people like el chapo.
From the article [about how isolated he is now and how unable to threaten or kill witnesses]:
“(...) unless the government is suggesting that the defense team will disseminate hit orders from Mr. Guzmán, there is no realistic way for him to do anything” to the witnesses at all."
Assuming that the leader of Sinaola cartel who had people murdered in thousands has lawyers that would deny him the means to order hits on witnesses is childishly naive.
Absolutely, and what chutzpah by the lawyers, really! "Oh just give us the information, we'll play by the rules! why would you even suspect that we wouldn't???"
FWIW, the submitted article links to two more in-depth articles from 2017 about the NYC prison in which Guzman currently resides, in the graf that reads: "10 South, the maximum-security wing of the Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York City's most impenetrable jail"
I'm no prison security specialist but right in downtown Manhattan, of all places, sounds like the least secure spot to host this powerful escape artist of a drug lord of anywhere in the country.
I was curious and decided to map possible escape routes.
He's pretty close to a 4/5/6, an R/W, a J/Z, and maybe a 1 train. That puts him at about 25 minutes from NY Penn, which allows him access to Amtrak or the LIRR.
He's about an hour by public transport from LGA, but that would require a bus. The fastest route to JFK would be 1h11m if he took the A (which isn't all that close) followed by an airtrain. If he chose Newark Airport it'd be something like 25 minutes to NY Penn station + 25 minutes to Newark Penn station and maybe another 10 minutes to Newark Airport via NJ Transit, so about an hour. In other words, from escape to the front door of the airport he's looking at at least an hour of commute, by which point I'd hope someone noticed he's missing.
This all, of course, assumes he takes public transport.
I think he'd have a helicopter pick him up, and take him a couple of miles to be transferred to a supersonic jet.
That jet would take him 100 miles into the atlantic and he and an accomplice parachute out with a liferaft and little engine.
The plane carries on to mexico as a decoy.
Radars aren't good enough to see small craft far from the shore in the ocean, so he can stay at sea as long as he likes and land anywhere. The search area would be huge - if we can't find MH370, we can't find him!
The claim that a a billionaire drug dealer in Mexico has to "escape" by crawling out of a tunnel from a rural Mexican jail is pretty funny.
He probably just walked out and the tunnel was built to make the administration of the jail look less guilty despite the fact they were probably fully aware of what was happening.
The problem with coming in contact with people like Guzman is you can chose between cooperating or misery & death. I'm sure the head of that jail decided he'd cooperate the moment he heard Guzman would be housed there and who can blame him.
The problem with coming in contact with people like Guzman is you can chose between cooperating or misery & death. I'm sure the head of that jail decided he'd cooperate the moment he heard Guzman would be housed there and who can blame him.
It's located right next the the new york police department which is the largest police department in the US with 38,000 officers [0].
It is also located right next to the courthouse and this is the procedure to go to court:
In an article published on April 5, 2011, Jim Dwyer of the New York Times described the experience of an inmate being transferred from the facility to the federal court across the street: A prisoner going to court from the Metropolitan Correctional Center is presented to federal marshals in the basement of the building. Shackled at the ankles, chained at the waist and cuffed at the hands, the prisoner hop-marches through a tunnel nearly 40 feet (12 meters) below the street. The prisoner and escorts go through channels, or corridors, with electronic doors at each end. These are controlled remotely by officers who watch the journey through cameras. More prominent prisoners, who need to be segregated from the general prison population, are housed in the 10-South wing, which is noted for severely confining conditions.
During this passage from jail to court, no one lays eyes on the prisoner except the marshals and the people in the surveillance stations. Once they have reached the north end of the tunnel, they wait for the prisoner elevator. Inside is a locked cage that the prisoner stands in for the ride up to the courthouse cells [1].
I spent the night there once, when arrested for a traffic violation. Twenty guys in a cell, one toilet. The bologna sandwiches are terrible.
It's directly connected to the court house. You emerge into the court rooms from an underground tunnel for arraignment. The transition from concrete dungeon to hard wood court room is pretty striking, and probably not without psychological intent.
I also spent three weeks performing jury duty there, and got to see defendants coming from the other direction, with at least a limited understanding for where some of them had just been.
Are you a Mexican? If not, would you also consider it okay if the military of your country conducted drone strikes and used thermobaric bombs with "acceptable level of collateral damage" for extrajudicial killings of fellow citizens in your own country?
I would find this totally unacceptable. I also find extrajudicial killings by drone strikes in other countries totally unacceptable but in my own country I'd consider such practices even worse.
Or maybe it's a way to take someone out without risking lives of many of your own people. Bringing them to court could just be too hard. But yeah, it's subverting of justice process. We should just send them notices about court cases and they will come if they're respecting law...
From the standpoint of words, about "subverting the whole justice system".
So here is why this is comical to me. On the one hand, the original commenter is right. An agent who can destabilize the entire justice and legal system of a country deserve be eliminated by extreme force - at least it would be nice to see that in Mexico, a country so decimated institutionally by the drug cartels. The country has an active insurgency and is not far off from a failed state.
Where does the comedy come in? Well the other side of this coin. What is is going on in the US? There is an active agent trying to undermine the justice system and the judiciary. For different reasons, but the result can be said to be comparable. It is the very president of the united states, Donald Trump!
That is precisely what the President Of The United States Donald Trump is doing. He is actively trying to undermine the FBI, firing James Comey, bullying the Secretary General in a weird way, manipulating evidence of the Muller investigation. Trump has even gone so far as to say that he will probably do what he can to manipulate and restrain the justice department. I guess also by - by proxy - appointing someone such as Kavenaugh as a judge for the court of supreme justice.
Maybe it's not comical...It's tragicomic. I don't know. Maybe we don't even have a word for this. Reddit calls it the "Witnessing events occurring in the Darkest Timeline." I tend to agree, this must be the darkest timeline.
For more information on the creation of the justice system and the FBI, I recommend watching the movie Hoover. Although probably brief, biased and Hollywood'ised - I like the way it presents the creation of the FBI.
For more information about the charades of the sitting government in the US, watch the entirety of season 04 to season 05 of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.
These are my views. I am not american, and beyond a degree in Political Science, I probably don't know enough to make an informed statement about this. One thing is certain, we set on the other side of the pond, gasping while watching th e events unfolding each and every week of the Trump administration.
I wouldn't want to live next to El Chapo and I didn't talk about typical neighbourhood drug dealer. It's about scale. There are many people I don't like, some of them even politicians but I wouldn't suggest harming them in any way.
I'm sorry ,it's just so damn easy for you to volunteer other peoples lives to be collateral damage in an extra judicial killing when you know statistically it won't be you.
If I had no other chance but to live near such criminals, I would try to suicide-bomb them, but that would probably be too hard and counter-productive because of layers of security with which those people surround. What would YOU do if you had to live near such criminals?
You many want to research a bit how these cartels work. Kids grow around down, they are part of the society around them and a central point of it. They couldn't survive any other way.
You have a kid that grew up thinking (not without a reason) that there's no better way than that do what the boss says. It will die to protect him. "Oh that kid is just a criminal, kill him!". In many cases, places where these cartels thrive are places where they locally can do better job than the government does.
I don't think that taking out the highest figure simply solves the problem. It wouldn't change much on the long run and on the short run highly increase the violence.
But more importantly, it seems extremely rare, that you could make a world a better place simply by killing somebody or a bunch of people. It's easy to think that, and a HN comment is too short to dive into that, but when you take time to think everything through, it seems far from obvious.
> If not, would you also consider it okay if the military of your country conducted drone strikes and used thermobaric bombs with "acceptable level of collateral damage" for extrajudicial killings of fellow citizens in your own country
It would entirely depend on the situation, but without doubt there are levels of crime and depravity I could find myself surrounded by where I'd welcome it. Duterte's extra-judicial killings are far from unpopular. Also: did occupied Western Europe want to be liberated, despite the inevitable collateral damage? I'd expect largely the answer was yes.
What do you know? I've studied this. The fact that you believe that moral insight can somehow be produced from data about the status quo tells me that you haven't.
Who would command those drone strikes? A neutral party, that would not target specific people who are in the way of some specific interests?
I can imagine that if you weild those tools where there are interests, a lot of hands will want to grab the controls and point them at people not involved with the original problem.
People in military uniforms, that are part of a (well-?) organised group armed with small arms and heavy weapons that is currently fighting against other military and paramilitary groups, can not with 100% honesty be called civilians...
I think that if you introduce a kind of mechanism that gives so much power in the hands of a selected and unaccountable few, you are on the road of corruption of power.
Not for me, because maybe I deserve the downvotes, but in controversial topics like this please try to not downvote other people just because of different point of views.
I am seeing good opinions being downvoted... why? The karma system is not a popularity contest.
I used to believe that, but there was a recent article on here a few days ago about cartels diversifying their sources of profit by dealing stolen fuel, so although I support legalising drugs, I no longer think this will put an end to the cartels.
While I understand your point, I don't think there's that much more money to be made from stolen fuel compared to the goldmine of drugs. A kilo of cocaine goes for around $26k in California. How much fuel would you need to sell in order to make that much? In Mexico a liter of fuel goes for about $1.
That's why I wrote 'it will slowly diminish their might.'
Without less money they will have less power, and less appeal, reducing the pool of capable candidates for leadership roles and therefore decreasing their effectiveness as an organization.
Decriminalizing drugs also had a similar effect in Portugal. To be honest, I think that if the government really wanted to they could stomp all these cartels out of existence. The problem is that there is a lot of incentive not to.
I believe that law should be modeled after reality, not the other way around. If there is demand for drugs, then there will also be ways to satisfy this demand, legal or not. On the other hand, there is also demand for murder so obviously this problem is not as easy as it seems.
Portugal doesn't treat users as criminals anymore but they still consume product that's illegally imported or produced by criminal organisations and the black economy is very much alive.
What legalisation can achieve is to reduce demand. I believe Holland has quite a low incidence of cannabis consumption.
> I think that if the government really wanted to they could stomp all these cartels out of existence
As long as there's demand (and the US has oh so much of it), someone will provide it. Trillions have been wasted on the drug war and nothing has been stomped out of existence. This has nothing to do with lack of incentive.
> Make drugs legal, and the problem will fade away with time
For this to be true, organized crime would have to be largely reliant on drug money. My understanding is they're not. Prohibition fueled the creation of these organizations, but if you're suggesting they've an inability to diversify, that seems questionable.
A side effect of pot being legalised in parts of the US is that cartels now push more heroin and meth because their profits from pot have dwindled so much.
As much as I'm pro legalise everything, I struggle to come up with a scenario where meth & heroin become legal apart from a kind of "look the other way" method Holland uses for cannabis. But this still involves illegal large scale cultivation and import of product that keeps criminal enterprises alive. Afaik most of the hash sold in Holland is smuggled in illegally from hash producing countries like Morocco, Pakistan, Nepal.
"Make drugs legal" is not actually as an easy a solution as it appears to be.
I claim (without any evidence) that increasing the palette of legal drugs would reduce the demand for the nastiest ones.
Furthermore, making drug use legal and moving law enforcement resources to addiction treatment would make more people seek help in battling their addiction.
One of the nastiest facets of war on drugs is that it creates criminals of people who harm no one and stigmatize them to the outskirts of the society.
That's a good way to keep the problem going forever. You can't lift people out of poverty and end the cycle of violence with bombs. That's the lesson the US completely failed to learn from its forever war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Really only for Germany and Japan, only because those were state-led wars. Not for any of the subsequent conflicts; Korean war isn't even really over yet.
You're conflating two very different situations in regards to Iraq. It's not one Iraq forever war.
There's the Iraq war (Second Persian Gulf War), and there's the Iraq civil war. The Iraq war, versus Saddam's regime, ended very quickly. That war was won trivially. The US could have optionally left at that point if it just wanted to declare an easy victory. Civil wars can go on forever (and given Iraq was a forced together nation of three major groups that dislike each other, it's likely going to).
The US achieved its primary goal in Afghanistan very quickly as well. It wiped out nearly all the organizing and attack projection capabilities that Al Qaeda had in using Afghanistan as a haven. The primary objective was not to kill all the Taliban. The Taliban was a different, optional objective. Afghanistan, like Iraq, is now a civil war between multiple factions that all want power.
Hence "cycle of violence"; the US launched its second invasion of Iraq, starting the war. It then declared victory and eventually left, having defeated and disbanded the conventional army of Iraq - but that did not stop the fighting. Car bombs are stil regularly going off in Iraq.
> wiped out nearly all the organizing and attack projection capabilities that Al Qaeda had in using Afghanistan as a haven
The cartels are embedded in the local population. If you treat the cartel as a military that needs a military solution, then you end up not just with civilian casualties, but with local hostility to you (for killing friends / family by collateral damage). If there was an effective way to fight a guerilla military embedded in the local population, the US would've already won in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen would've been long defeated, and Hezbollah long forgotten.
I always wonder, when they catch this kind of criminals, why not shoot them on sight like they did Pablo Escobar or Osama? Special forces officer: "it was low light operation and we thought that he had a weapon so we shot him." and thats that.
He can be tried and sentenced in absentia. (The problem is, as long as the profit is so insanely high, and the risk is relatively low, thousans will try to take his place.)
I think it is the pictures of a former king pin being tried sitting in a court that prosecutors want, it sends a message that no one is above the law. Being tried in absentia doesn't really tick that box.
Representative democracy can be done right. An independent Anticorruption Agency with investigatory and prosecutory powers irrevocably granted by the constitution, but with narrow scope, can work wonders.
Of course, above a critical mass of amassed power/popularity, nothing can stop a dictator to simply do re-found the state with a new constitution, but at that point it's very much a coup anyway.
Teaching, not nit-picking:
"shoot on sight" is the idiom here, meaning shoot as soon as target is visually confirmed. Whereas "on site" relates to location.
I don't support the death penalty, but I'll play devil's advocate here - because it seems the trade-off in cases like this is one not-innocent-to-six-sigma person being killed, versus quite a few innocent witnesses being killed.
And the nightmare for witnesses will continue after the trial, because they're never, ever, going to be safe.
They still will hunt down the informants or anyone who might be one in case of the assasination. It is not like informants will give out the info in return for nothing. They will probably want money, witness protection and one way ticket to the USA.
Also cartel knows who are the key witnesses. It is not like the El Chappo discussed his business with infinite number of people. I would say 10-20 max if not less. So they just make a list and see who is present/not present and where are their families.
Though I am not even sure prosecution needs star witnesses. I don’t think there is a juror left who has no opinion on El Chappo.
The bigger problem is that dealing with El Chappo, killing or otherwise, is not actually solving the problem of cartels having nearly infinite resources to pursue informants/witnesses.
In a way dealing with cartel is like dealing with a state actor, but without traditional tools because they are outside the international law.
The only way is legalize the whole thing to bring drug trade into legal framework.
In the end the only leverage USA has is its market. So if they give market to legal entities, cartels and violence associated with them will go away.
“In the end the only leverage USA has is its market. So if they give market to legal entities, cartels and violence associated with them will go away.”
Oil is legalized in the US, yet a cartel has until recently dominated that market, and OPEC’s members certainly use violence to maintain their control. The only thing displacing OPEC now isn’t a free market, it’s local production.
Sounds like you're unfamiliar with the handiwork of the House of Saud, or Vladimir Putin. Both of them have a very high body count and list of atrocities done in the name of oil revenues.
Russia isn't a member of OPEC but they still work with them. The oil cartels don't exactly have the same egregious violence that the drug cartels are known for, it's a bit different but the Saudis do have their own way of influencing the region.
Like maybe someone learned mind control and made El Chapo do it. But when he is not under mind control he is 100% law abiding citizen.
It will be a crazy defense, but it will be up to jury determine if that is the case.
Or another scenario is that El Chappo had no choice because rogue officials in the US demanded him smuggle drugs to the US or his family will be killed.
except you can’t have a fair trial in the US anyway. so presumption of innocence is just a mythical phrase (same as freedom of speech). money wins trials in the US. in this case the defense has to outspend the US gov. plus all high profile trials become media circuses that influence the outcome.
It's the cornerstone of law for a very good reason. As soon as you start making exceptions you have to have some agency who can decide who are the exceptions. You then have an agency that can summarily execute anyone they wish with no recourse. This is not a situation any sane person should desire.
Because the sanctifying aura of procedure is a cornerstone of the State’s monopoly on *legitimate violence.
And because, in many cases, that procedure actually reflects real values to which the leaders of government have actual commitment even beyond the pragmatic motivation to be seen as committed.
People sometimes forget that, even though there are bad actors in law enforcement, there are many good actors. Those good actors are likely trying to do the right thing most of the time.
I think if you're in the business of violence you might well find the thought of sitting in a prison cell for the rest of your life scarier than dying in a shoot-out with the police
They did not shoot Osama on sight. While that would have been legal since there was an AUMF, as a practical matter had he surrendered he would have been arrested. Extrajudicial execution is abhorrent.
> ‘They knew where the target was – third floor, second door on the right,’ the retired official said. ‘Go straight there. Osama was cowering and retreated into the bedroom. Two shooters followed him and opened up. Very simple, very straightforward, very professional hit.’ Some of the Seals were appalled later at the White House’s initial insistence that they had shot bin Laden in self-defence, the retired official said. ‘Six of the Seals’ finest, most experienced NCOs, faced with an unarmed elderly civilian, had to kill him in self-defence? The house was shabby and bin Laden was living in a cell with bars on the window and barbed wire on the roof. The rules of engagement were that if bin Laden put up any opposition they were authorised to take lethal action. But if they suspected he might have some means of opposition, like an explosive vest under his robe, they could also kill him. So here’s this guy in a mystery robe and they shot him. It’s not because he was reaching for a weapon. The rules gave them absolute authority to kill the guy.’ The later White House claim that only one or two bullets were fired into his head was ‘bullshit’, the retired official said. ‘The squad came through the door and obliterated him. As the Seals say, “We kicked his ass and took his gas.”’
A defining moment for the US for sure. It showed the war on terror wasn't excusable and that even the most conscious and educated president would still be a hypocrite when it really mattered. It has been downhill ever since with Russia and China doing largely whatever they want.
> It has been downhill ever since with Russia and China doing largely whatever they want.
That's a riot. Is that before or after China annexed Tibet and culturally destroyed it? Before or after they annexed Hong Kong entirely against the will of the people of Hong Kong?
Before or after Russia annexed most of Eastern Europe and held it hostage for nearly half a century? Poland for example is a very large nation, it has only been free of Russia for less than 30 years now.
China and Russia do whatever they want, insofar as they can. That will never change and it's true of all great power nations throughout history.
> Before or after they annexed Hong Kong entirely against the will of the people of Hong Kong?
The lease ran out, this was planned all along. The people don't like the changes that's for sure but their will was never something China would be bothered with.
How was Obama a hypocrite? And why was this a defining moment for the US? The US has been killing foreign nationals for decades, think of all the CIA operations in the past. Obama ordered 540 drone strikes during his 8 years in office. I think the OBL operation was an expected response after finding his location. And would anyone expect different actions from Russia? From Israel?
Whether Obama is a hypocrite or not is certainly a matter of opinion. The defining moment was the missed opportunity to end, or begin to end, the war on terror.
Up until that point the invasions, surveillance, renditions, torture and threat to civil liberties could be justified as, or at least categorized as, means to oppose Al Qaeda. By killing bin Laden he became just another enemy in a long line of people that the US wants to kill. And the methods of the war on terror, instead of a regrettable period in US history, just another tool for the US to use as it sees fit.
> And would anyone expect different actions from Russia? From Israel?
Notice what Osama did not do: put his hands up and shout "I surrender". Osama is a bad case because of LOAC. Most criminals are not engaged in acts of war.
In what sense is it legal to send a covert SEAL team to enter a sovereign allied country and arrest/kill somebody? US has no such jurisdiction in Pakistan.
I don't see your point here. The US funded Pakistan during the Soviet-Afghan war? What's that have to do with the US's decision to kill the world's most wanted terrorist in a country giving him safety?
My point is that betraying the sovereignity of allies and claiming the higher moral ground is mutually exclusive. You can't be someone's friend and then punch them in the face when it's convenient. Pakistan is a shitty country, with shitty practices, but it IS an ally. Note that Saudi Arabia is a VERY shitty country, and is currently a strong ally.
"I wouldn't call Pakistan an allied country of the United States"
"Pakistan joined the "War on Terror" as a U.S. ally. Having failed to convince the Taliban to hand over bin Laden and other members of Al Qaeda, Pakistan provided the U.S. a number of military airports and bases for its attack on Afghanistan, along with other logistical support."
This immediately brings to mind the Simpsons, where Phil Hartman as Lionel Hutz says "there's the truth, and then there's the truth (with a smiling face)". The US and Pakistan are allies in name only. Let's the politicians save face on both sides. But that's hardly the truth. The US didn't tell Pakistan about the OBL operation because they didn't trust them. You trust allies, you distrust non-allies. As a comparison, if OBL was in India or France, don't you think the US would have worked with these countries on the mission?
That's my point - being allies "in name only" is misleading and dishonest. Anyway, imo, we are close to on the same page and are arguing semantics, so let's stop wasting each other's time (that's really directed at both of us, not a passive-aggressive stab at you).
That's pretty simple. bin Laden's organization was a direct threat to the US. Pakistan was protecting him. The primary responsibility of the US President is not to respect the sovereignty of Pakistan, it is to ensure the security of the United States and its people. For the US President, respecting Pakistan's sovereignty sits below ensuring the security of the people of the US in their job description.
Besides that, international legality is defined solely by the countries with the biggest sticks. That will always be true, without exception. The UN and all global bodies of justice and rule setting derive their authority and possess capability solely at the permission of the most powerful nations.
The world isn't run by the UN, international legality isn't defined by 195 nations, it's all run by six or seven countries (which control the majority of all economic activity and by far have the most powerful militaries). The UN is a lever for those powerful nations to keep order in dealing with all the others. It's a means to herd cats.
There's a quote by a rather vile heiress named Leona Helmsley, paraphrasing: taxes are for the little people. Respecting sovereignty is only a fixed rule for the little countries. Why? Because of how consequences work and who can dish them out. I'm not advocating that, mind you, I'm saying that's actually how the world works and always will. You see it with every empire that has ever existed, you see it with the US, Russia, China, etc.
There are countries that are so enlightened that they don’t officially have capital punishment, but the police are rumored to not try that hard to capture certain criminals alive (not all countries without capital punishment are like this). I don’t consider that progress, but not everyone agrees with me.
One of the few things that scares those type of criminals is being jailed by los Yankees.
In their home country they probably assume they can always use relentless bribing for more favourable conditions and a possible release. In the US, forget it.
Whilst the benefit to the safety of the jury and prosecution's witnesses is obvious, this also seems incompatible with the defence's discovery rights. Although I'm not sure how the two could be reconciled, such that a fair trial could be held.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 216 ms ] threadBut seriously at some point I find myself asking why we must have a trial with witnesses. If you have so much accrued evidence that you know these steps are necessary to protect witnesses that should be sufficient to give you life in prison/death penalty.
Which is kind of gross, but if someone has clearly so much disregard for the law, why should they get to abuse it?
Probably best to fight for those civil liberties we take for granted.
Oh yeah, poor him, oppressed by the government.
That kind of attitude only makes a huge mockery of those who obey the law.
My intended meaning is that if you end the War on Drugs, powerful, murderous cartel bosses would no longer exist.
So even now, in times where we don't think of ourselves as living in tyranny, our state is creating it. The War on Drugd has always been a war on people, not a pro-humanity experiment.
A political system encompasses both a legal process and a system of allocating power. Extrajudicial means not authorized, but it doesn't imply the power exercised was illegitimate. Rather, it suggests the power was legitimate. Contrast that with a murderer, who never possessed any legitimate power to take a life, let alone take one according to some legal right. Cold comfort but in principle a meaningful distinction, especially if you agree that power is principally defined and circumscribed by the office, and only secondarily by the rules for executing that office.
For the sake of argument, let's say the drug scourge was truly an immediate and existential threat to the Philippine polity. Duterte's mistake wasn't to unleash vigilante death squads, it was to admit to and purport to authorize the death squads. If he had (1) quietly unleashed the death squads, (2) creating plausible deniability and permitting the existence of the fiction that the state wasn't involved, and crucially (3) left himself and the vigilantes exposed in principal to punishment for exercising power without legal right, then there would have been no substantial injury to the rule of law.
It's like civil disobedience--it nominally violates the law but as long as you're willing to accept the legal consequences the rule of law isn't injured. You're putting yourself at the mercy of the law in service to the law.
It's why I absolutely opposed the Bush-era and Obama-era strategies to "legalize" various tactics in the War on Terror, and would have preferred the status quo ante where the president exercised unchecked powers. Both Bush (notwithstanding "Unitary Executive" advisers) and Obama argued Congressional authorization made the executive more accountable. But it made the executive less accountable because now it had both the power (slightly diminished, maybe) and the legal right where once it only had the power. Legalization corrupted our law and our morality by authorizing behaviors that should never be authorized, merely tolerated as a practical matter.
Previously, as long as both Congress and the People believed an exigency legitimate they had the option of looking the other way, especially if the President never admitted it and maintained enough restraint to maintain the polite fiction. By leaving themselves exposed to punishment the President and his agents are incentivized to restrain themselves and as a practical matter limited to exercising their powers in situations and in a manner that doesn't openly flout the rule of law--in other words, precisely those contexts where the rule of law is already inoperable or under existential threat.
As with civil disobedience, however, the solution to the paradox requires selflessness and credible risk of self-sacrifice. The existence of such leadership seems as scare as it ever has been.
The parallels with Socrates' trial and death are not coincidental, though it was by putting together the above theory that led me to a fuller understanding (I think) and greater appreciation of the story.
How might this work with El Chapo, presuming reasonable necessity? From a position of legitimate power (President, General), arrange and permit his extrajudicial assassination by an otherwise respectable citizen (i.e. not a rival, though perhaps a victim if public sympathy is important) willing to face public prosecution (not to mention cartel reprisal) for the promise (not guarantee) of a commuted sentence. It's risky--how do you know when the rule of law is existentially threatened, or that an act is reasonably necessary in defense? But at least the risk of punishment faced by all parties serves to sharpen judgement and, if necessary, is available to remedy any harm to th...
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you — where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast — man's laws, not God's — and if you cut them down — and you're just the man to do it — d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.
-- A Man For All Seasons
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplock_courts
With the benefit of hindsight they appear to have done more harm than good in that they played into the Republican strategy of making NI ungovernable by normal means.
That 2003 law also created an exemption for Double Jeopardy. I guess Parliamentary Supremacy finally defeated the Magna Carta.
Anyway I agree with the many people who have said variations on “slippery slope”, only i think it’s more of a cliff.
But I also think that we do need to develop some system for managing defendants who directly attack the legal system and the people involved. Clearly the current approach has a weakness when dealing with people like el chapo.
“(...) unless the government is suggesting that the defense team will disseminate hit orders from Mr. Guzmán, there is no realistic way for him to do anything” to the witnesses at all."
Assuming that the leader of Sinaola cartel who had people murdered in thousands has lawyers that would deny him the means to order hits on witnesses is childishly naive.
One can assume that literally anyone who succeeds in getting him out of jail will be given lavish rewards and protection.
Absolutely, and what chutzpah by the lawyers, really! "Oh just give us the information, we'll play by the rules! why would you even suspect that we wouldn't???"
Witnesses getting killed for the sake of protecting the org would be in line with what they have been doing up until now
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/nyregion/el-chapo-complai...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/23/nyregion/el-chapo-guzman-...
Google Maps/Earth view: https://goo.gl/maps/2Qp8Xt7D5Fw
I worked downtown Manhattan for several years and had no idea a high-security prison "tougher than Guantánamo Bay" was sandwiched right in there.
He's pretty close to a 4/5/6, an R/W, a J/Z, and maybe a 1 train. That puts him at about 25 minutes from NY Penn, which allows him access to Amtrak or the LIRR.
He's about an hour by public transport from LGA, but that would require a bus. The fastest route to JFK would be 1h11m if he took the A (which isn't all that close) followed by an airtrain. If he chose Newark Airport it'd be something like 25 minutes to NY Penn station + 25 minutes to Newark Penn station and maybe another 10 minutes to Newark Airport via NJ Transit, so about an hour. In other words, from escape to the front door of the airport he's looking at at least an hour of commute, by which point I'd hope someone noticed he's missing.
This all, of course, assumes he takes public transport.
It's probably also worth noting that El Chapo isn't going to just run around the city without modifying his appearance somehow.
That jet would take him 100 miles into the atlantic and he and an accomplice parachute out with a liferaft and little engine.
The plane carries on to mexico as a decoy.
Radars aren't good enough to see small craft far from the shore in the ocean, so he can stay at sea as long as he likes and land anywhere. The search area would be huge - if we can't find MH370, we can't find him!
Why not a small submarine?
The claim that a a billionaire drug dealer in Mexico has to "escape" by crawling out of a tunnel from a rural Mexican jail is pretty funny.
He probably just walked out and the tunnel was built to make the administration of the jail look less guilty despite the fact they were probably fully aware of what was happening.
The problem with coming in contact with people like Guzman is you can chose between cooperating or misery & death. I'm sure the head of that jail decided he'd cooperate the moment he heard Guzman would be housed there and who can blame him.
Plato o Plomo....
EDIT should be "plata"
(thanks $diety for the two hour edit window)
It's "plata o plomo".
"Plata" can mean "silver" or "money". In this context they are referring to "money".
"Plato" is literally "plate" as in where you put your food on.
It is also located right next to the courthouse and this is the procedure to go to court:
In an article published on April 5, 2011, Jim Dwyer of the New York Times described the experience of an inmate being transferred from the facility to the federal court across the street: A prisoner going to court from the Metropolitan Correctional Center is presented to federal marshals in the basement of the building. Shackled at the ankles, chained at the waist and cuffed at the hands, the prisoner hop-marches through a tunnel nearly 40 feet (12 meters) below the street. The prisoner and escorts go through channels, or corridors, with electronic doors at each end. These are controlled remotely by officers who watch the journey through cameras. More prominent prisoners, who need to be segregated from the general prison population, are housed in the 10-South wing, which is noted for severely confining conditions.
During this passage from jail to court, no one lays eyes on the prisoner except the marshals and the people in the surveillance stations. Once they have reached the north end of the tunnel, they wait for the prisoner elevator. Inside is a locked cage that the prisoner stands in for the ride up to the courthouse cells [1].
I think it is pretty secure.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Police_Departmen...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Correctional_Cent...
I spent the night there once, when arrested for a traffic violation. Twenty guys in a cell, one toilet. The bologna sandwiches are terrible.
It's directly connected to the court house. You emerge into the court rooms from an underground tunnel for arraignment. The transition from concrete dungeon to hard wood court room is pretty striking, and probably not without psychological intent.
I also spent three weeks performing jury duty there, and got to see defendants coming from the other direction, with at least a limited understanding for where some of them had just been.
[0] https://www.yelp.com/biz/manhattan-central-booking-new-york
Drone strikes, thermobaric bombs and an acceptable level of collateral damage.
There's plenty of El Chapos ready to take his spot, every decade or so you are able to actually arrest one of them.
I would find this totally unacceptable. I also find extrajudicial killings by drone strikes in other countries totally unacceptable but in my own country I'd consider such practices even worse.
From the standpoint of words, about "subverting the whole justice system".
So here is why this is comical to me. On the one hand, the original commenter is right. An agent who can destabilize the entire justice and legal system of a country deserve be eliminated by extreme force - at least it would be nice to see that in Mexico, a country so decimated institutionally by the drug cartels. The country has an active insurgency and is not far off from a failed state.
Where does the comedy come in? Well the other side of this coin. What is is going on in the US? There is an active agent trying to undermine the justice system and the judiciary. For different reasons, but the result can be said to be comparable. It is the very president of the united states, Donald Trump!
That is precisely what the President Of The United States Donald Trump is doing. He is actively trying to undermine the FBI, firing James Comey, bullying the Secretary General in a weird way, manipulating evidence of the Muller investigation. Trump has even gone so far as to say that he will probably do what he can to manipulate and restrain the justice department. I guess also by - by proxy - appointing someone such as Kavenaugh as a judge for the court of supreme justice.
Maybe it's not comical...It's tragicomic. I don't know. Maybe we don't even have a word for this. Reddit calls it the "Witnessing events occurring in the Darkest Timeline." I tend to agree, this must be the darkest timeline.
For more information on the creation of the justice system and the FBI, I recommend watching the movie Hoover. Although probably brief, biased and Hollywood'ised - I like the way it presents the creation of the FBI. For more information about the charades of the sitting government in the US, watch the entirety of season 04 to season 05 of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.
These are my views. I am not american, and beyond a degree in Political Science, I probably don't know enough to make an informed statement about this. One thing is certain, we set on the other side of the pond, gasping while watching th e events unfolding each and every week of the Trump administration.
Your confidence that you'd sacrifice yourself heroically in circumstances it's utterly certain you'll never find yourself in is admirable.
Well not kill myself for a start...
You have a kid that grew up thinking (not without a reason) that there's no better way than that do what the boss says. It will die to protect him. "Oh that kid is just a criminal, kill him!". In many cases, places where these cartels thrive are places where they locally can do better job than the government does.
I don't think that taking out the highest figure simply solves the problem. It wouldn't change much on the long run and on the short run highly increase the violence.
But more importantly, it seems extremely rare, that you could make a world a better place simply by killing somebody or a bunch of people. It's easy to think that, and a HN comment is too short to dive into that, but when you take time to think everything through, it seems far from obvious.
It would entirely depend on the situation, but without doubt there are levels of crime and depravity I could find myself surrounded by where I'd welcome it. Duterte's extra-judicial killings are far from unpopular. Also: did occupied Western Europe want to be liberated, despite the inevitable collateral damage? I'd expect largely the answer was yes.
I can imagine that if you weild those tools where there are interests, a lot of hands will want to grab the controls and point them at people not involved with the original problem.
Murder each other as much as you see fit but can we at least respect the rule of law and have these ISIS members stand trial in the future?
I am seeing good opinions being downvoted... why? The karma system is not a popularity contest.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Make drugs legal, and the problem will fade away with time.
Of course, not immediately. But when the lucrative funding of drug trade is cut off, it will slowly diminish their might.
https://www.historyextra.com/period/modern/1940-the-year-mex...
The drug cartels were losing out on a lot of money too as a result apparently.
Without less money they will have less power, and less appeal, reducing the pool of capable candidates for leadership roles and therefore decreasing their effectiveness as an organization.
https://www.historyextra.com/period/modern/1940-the-year-mex...
Decriminalizing drugs also had a similar effect in Portugal. To be honest, I think that if the government really wanted to they could stomp all these cartels out of existence. The problem is that there is a lot of incentive not to.
I believe that law should be modeled after reality, not the other way around. If there is demand for drugs, then there will also be ways to satisfy this demand, legal or not. On the other hand, there is also demand for murder so obviously this problem is not as easy as it seems.
Where does a lawmaker draw the line?
What legalisation can achieve is to reduce demand. I believe Holland has quite a low incidence of cannabis consumption.
> I think that if the government really wanted to they could stomp all these cartels out of existence
As long as there's demand (and the US has oh so much of it), someone will provide it. Trillions have been wasted on the drug war and nothing has been stomped out of existence. This has nothing to do with lack of incentive.
For this to be true, organized crime would have to be largely reliant on drug money. My understanding is they're not. Prohibition fueled the creation of these organizations, but if you're suggesting they've an inability to diversify, that seems questionable.
As much as I'm pro legalise everything, I struggle to come up with a scenario where meth & heroin become legal apart from a kind of "look the other way" method Holland uses for cannabis. But this still involves illegal large scale cultivation and import of product that keeps criminal enterprises alive. Afaik most of the hash sold in Holland is smuggled in illegally from hash producing countries like Morocco, Pakistan, Nepal.
"Make drugs legal" is not actually as an easy a solution as it appears to be.
Furthermore, making drug use legal and moving law enforcement resources to addiction treatment would make more people seek help in battling their addiction.
One of the nastiest facets of war on drugs is that it creates criminals of people who harm no one and stigmatize them to the outskirts of the society.
Worked post WWII most places.
You're conflating two very different situations in regards to Iraq. It's not one Iraq forever war.
There's the Iraq war (Second Persian Gulf War), and there's the Iraq civil war. The Iraq war, versus Saddam's regime, ended very quickly. That war was won trivially. The US could have optionally left at that point if it just wanted to declare an easy victory. Civil wars can go on forever (and given Iraq was a forced together nation of three major groups that dislike each other, it's likely going to).
The US achieved its primary goal in Afghanistan very quickly as well. It wiped out nearly all the organizing and attack projection capabilities that Al Qaeda had in using Afghanistan as a haven. The primary objective was not to kill all the Taliban. The Taliban was a different, optional objective. Afghanistan, like Iraq, is now a civil war between multiple factions that all want power.
> wiped out nearly all the organizing and attack projection capabilities that Al Qaeda had in using Afghanistan as a haven
It's questionable as to how much they had in the first place ... and yet, Al-Nusra, an AQ-derived splinter organisation, is now fighting alongside US-backed groups in Syria. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/are-al-qaed...
We even now have weird indirect US-Iraq-Iran cooperation against ISIS. https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/field/field...
Even if the whole thing is useless in the big scheme of incentives.
Shooting them is what the cartels do, justice would be that he is tried by a jury and sentenced under law.
I can see how there could be a net benefit to shooting them on site, but you can't say for sure that the witnesses etc lives would then be safe.
Of course, above a critical mass of amassed power/popularity, nothing can stop a dictator to simply do re-found the state with a new constitution, but at that point it's very much a coup anyway.
Teaching, not nit-picking: "shoot on sight" is the idiom here, meaning shoot as soon as target is visually confirmed. Whereas "on site" relates to location.
As far as US judicial system is concerned Osama and Pablo are innocent.
It is always better to try people in court then kill them, because it limits the chances that someone innocent can be killed.
And the nightmare for witnesses will continue after the trial, because they're never, ever, going to be safe.
It's not a problem with an easy answer.
Also cartel knows who are the key witnesses. It is not like the El Chappo discussed his business with infinite number of people. I would say 10-20 max if not less. So they just make a list and see who is present/not present and where are their families.
Though I am not even sure prosecution needs star witnesses. I don’t think there is a juror left who has no opinion on El Chappo.
The bigger problem is that dealing with El Chappo, killing or otherwise, is not actually solving the problem of cartels having nearly infinite resources to pursue informants/witnesses.
In a way dealing with cartel is like dealing with a state actor, but without traditional tools because they are outside the international law.
The only way is legalize the whole thing to bring drug trade into legal framework.
In the end the only leverage USA has is its market. So if they give market to legal entities, cartels and violence associated with them will go away.
Oil is legalized in the US, yet a cartel has until recently dominated that market, and OPEC’s members certainly use violence to maintain their control. The only thing displacing OPEC now isn’t a free market, it’s local production.
Standard Oil, the Seven Sisters, the As-Is agreement, Texaas Raialroad Commission, National Producers, OPEC.
There are economic reasons.
I know this is the cornerstone of all law in western countries but its a really difficult thing to argue for in this case.
Like maybe someone learned mind control and made El Chapo do it. But when he is not under mind control he is 100% law abiding citizen.
It will be a crazy defense, but it will be up to jury determine if that is the case.
Or another scenario is that El Chappo had no choice because rogue officials in the US demanded him smuggle drugs to the US or his family will be killed.
Osama bin Laden was tried and convicted for the first WTC bombing
And because, in many cases, that procedure actually reflects real values to which the leaders of government have actual commitment even beyond the pragmatic motivation to be seen as committed.
> ‘They knew where the target was – third floor, second door on the right,’ the retired official said. ‘Go straight there. Osama was cowering and retreated into the bedroom. Two shooters followed him and opened up. Very simple, very straightforward, very professional hit.’ Some of the Seals were appalled later at the White House’s initial insistence that they had shot bin Laden in self-defence, the retired official said. ‘Six of the Seals’ finest, most experienced NCOs, faced with an unarmed elderly civilian, had to kill him in self-defence? The house was shabby and bin Laden was living in a cell with bars on the window and barbed wire on the roof. The rules of engagement were that if bin Laden put up any opposition they were authorised to take lethal action. But if they suspected he might have some means of opposition, like an explosive vest under his robe, they could also kill him. So here’s this guy in a mystery robe and they shot him. It’s not because he was reaching for a weapon. The rules gave them absolute authority to kill the guy.’ The later White House claim that only one or two bullets were fired into his head was ‘bullshit’, the retired official said. ‘The squad came through the door and obliterated him. As the Seals say, “We kicked his ass and took his gas.”’
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n10/seymour-m-hersh/the-killing-of...
A defining moment for the US for sure. It showed the war on terror wasn't excusable and that even the most conscious and educated president would still be a hypocrite when it really mattered. It has been downhill ever since with Russia and China doing largely whatever they want.
That's a riot. Is that before or after China annexed Tibet and culturally destroyed it? Before or after they annexed Hong Kong entirely against the will of the people of Hong Kong?
Before or after Russia annexed most of Eastern Europe and held it hostage for nearly half a century? Poland for example is a very large nation, it has only been free of Russia for less than 30 years now.
China and Russia do whatever they want, insofar as they can. That will never change and it's true of all great power nations throughout history.
The lease ran out, this was planned all along. The people don't like the changes that's for sure but their will was never something China would be bothered with.
Up until that point the invasions, surveillance, renditions, torture and threat to civil liberties could be justified as, or at least categorized as, means to oppose Al Qaeda. By killing bin Laden he became just another enemy in a long line of people that the US wants to kill. And the methods of the war on terror, instead of a regrettable period in US history, just another tool for the US to use as it sees fit.
> And would anyone expect different actions from Russia? From Israel?
Probably not, which is sort of the point.
"I wouldn't call Pakistan an allied country of the United States"
"Pakistan joined the "War on Terror" as a U.S. ally. Having failed to convince the Taliban to hand over bin Laden and other members of Al Qaeda, Pakistan provided the U.S. a number of military airports and bases for its attack on Afghanistan, along with other logistical support."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan%E2%80%93United_States...
Before you yell about wikipedia as a source, consider that this is a well-known fact.
Besides that, international legality is defined solely by the countries with the biggest sticks. That will always be true, without exception. The UN and all global bodies of justice and rule setting derive their authority and possess capability solely at the permission of the most powerful nations.
The world isn't run by the UN, international legality isn't defined by 195 nations, it's all run by six or seven countries (which control the majority of all economic activity and by far have the most powerful militaries). The UN is a lever for those powerful nations to keep order in dealing with all the others. It's a means to herd cats.
There's a quote by a rather vile heiress named Leona Helmsley, paraphrasing: taxes are for the little people. Respecting sovereignty is only a fixed rule for the little countries. Why? Because of how consequences work and who can dish them out. I'm not advocating that, mind you, I'm saying that's actually how the world works and always will. You see it with every empire that has ever existed, you see it with the US, Russia, China, etc.
Agreed, but governments do plenty of abhorrent things.
In their home country they probably assume they can always use relentless bribing for more favourable conditions and a possible release. In the US, forget it.