In today's Australian Neil Brown, described as "a former federal minister and deputy leader of the Liberal Party" (do you remember when that was?) invokes some of Winston Churchill's recently published WW2 comments in favour of executing Hitler and his close associates summarily to support his view that more ruthless measures are needed to combat terrorism.
Mr Brown says (striving unsuccessfully to give a Churchillian ring to his words) " we will get nowhere if we are anything short of ruthless and if we continue to handicap ourselves, as we are now, by self-imposed moral and legal principles that are outdated, counter-productive, highly theoretical and guaranteed to do nothing but give the enemy an advantage that could ultimately lead to our defeat."
This is all very well, but note (1) the WW2 German leaders who were captured were put on trial (flawed though the processes were), (2) Saddam Hussein is currently on trial (no sub judice in Iraq?) and (3) Mr B is fuzzy about where all this might end (or if it will).
No comments:
Post a Comment