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They do not think like we do about our laws.

Edit

Precedent though has been set

What precedent? That we eventually release people from prison? That people we capture on the battlefield are eventually repatriated?

 CptJake wrote:
For what it is worth, I've never understood the desire to mix intelligence gathering and gathering evidence/statements for trial use.

The standards, both from an allowed collection mechanism and from a 'suitable for use' perspective are way too different in most cases.

Its the view that terrorism is a crime and not an act of war.

 Frazzled wrote:
Its the view that terrorism is a crime and not an act of war.

The problem is that (in my opinion) it can sometimes be one or the other. If you have a guy in Alabama who fills a truck up with barrels of fertilizer and blows up a federal building, he's an American citizen and it's a crime and appropriate for domestic law enforcement to handle (while investigating for overseas links). As an American citizen, the type of crime committed does not remove your due process rights. I think the matter is clear.

When you have a guy in AQ who fills up the same van and blows up an embassy, it's not a law enforcement matter because it's stateless actors who are part of an organized fighting force our Congress has authorized the president to use force against. Our military should handle that. Also pretty clear cut.

When it's a foreign actor, or a worse yet, a stateless non-AQ actor, things get so, so much fuzzier though. I'm not clear what authority allows us to go seize a guy who is a Libyan citizen who allegedly committed a crime overseas against American sovereign territory. He's not AQ, so we have no AUMF. What is the process? Do we have Libya indict him, and then extradite him? Do we just snatch him because we can? Can we just kill him with a Hellfire? The answers to those questions all appear to be "yes" depending on the situation, and I find that problematic.

Ultimately I think we need an internationally-agreed upon framework for dealing with people like this. The problem is we're never going to get one because the US doesn't want to be subject to it, just as we would not sign off on the International Criminal Court.

I doubt an 'internationally-agreed upon' framework will ever exist for effectively dealing with non-state actors.

And that does not bother me.

What I want is for our gov't to communicate clear and concise policies for US to handle them. This ad hoc approach is doomed to fail in many ways for a variety of reasons.

edit: The issue precedes the current administration though they seem to have exacerbated it.

 CptJake wrote:
I doubt an 'internationally-agreed upon' framework will ever exist for effectively dealing with non-state actors.

And that does not bother me.

What I want is for our gov't to communicate clear and concise policies for US to handle them. This ad hoc approach is doomed to fail in many ways for a variety of reasons.

edit: The issue precedes the current administration though they seem to have exacerbated it.

Yes, I agree with all of that.

I think that agreement would be best but I also don't think it will ever exist. As a nation, we're really not willing to surrender any of our sovereignty and in light of how some past international efforts have gone, like the Human Rights Commission, perhaps that's for the best.