Thread: David Hicks

History is littered with those who went to the aid of another country as individuals to defend against what ever they saw is wrong. Be it the Alimo, the Spanish civil war, or those who acted as partisans (often in other countries) during world war 2. Hicks got himself on the loosing side, and ended up paying a price for doing so. I don't defend merceneries any more than American (and they do not stand alone) aggression or interference in countries such as Laos, Cambodia, El Salvador, or the arming of thugs in Afganistan to fight the Russians, and those thugs included Bin Laden. If Hicks had of been on the "right side" he may have been branded a hero rather than a terrorist, but like a dill he got in with right wing zeolots who had lost the plot.

Taking a narrow view and applying aggression to beat down and destroy a threat gets us no where, we need standards to protect human rights, civilised society and those rights extend to political, religous, economic, and above all individual security and freedom from oppression.

Every side is guilty of getting it wrong the west has a long history of pursuing its economic interests against the rights of weaker countries. We have in part provided the fuel to help the ratbags that are causing this mayhem, and we do have an obligation to think more widely than the individual.

Once a powerful nation sacrifices basic standards to impose an over zealous set of rules on the ratbags it raises the chances that it is feeding the hate that keeps these animals going and giving them more reason to keep going.

If instead of pouring billions into a futile war we had of spent it earlier raising the living standards of poor nations we may not be facing some of the issues we face today. The other half of this is our support of oppressive regimes and allowing their brutality to continue with our support, after all we supported Sadam until he attacked Kuwait, we didn't give a stuff while he wasted the lives of thousands of Iraqis and Iranians in a brutal war. When do we learn our lesson.

Hicks is a non issue, but the commission, which does not have the support of the supreme court is not and should not be acceptable. The Supreme Courts role in this is to decide if the American President has the power to set up such a commission, if it was on Amercian soil the Supreme Court may well decide it breaches the basic rights enshrined in the Amercian Constitution, but todate it has not needed to look at that point.

Lets not dwell too long on Mr Hicks, we do not know enough of his story and may never find out what motivated him and led him to Gitmo, but for him it is a path for which he is paying a price. It is the same type of foreign mercenary that is currently killing so many in Iraq, and they do not deserve much sympathy.

John.