That's what one poster suggested was the gist of this argument, as silly as that is. Of course, that was not the point and saying it was, or might be, was merely a simpleminded soundbite. A more rational question might be, have we legalized murder in Iraq? The real issue is the shift to the right of the liberals when it comes to crime. Namely, the acceptance of the conservative idea that rehabilitation is impossible. As we move closer to a fascist state, it becomes more obvious how this idea of "tough on crime" is a necessary and sufficient premise of the War on Terror and other BushCo acts of crime. Lest this argument be accused of condoning terrorists such as those in the planes on 9/11, that is not the point either, and is not the argument. (Though it would be an easy argument to say we wished they lived so we could put them to death.) The argument is that because the U.S. is so punitive, and because we justify treating our criminals so severely, we are free to invade "inferior" countries inhabited by people even worse than our own criminals, be that true or not. This allows us to ignore women and children killed in Iraq even as we have hours and hours of national news about a missing or murdered "Cute, White Girl." Because we are so punitive here, we have a right to be so punitive elsewhere. It is an American worldview that helps justify our police-like foreign policy. All of this is in fact based on a false premise:
The very nature of our modern culture, with its pressures and predilections for soundbites, and our “complicated, confusing, shades-of-gray world” triggers anxiety that provokes projection of the shadow archetype. As an example of the swiftness with which an archetype can be taken up, the rehabilitation rationale that prevailed from the nineteenth century to the early 1970s was abruptly abandoned when Robert Martinson published a sociological analysis of prison rehabilitation programs, concluding that rehabilitation would never succeed because it was conceptually flawed:
"Immediately, almost overnight the concept that had served as a cornerstone of corrections policy for more than a century was politically and publicly discredited. We moved abruptly in the mid-1970s from a society that justified putting people in prison based on the belief that their incarceration would somehow facilitate their productive re-entry back into the freeworld to one that used imprisonment merely to punish criminal offenders by “incapacitating” and “containing” them behind bars, as far away from the rest of us for as long as possible."
The “immediate and unexpectedly enthusiastic reception” of Martinson’s work and the “extreme and extremely uncritical ways in which were being both promoted and implemented” surprised Martinson himself. We are not surprised; Martinson hooked into the shadow archetype, and the collective embraced the familiar story. Five years later, Martinson published an article retracting most of his earlier piece. No one was interested. We are not surprised by that either. Once the archetype is hooked, played on by politicians and amplified by the media, we become eminently manipulable. When the discourse becomes too vehement or vituperative, perk up your ears, and hear the voice of one seeking to escape from himself.
Source: PARADING THE SAURIAN TAIL: PROJECTION, JUNG, AND THE LAW (PDF)
If American criminals cannot be rehabilitated, or reasoned with, or understood, the terrorists, potential terrorists, and maybe Arabs in general, cannot be either. The only solution then becomes “incapacitating” and “containing” them behind bars, as far away from the rest of us for as long as possible." Or killing them. We use the death penalty when we can, and war when we can't.
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