The Star Tribune has run several editorial columns and letters recently about the morass of gun-inflicted violence in which America is mired. Every suggestion, reasonable or not, for restricting sales or possession of guns instantly generates controversy and resistance. On the other hand, obviously there does exist a consensus in favor of crime control, as urged by a retired policeman [Star Tribune letters, Jan. 29.]
But there’s a less expensive and more practical means of crime control than the former cop’s demand for more prison cells to cage more criminals.
The sensible solution is to end prohibition of cannabis and dismantle the broadly counter-productive policy of drug prohibition.
According to Census Bureau figures, after alcohol prohibition was repealed in 1933, the rate of murders and assaults committed with firearms fell dramatically, year after year, for the next 10 years, until it was cut nearly in half.
Why did it happen? Because restoring legitimate liquor sales ended the turf warfare of organized criminals who’d been supplying bootleg liquor.
By taking the business out of the gangs, you put the gangs out of business—not entirely, but enough to make a dramatic improvement in public safety.
There’s plenty of political mischief in the currently deadlocked debate on gun control. Every day, lives are lost so that politicians can save face, or at least save their prospects of re-election. And yet a straightforward, feasible policy to potentially cut gun offenses in half is sitting in plain sight. On the “drug war,” public opinion has concluded it’s “a bust.” As the New York Times said, in recommending the re-legalization of cannabis: It’s time to end prohibition—again.
Oliver Steinberg
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The prosecutors in the local ISIL suspects case have really gone too far and need to be held accountable. First they charge the five Somali-American men with “conspiracy to commit murder,” which has no basis or evidence to make such a charge, and now the prosecutors claim that if these five young men “must be categorized within the international law of armed conflict, they would be best categorized as aspiring war criminals.” Star Tribune, 2-5.
This is nonsense. Never in the history of “war” have foot soldiers, especially ones that haven’t even hit the battlefield yet, been defined as “war criminals.” The prosecutors claim the suspects are not covered under “humanitarian law,” also known as the “rules of war,” because they do not belong to a “regular army, which includes being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates, wearing a uniform, and openly carrying arms.” This is the absurdity of the “rules of war,” that the Nazis were not in trouble for their aggression because they did it within the “rules”; they were only in trouble for murdering Jews.
Is it racism that ISIL does not get the same leniency as foot soldiers fighting ISIL? Foot soldiers on any side are not “war criminals.” It is only those who behead people and rape women who are the “war criminals.”
The attorneys for these five men are correct in saying they have “combatant immunity” based on international law. The “rules of war” clearly state “that the law grants all parties in a conflict the right to use appropriate force to achieve their aims.”
Fighting on the battlefield is using “appropriate force.” These young men wanting to go fight in Syria are covered under international law. No matter how absurd the “rules of war” are, both sides have access to them.
And how could Nazi soldiers be covered under the “rules of war” when they were part of a force that murdered people? How were they not considered a terrorist group and the “rules of war” did not cover them, as the prosecutors claim is the case with ISIL?
Frank Erickson
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U.S. District Judge Michael Davis shows such courage as he goes after a 20-year-old who was a teenager when he was apprehended for trying to go to Syria.
Judge Davis, Abdirizak Mohamed Warsame is a 20-year-old with no weapons or money—he has no warplanes, attack helicopters, 500-lb. bombs, drones, missiles, battleships, generals, soldiers under his command, no billion dollar military budget—but Warsame is the current “face of terror” who is being scapegoated for all the crimes committed by the U.S. in Iraq.
Warsame does not “start wars” that destroy entire cities and kill tens of thousands of people like U.S. presidents do.
If Warsame cannot acquire the freedom to kill people by going to Syria, how did the U.S. government in 2003 acquire the freedom to kill people by going to Iraq? This is what Judge Davis should be looking into, and this is also what the mainstream media in Minnesota should be focusing on—not this obsession with teenagers who are trying to become grunt foot soldiers for ISIL. Who are the real criminals?
Frank Erickson
