| ashu |
Posted
on 24-Sep-01 11:52 PM
Hi all,
In the aftermath of September 11 ko terrorist attacks, many intellectually challenging/difficult questions are being asked:
Foremost among them are:
Are there limits to civil liberties?
If so, what are they, and under what conditions?
What does a "just war" mean when the enemy is faceless?
What does "justice in war" mean when, again, the enemy is faceless,
and so on.
The debates surrounding The Laws of War are likely to get more interesting
and also intellectually more difficult.
As a flavor of things to come, below is an extract from an article from world's most influential magazine -- The Economist of London -- to keep our brains grappling with these issues of the day.
Enjoy,
oohi
ashu
ktm, Nepal
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Eternal vigilance?
Sep 24th 2001
From The Economist Global Agenda
If America is to fight a prolonged war against terrorism, as George Bush has promised, the true front-line may be at home. And among the biggest casualties may be civil liberties and privacy
IN TERMS of lives lost and physical destruction, the attacks on New York and Washington were terrible enough. But fears are growing in both America and Europe that there could be other victims: many of the civil liberties and fundamental rights, which established democracies have taken generations to create, and which many citizens of western countries have so long taken for granted. Many western governments have already proposed a raft of new measures: tighter restrictions on immigrants and asylum seekers; stronger surveillance powers for the police and intelligence services, and reduced rights for criminal defendants. More secure forms of identification, employing high-tech versions of the national identity cards carried by most people in continental Europe, may also soon be proposed in America and Britain, two places that have long resisted them.
There seems little doubt that some change in the current balance between individual rights and security is now bound to take place. The question is how drastic that change might be. The debate is likely to be fiercest in the United States. Not only is America now the site of the most spectacular and bloodiest terrorist attacks in history, it has also been the country with the widest liberties and most firmly entrenched rights.
The rest of the article is at:
http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=789583
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