In the long run, I think we will adapt to the recent Supreme Court ruling on how we must treat our terrorist enemies, but it is a bizarre world where we have to go around the Supreme Court's utterances that defy common sense in order to fight a war.
And today I read it isn't as bad as it has been portrayed by war supporters:
It is not true that the Court's ruling, invoking a provision of the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war, gives terrorists "all the benefits with none of the obligations" set down in the convention. It's not even true that to reach the result it did, the Court had to "stand the Conventions on their head" and "give words the precise opposite of their plain meaning and intent."
And it's certainly not true that the ruling has thrown a great legal obstacle in the general path of Bush administration policy. But a defensible ruling can still be a mistake, as I think this one was.
Be annoyed at the Supreme Court, but don't despair.
After we ctoss the Ts and dot the Is, we will stilll be killing jihadis.
