>To put it another way: from my perspective, this support our troops line is a
>really a weird and cryptic way to defend penal abolitionism for precisely the
>worst sort of crimes, the ones for which I - a penal minimalist - would not be
>prepared to forgo some sort of serious punishment. I cannot see how joining a
>criminal army, then committing serious war crimes is *less* damning than
>joining a gang and killing one's rivals - it certainly isn't worthy of 'our
>support'. I fail utterly to see how pointing this out is unpatriotic - it is
>antinationalist, precisely at the moment where being antinationalist would be
>the only acceptable form of patriotism.
Well put. "Support our troops" means nothing less than "support OUR war criminals". Neither is ignorance of the law a valid excuse. I support prosecution of our troops in the international criminal court.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas