On Tue, 22 Jul 2003 20:25:20 +0000 (UTC), "William Black"
wrote:


"Peter Skelton" wrote in message
.. .
On Tue, 22 Jul 2003 19:30:27 +0000 (UTC), "William Black"
wrote:

The operative word here is CRIMINAL...

You don't go to war against criminals, you arrest them and put them on
trial, and if found guilty you punish them...

I wonder whether the difference between a criminal conspiracy
that gets the law and one that gets war isn't mostly size. Which
rules they get after capture seems to be something of a political
decision.

(Certainly the navy was needed to deal with pirate bases at times
in the past.)

And the militia was called out at Peter's Fields in Manchester, and the US
Army was used against the Bonus Marchers and the modern RN seems to operate
against drug smugglers with some success..

In other words, big problems get the military, we're together so
far.

The military is often called out to aid the civil power.

Pirates were hanged at execution dock, but they were tried before a
civilian court.

Or an Admiralty court, depending IRRC.

However arresting them was often a bloody business, it doesn't stop them
being criminals, and, probably more to the point, it didn't stop ship's
captains holding 'Letters of Marque' being treated as prisoners of war.

Or as pirates, also depending on the political situation.

It's a little hard to think of Hitler and his gang of merry
assasins, murderers, theives, & rapists as anything but a
criminal conspiracy though and they got war.

Then there are revolutionaries. The founding fathers might have
been thought of as a criminal conspiracy, except that they won.
Many failed revolutionaries have been, but the American
Confederacy was not.

Other lovely people like our fiends AQ who aren't really a
country, although they control terrotory and have political
agendas.

The situations don't really fit the laws exactly. In many cases,
laws, in the broad sense of the word, are written to deal with
the situations.
____

Peter Skelton