Quote:
Originally posted by Captain
By protection all we are talking about is due process and avoidance of cruel and unusual punishment.
I think many of the founding fathers would have, at the least, expected to treat foreigners of high birth or who were officers in the opposing forces with such respect and protection. Many would have extended that treatment to all foreign combatants. That is not to say they would not have hung them after the trial.
Remember, these were people who were actively engaged in risking their lives fighting for the principal that all men were endowed by their creator with unalienable rights. That is "all men" not "Americans" or "citizens".
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Give me a break. You think these guys would have given any due process to muslim terrorists in their day. If a muslim from Tripoli had dressed himself up as a colonial and blew himself up with the intention to kill women and children, there would have been no due process. His partners in crime, if still in the US, would have been tortured to find information about other conspirators and they would have all been shot.
A soldier in a foreign army in uniform is one thing. But they killed spies right on sight (Washington hung Beneditct Arnold's coconspirator right when they caught him). And that is a spy that was not out to kill women and children. A spy (somone dressed in civilian clothes) out to kill women and children would have not received any mercy or any rights from the colonials. Escpecially if he was a religious fanatic.
