Balance between the will to win and the cost in liberty…
Like kids on a playground, petulance abounds:
The Court thus properly rejected Justice Thomas’s extraordinary idea that the “structural advantages attendant to the Executive Branch†in war-time—aspects of executive power that make that branch the “most dangerous†to individual liberty today—merit a hands-off approach by the courts. (Ironically, Justice Thomas refers to Justice Stevens’ “unfamiliarity with the realities of warfareâ€; but Stevens served in the U.S. Navy from 1942 to 1945, during World War II. Thomas’s official bio, by contrast, contains no experience of military service. Justice Stevens suffers another unwarranted ad hominim [sic] attack from Justice Scalia, who refers to Stevens’ sarcasm). In short, Hamdan follows the wisdom of Justice Souter’s concurrence in Hamdi: “For reasons of inescapable human nature, the branch of government asked to counter a serious threat is not the branch on which to rest the Nation’s reliance in striking the balance between the will to win and the cost in liberty on the way to victory.â€
