David Hicks represents a challenge to way Australians see themselves. Whatever crime he is allegedly guilty of, it seems he will be tried by American Law.

During World War One, one hundred and twenty-one Australians were sentenced to death, the majority for desertion.
None were executed because Australian military law all but forbade capital punishment. Moreover, domestic antipathy to the death penalty in the AIF was etched in stone and governments attempting to introduce conscription could not afford to challenge it. Those attempts failed anyway. The Australian soldier remained a volunteer free from the threat of extreme sanction despite attempts by various Australian and British Generals to adopt the British system of military justice.
Such ‘Justice’ had ‘Field Punishments’ for example.
This involved tying the offending soldier to a gun carriage or such in ‘No-Mans-land’ for long periods of hours on a daily basis. Australians in the circumstances did not give way to the pressures to relinquish Military diciplinary rights of its soldiers to the British.

But, David Hicks’s trial has already begun. In a re-run of the Lindy Chamberlain debacle the Herald-Sun conducted a macabre opinion survey asking whether Hicks should be killed. Despite not having been charged with any offence, Hicks was tried in the court of public opinion.

The results, published on December 14, announced that 19,721 respondents (89.7% of the voters) voted YES - he should be killed!
GOOD ONE! Herald -Sun.
Makes us all so proud to have you on the side of might and right!

The question is:
1. Should David Hicks be brought home for trial by media
OR
2. Should we leave this unpleasantry to those wonderful people who invented the ‘Lynch-Mob’ and the Klu Klux Klan.
OR
3. Should we acknowledge that he is an Australian and afford him the dignity of his rights to be tried under Australian Law with perhaps a jury of his peers.

Now, you have your say on these questions at right>

Is this, with the blessings of our Prime Minister, another 'Breaker Morant' situation about to happen?