It's not just a theater question; it's a question people committed to live performance minus marquee names bang their heads over.
Leave aside the question of how a police officer is supposed to tell whether a person being questioned has committed a crime (crossing the border without papers) or a civil violation (overstaying a legal visa) or is just an American citizen without ID.
But although Admiral Mullen expressed confidence in Pakistan's ability to clamp down on insurgents within its borders, many analysts are posing a thornier question: How committed is it to doing so?
In New York, the city only gives up non-citizens in its custody if ICE presents a federal judicial warrant and if the individual in question has committed a serious crime.
But patient groups questioned how committed the government really was.
The second would consider applications for amnesty from members of the security forces and ANC, and determine whether the acts in question were committed in a political context and whether applicants had provided full disclosure about them.
Human rights groups also have questioned how committed the military is to ending the conflict.
Certainly Russia's Chechens, who without question have committed atrocities against civilians, belong on the list.
Yet activists said Facebook should not have been caught off guard by the UN's findings, and question how committed the company is to fixing its issues in Myanmar.
We can profitably discuss these questions without committing ourselves to any view about the metaphysical complexity of the concept of desert.
