Close Gitmo?

[Serenity]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090310/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/guantanamo_detainee_taliban

 

 

[kevbone]

The Taliban's new top operations officer in southern Afghanistan had been a prisoner at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, the latest example of a freed detainee who took a militant leadership role and a potential complication for the Obama administration's efforts to close the prison. U.S. authorities handed over the detainee to the Afghan government, which in turn released him, according to Pentagon and CIA officials.

 

The relative word being detainee. Not convicted criminal. Innocent until proven guilty.

[tvashtarkatena]

Seems like compelling evidence that Gitmo is, in fact, a very effective terrorist recruiting tool. Either that or that this detainee was Taligan before Gitmo, which would point to a failure of both U.S. intelligence and military commissions; the system that was supposed supposed to try and punish such people. (Note on that system; it's charged only a handful of the more than 1200 original detainees at Gitmo after 8 full years...and never convicted any of them). Anyway you look at it, such events only serve to illustrate why Gitmo has been a bad idea all along.

 

Unless the poster's point is that we should lock up everyone in the world in case they are inclined to do something bad in the future, but it's been hard to determine exactly what this poster's recommendations would be concernting Gitmo other than to throw the Constitution and rule of law to the wind, as Somalia and other coutries have done with somewhat less than satisfactory results.

Edited March 11, 2009 by tvashtarkatena

[JosephH]

Bullshit - the majority of this trash is just more of the same misinformation the military was dishing out when the the large majority of the 'terrorists' were sold to them. If the occasional one does make it on to a battlefield, the first question to ask is what was their true prior history and did we actually create a problem in gitmo. How many of these few were innocent prior to gitmo and only became a problem after our treatment of them.

 

The gitmo story that ought to be getting air is the unbelieveable travesty of the Uighurs who were fighting the Chinese and miraculously ended up in gitmo ever since despite being completely innocent of any threat against the U.S.. We've been hanging onto them for the Chinesee. It couldn't be more pathetic or criminal.

[tvashtarkatena]

Town Hall Seattle, 7:30, this Wednesday there's a one hour talk on what Obama should do with Gitmo. $5 at the door. The science and politics lectures at Townhall are usually good.

[tvashtarkatena]

I'm a firm believer that karma is one of the basic principles that determines what the future looks like. Human beings, being herd animals, are both reciprocal and easily lead. Reciprocity can be positive or negative, but tit for tat is definitely our daily bread. The herd follows these trends, magnifying them. A society can follow the rest of the world into a black hole or help lift it up; neutrality is impossible. Gitmo has and will continue to have far reaching and long lasting ramifications, virtually all of them negative for all parties. I don't see the point in working towards the kind of world Gitmo seeks to create.

[Tokogirl]

Tvash,

Just to fan the flames: What type of world will Gitmo create?

[tvashtarkatena]

There are two main problems with Gitmo: the loss of habeus corpus and torture.

 

Without habeus corpus, a prisoner may be imprisoned, as nearly all of the remaining Gitmo detainees have, indefinitely without being charged with a crime. Governments who employ such tactics can make people dissappear at the will of one person. In our case, that would be the President (or, when so designated, the Attorney General).

 

The loss of habeus corpus is the heart of totalitarianism.

 

Torture provides a convenient means with to extract whatever quick confession a government needs to continue to claim the righteousness of such tyranny. National security is invariably the reason given for continuing it.

 

The most common justication I hear for the adoption of such totalitarian policies by the U.S. is the 'unlawful combatant' argument; opponents captured without uniforms and so called non-state actors should not be afforded basic human rights established by the Geneva conventions Article 3 and other statutes. This argument has not held up in court, largely because treaty obligations such as Article 3 have been afforded combatants by the signatories by convention and practice; both of which are common and established means of putting treaty language into practice. The two main problems with this 'non-uniformed combatant' designation is that 1) any citizen the State deems to be a combatant would fall under the non-uniformed category and b) a majority of combatants in the wars raging today do not wear uniforms, and many are tribal, and so could be considered non-state actors. If Common Article 3 didn't apply by convention and practice, most prisoners of war around the world would be afforded no human rights protections at all.

 

A government may oppress its own people in such a manner, but such oppression is contagious. Opponents retaliate and escalate. Trading partners (China comes to mind) quietly abandon human rights progress, knowing that the U.S. no longer has negotiating leverage by way of example in that area. Allied countries are bullied into eroding their human rights protections; privacy, speedy right to counsel and trial, etc.

 

The result is a downward spiral in human rights standards worldwide. Once habeus corpus is abandoned and torture adopted, there is not bottom as to where this can go.

 

 

[tvashtarkatena]

The capacity for atrocity exists roughly equally among all human beings. We tend to think of Americans as being somewhat better on this scale, but we're not. A mild mannered insurance salesman will happily bulldoze bodies into mass graves or wipe out a city when given the order to do so.

 

This is precisely why the rule of law is so important. Unchecked human judgement is a recipe for a world full of violence and sorrow.

Edited March 11, 2009 by tvashtarkatena

[Off_White]

Well Serenity, let's create a little scenario, shall we? Let's say you're taken prisoner by a couple of Hungarians who trade you in for a bounty from a country you may not have been all that fond of to begin with, maybe France? Those Hungarians claim they saw you talking to a guy who tried to cut the toe off a DeGaulle statue with a hacksaw. So, the French secretly lock you up for years without any charges or opportunity to defend yourself in a court of law. They torment you with cold, sleep interruptions, throw your MMA scrapbook full of autographed photos in the toilet, and blast high decibel Maurice Chevalier at you 24 hours a day. Lets say they do this for four years, then decide to release you back to the US, hoping you'll be put into the Federal Pen on their say-so. Lucky for you, Bush was still president, and he wasn't all that fond of the French either, so they let you go. Do you think you might now have an axe to grind against the country that ruined your life, locked you up while your wife married some other guy and disappeared with your child while no one had any idea where you went? Hell, even if you had been childhood friends with that guy with the hacksaw, I bet you'd want to make those French bastards pay.

 

As posited, Gitmo is a great recruitment tool. If they weren't our sworn enemy before we locked them up without charges for years on the uncorroborated evidence of random scumbags and tortured them, odds are they're our enemies now. Abandoning our principles, we have done great harm to ourselves.

 

Hell yes close Gitmo now.

[Serenity]

Translation and summation of previous nine posts:

 

http://break.com/index/hippies-wail-for-dead-trees.html

[mattp]

What I find telling is the fact that nobody has ever made a compelling case for Gitmo in the first place. They told us they had to lock up some bad guys, but never said who they were or how they identified them as bad guys. Then they told us they had to apply a little pressure on these bad guys in order to extract information to protect America but denied doing what everybody in the world knew they were doing (torture) and never told us about much of any actual beneficial information gained and we are not even seeing any real discussion of whether the whole thing has ever been worth it. Now they simply say they want to close Gitmo but don't know how to do it and they present disturbing things like the link above.

 

I'm sure there are some good reasons for at least some of the decisions along the way and maybe we have gained some valuable information at some point or maybe some of the detainees, if they had not been detained, would have committed acts of terrorism several years ago. But the only way you can believe that we actually benefit from Gitmo is if you take all of our government's propaganda on faith and completely ignore the arguments of those like Tvash and Off White.

 

Can you, Serenity, make a real argument FOR Gitmo or similar programs and facilities? Can you really do more than just to say that OffWhite and Tvash are worrying too much about the downsides of Gitmo and not fearful enough of what happens without?

[ivan]

what are you guys worried for - don't you know your government is in control?

[rbw1966]

Off is in FINE form!

[Serenity]

[img:center]http://www.hickerphoto.com/data/media/164/fishing-boats_T4850.jpg[/img]

[Serenity]

So in all seriousness, according to your logic we would have had to grant a trial to every German, Japanese, and Viet Cong 'soldier' we captured, granting them rights reserved for US citizens.

 

Oh, and BTW our enemies don't wear uniforms anymore, or generally work for recognized governments.

 

Also, according to some of your arguments the government should be compelled to put every classified document or piece of information into an easily accessible .pdf format so you can peruse it at your leisure, so that you can gain a better understanding of the world in which you DON'T actually reside in. Therefore allowing you to critique and harangue every move that's being made in the world from the safety of your Seattle office tower. Wow, that sounds smart.

 

So much for your logic.

[billcoe]

Can you, Serenity, make a real argument FOR Gitmo or similar programs and facilities? Can you really do more than just to say that OffWhite and Tvash are worrying too much about the downsides of Gitmo and not fearful enough of what happens without?

 

Here ya are Matt. These guys in Gitmo are prisoners of War. As such, they don't need to have trials and convictions. As prisoners of war, they have a duty to kill you as their enemy if released. Some of them have already been released and later picked up on a battlefield. Sooner or later one of them may get a lucky shot off and kill a guy like Mike. Some probably have already. Unlike the rest of us who can sit on our asses safe and sound, Mike and folks like him do not have the luxury of pontificating and splitting these fine hairs in the safety of their homes far from the real threat of violence most of these pricks are bringing to there tables.

 

However, I do not want to argue for leaving it open. Certainly there are innocents mixed into the mix of major shitheels locked up there. The aspect I particularly find angering is what appears to be routine torture. I thought Stephen King the novelist nailed it when he said " If water boarding isn't torture, then waterboard Jenna Bush".

 

edited to add I see Serenity made that point as well while I was typing.

Edited March 11, 2009 by billcoe

[ivan]

So in all seriousness, according to your logic we would have had to grant a trial to every German, Japanese, and Viet Cong 'soldier' we captured, granting them rights reserved for US citizens.

 

Oh, and BTW our enemies don't wear uniforms anymore, or generally work for recognized governments.

 

if we'd defined them as soldiers, then no, we could have used the geneva convention, which would have banned the torture we used on them, and doesn't require trials

 

i guess i'm a traitor but i have sympathies for our enemies, or at least i try to honestly understand them - they have some legitimate arguments, not the least of which is that we (and you seem to personify this quite well) think of ourselves as the new rome, as an imperial master which has the god-given right to impose it's will on the world and in the process trample all over anyone in our way - look at yourself - clearly you think of yourself as strong and brave - if you were born and raised in afghanistan/iraq/saudi arabia/iran/pakistan, which side would you be on right now? would you not see us as arrogant or hypocritical?

[JosephH]

Translation and summation of previous nine posts:

 

http://break.com/index/hippies-wail-for-dead-trees.html

 

Translation and summation of previous nine posts:

 

Reasonable people wail at the corruption of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights of the United States of America, and of the treasonous and inept prosecution of unnecessary preemptive war. We wail at the shame of the establishment and employment of the exact camps and methods that we as a nation have prosecuted others as war criminals and for crimes against humanity.

[kevbone]

 

These guys in Gitmo are prisoners of War.

 

What war are you referring too?

[ivan]

as far as releasing bad guys and having them show back up on the battlefield - hey, look at your history - its a time-honored tradition! - for example, the north and south exchanged prisoners during the civil war (and when the practice was stopped, the "american auschwitz" of andersonville resulted) - prisoner exchanges were common in the napoleonic wars too - now, the germans and soviets just murdered each others prisoner, but then how well do we remember them? your choices w/ POWs/enemy combatants/guys in pj's/whatever are a) kill them after they surrender (okay, solves the problem, but costs you your national soul in the process) b) hold them for the duration of the war (problematic given the politics/expense, especially when you declare a war that by definition can have no ending - "war on terror") or c) at some point release/exchange them.

 

is there a 4th option?

[KaskadskyjKozak]

as far as releasing bad guys and having them show back up on the battlefield - hey, look at your history - its a time-honored tradition! - for example, the north and south exchanged prisoners during the civil war (and when the practice was stopped, the "american auschwitz" of andersonville resulted) - prisoner exchanges were common in the napoleonic wars too - now, the germans and soviets just murdered each others prisoner, but then how well do we remember them? your choices w/ POWs/enemy combatants/guys in pj's/whatever are a) kill them after they surrender (okay, solves the problem, but costs you your national soul in the process) b) hold them for the duration of the war (problematic given the politics/expense, especially when you declare a war that by definition can have no ending - "war on terror") or c) at some point release/exchange them.

 

is there a 4th option?

 

We should close Gitmo and move all the prisoners into a halfway house next door to josephh, mattp or kevboner. These guys are clearly innocent lambs!

[kevbone]

Nice.....you post something from cnn of all places.....think of your source dude. Does not matter what they confess....they have to be proven guilty in a court of law before they are not innocent anymore.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Nice.....you post something from cnn of all places.....think of your source dude. Does not matter what they confess....they have to be proven guilty in a court of law before they are not innocent anymore.

 

you are a jackass

[JosephH]

These guys are clearly innocent lambs!

 

Wow! 5 of 500! Man, we're really making a dent in global and anti-U.S. terrorism this way. Maby 25 of 500 have been anyone you could remotely consider a 'high value' individual. It's a joke - as is the entire 'war on terror'. Why? Because it costs us about $3B / 'high value' target whereas 'they' can field such an individual for about $300k or so max. total expenses. Our entire approach to 'fighting' terrorism is bankrupt and ineffective.