Now we know you’re either driving trollies, or you’re completely delusional.
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I remember the old tactical board game Squad Leader. Does that count?
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[quote=“Ion, post:64, topic:78508”]
Making the war more difficult doesn’t just hurt the troops, and make the war last longer.[/quote]
We both want “the war” to be over. How is that accomplished? What has to happen in order for “the war” to be over.
As far as civilians go, we’re completely free from the worst effects. No one in America is being violently killed by U.S. forces because they’re in the same building as someone the CIA suspects of being an enemy.
As well they should. Also, a lot of Afghans and Pakistanis and Yemenis equally fear drone strikes. As well they should.
Just a guess, there’s likely some military regulation against putting detainees in a supermax.
As I said, it would be against the Conventions if they were POWs. Since military regulations were written to comply with the Conventions, it’s possible this applies to all detainees as well, even if they don’t qualify for POW status. Similarly, Guantanamo always allowed ICRC inspectors even though it wasn’t required under Common Article 3. They do have regulations for everything.
It may also simply be a matter of knowing there will be complaints. HRW and HRF are already whining about the plan not to give them trials after they arrive in the U.S.
- Congressional supporters? I think you meant to say, “practically all of Congress.”
- They’re “not shutting it down.” They were never going to shut it down. This is only about moving Guantanamo to the U.S.
You guys really do need to understand how throughly you’ve been deceived.
Back when Bush was in office, Guantanamo became a cause for the radicals that slowly attracted partisans eager to complain about the Bush administration. Politicians used it to rile up their voters.
But after getting all those voters to gallop on those high horses, President Obama needed to be able to say he was closing Guantanamo. The trouble was, we were still at war, and (like I said) it wasn’t a serious crime to be an enemy combatant.
Faced with the problem that Guantanamo wasn’t the outrage politicians pretended it to be, they decided they’ll simply move Guantanamo to a different prison, and then say, “okay, we closed it.”
Sorry, but that’s the truth.
As funny as that is, what strikes me as especially funny is that – after all those talk about human rights, you’re all actually willing to lock the detainees in a prison that’s less comfortable than the one in Guantanamo. Now you’re trying to justify it by saying it saves money.
As I said, that went out the window in 2008 (see: Boumediene v. Bush). They’ve had habeas corpus since then. What you see in Guantanamo is the rule of law.
It doesn’t work that way because bank robbery is a crime. Joining Al Qaeda was not.
You really need to complain about this to Senators Feinstein and Durbin.
http://www.lawfareblog.com/2013/11/bagram-more-on-wind-down-of-obamas-guantanamo/
It’s mostly closed now, though. All but about 50 detainees were transferred to the Afghans.
Funny how you need to show a picture of when they just arrived to a temporary camp that was closed within six months.
Try this one:
Ask our enemies to support the U.N. monitored elections. They can vote for their own type of government.
So far, the majority of Afghans voted against the Taliban, which is a good thing for those of us who oppose slavery. (People forget that the Taliban supports it – it’s not just ISIS and Boko Haram.)
Generally true, not counting sudden incidents like 9/11 anyway.
It’s a shame that people haven’t managed to ask our enemies to separate non-combatants. It could have saved lives.
I’m not buying the numbers, though. But that’s a separate topic.
NEWS FLASH: terrorism existed prior to 9/11. There were already mechanisms in place that would have worked just fine. There are hundreds of terrorists in Federal prisons in the United States. Osama Bin Laden had been on the FBI’s most wanted list since 1998, do you think if he’d been captured during the Clinton administration the government would have said “golly, we don’t have anywhere to put him! We should have thought of that!”
You also continue to go back and forth on whether these are military detainees (POWs) or criminal suspects. I vote for the latter, but either way they haven’t been accorded anything close to ordinary due process.
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Yes, it worked just fine for some of the normal players. Bin Laden was already wanted for the attacks on our embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.
But what he did was a crime. It wouldn’t have worked for many of the Al Qaeda members we capture. It wouldn’t have worked for everyone involved in those embassy bombings either. It would be catch-and-release for bomb makers and other technicians.
That’s one way that wars and crimes are different. The Supreme Court would not allow Guantanamo if Congress hadn’t authorized military action.
This war is taking too long as it is now. Nobody wants to do catch-and-release. Even President Obama would rather drone them out of our misery.
They’ve had due process. You just weren’t aware that due process doesn’t always include a trial.
Well, you know that now, thanks to Senators Feinstein and Durbin (not to mention the Supreme Court), both of whom agree with me on the matter of trials, and yet they will tell you straight to your face that they want to “close” Guantanamo. (Don’t fall for it next time.) The Army manual on detainees was last updated in the 1990s, and goes way back. It even has the word “Detainees” right in the title.
You could, of course, recognize that the law works this way, but say you want it changed now. That’s an argument you should be having with Feinstein and Durbin, whose jobs are to adjust the laws as society sees fit. Just tell them that what was fine for earlier wars against Europeans is just not good enough for a war against slavery. Good luck with that.
It’s true that prisoners of war don’t always get court trials as part of due process, but you yourself have already stated
If they aren’t POWs then they are criminal suspects. People suspected of crimes are supposed to get due process according to the laws of the detaining country. In the United States that means a jury trial.
We’ve gone back and forth on this a dozen times and you still haven’t been clear on whether you think these people are POWs or criminals. Choose a position and go with it already.
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Wrong. It is not either-or. It has never been either-or. It will never be either-or.
This isn’t something Bush just made up. As I just said, “The Army manual on detainees was last updated in the 1990s, and goes way back. It even has the word “Detainees” right in the title.”
The Geneva Conventions were written by diplomats with guidance of their nations’ militaries. It was rewritten in 1949 with the horrors of real war fresh on their minds. They had no interest in making wars take longer. They never would have agreed to what you’re asking for.
The concept of detaining people in war isn’t new.
The concept of a new kind of detainee that exists in a perpetual quantum state that is simultaneously-yet-neither-POW-and-criminal-suspect is both new and abhorrent. Yes, there have been times in war when it wasn’t clear whether an individual detainee was a legitimate POW or some kind of criminal—but in the past the goal was to figure out which category they belonged in and treat them accordingly.
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“Detainees” covers both POWs and criminals. Presumably there are special cases - like ordinary civilians, detained if only to remove them from an area where fighting is going to occur.
But having “Detainees right in the title” does not in any way suggest, let alone justify, detaining people indefinitely without trial or torturing them.
You’re just making stuff up, and have been for the entire thread.
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So you admit that these people did nothing criminally wrong?
“Making bombs that are used by terrorists” is, I believe, still a crime. Accessory to murder, I think it’s called.
“It’s inconvenient to give treat these people humanely, so let’s imprison them indefinitely without trial, torture them, or, even better, let’s just kill them all!”
Do you even read what you’re typing?
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This is the way it is, and has always been. You just didn’t notice because most of the action in past wars was by men in uniform.
But you should include those thoughts in your letters to Senators Feinstein and Durbin. Both of them have a “(D)” after their names. Like most of their supporters, they’ll tell you they support justice.
Every word.
Be polite to Senators Feinstein and Durbin when you also write your letter.
I doubt they’d listen. My vote counts for nothing down in USAnia (and I’m not moving just so that it counts a little more than nothing).
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I have. I’ve also donated money to the ACLU and Amnesty International campaigns to fight this kind of thing.
What kind of idiot blindly supports anything a politician says or does just because they happen to share party affiliation?
Oh.
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you can guess for us all you like.
When you get back to guessing for you and deigning to allow me to guess for myself, that MIGHT begin a conversation. Until then, just feed me my lines, bro.
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Orwell would have agreed with me. I suggest you remember what he meant by that element of the book.
I know I’ve taken controversial positions. I played a very small part in cheering it on. Of course, I can explain how and why. When I say I support the Geneva Conventions, I can say I accept the interpretation of the Supreme Court. Nevertheless, I generally supported the basic policies, and can face that.
Your position just got fuzzier – as I’ll explain, if you’ll please bear with me…
Okay, so let’s say you want to really close Guantanamo, meaning everyone gets a full trial instead of the tribunals they’ve had.
Then imagine some smarty-pants comes along and points out that Anwar al-Awlaki (before being properly droned in 2011) had written an essay on “44 Things You Can Do To Support Jihad” and that #28 was to help the detainees.
You’d surely say you have nothing to do with that. Just because you and Awlaki support the detainees in some way doesn’t mean you agree on the same things. There isn’t a link. It’s preposterous.
And it’s true that there doesn’t have to be a link.
But I think you have to recognize a link when, only about six months later, Awlaki is invited to attend (via internet) a conference run by none other than Moazzam Begg’s organization (mentioned earlier). And Begg’s organization had a partnership with Amnesty.
It wasn’t a minor partnership either. They gave up their gender rights leader in 2010 when Amnesty chose Begg over her. You must have heard about it then. A lot of members left Amnesty after that. (I’m a former member, too, but I left many years earlier.)
So, I have the Supreme Court’s position, and the history of the Geneva Conventions. You have an organization that chose a Taliban supporter over their gender rights leader. The Orwell quote is apt here.
The ACLU isn’t any better.
A lot of you folks were acting like you believed Obama’s plan to “close” Guantanamo was different than simply moving it. It seems like you’re still hoping that I’m wrong. If you wipe your eyes, maybe you’ll be able to read that Feinstein op-ed again, and maybe it’ll turn out that I read it wrong after all. But I didn’t.
I shuddered when I saw that.
Okay, not really. But I did fret a bit.
I almost felt queasy when looking at what I’d written that could offend you so, and then what you’d written that would make me unable to restrain myself. I do need to work on my manners.
Oh the humanity…
Not to mention convoluted, uninformed, ahistorical, ideologically inconsistent, and inhumane.
Good day.
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