[bobbtmann]

The integration of native americans in Canada was a tragic affair. Most of them were taken as kids and abused in schools. It's not really a good example for anything. Canada also has reservations.

NGTM-1R, how many of those prisoners in Gitmo were actually captured in combat? How many were rounded up from their homes? Should all of them been shot on the spot? Even the idea that they're all guilty to begin with is wrong. They've never had a trial to determine if they were guilty, they were just thrown in based on suspicions. Their guilt was never established, yet you would have them shot.

Honestly, I think there is a reason why Obama feels he can't release those prisoners now. They may not have been enemies of the US when they were put in, but after six years I bet they're not friends any more.

[zookeeper]

Honestly, I think there is a reason why Obama feels he can't release those prisoners now. They may not have been enemies of the US when they were put in, but after six years I bet they're not friends any more.

Doesn't sound like a problem, really. Publicly apologize for the whole affair, jail the people responsible, compensate the detainees with, say, ten million dollars each and help them to safely settle back in their home countries or alternatively give them nice beach houses in the US and allow them to bring their families over too.

That'd sound quite a bit like justice to me.

[General Battuta]

The fact that the trials after World War II were sham trials does not somehow mean that trials of Gitmo inmates today would be sham trials; analogy is not causality.

But it is.

Opening an argument with 'analogy is causality' is a bad way to start.

Any attempt to make the legal system work in these cases would be even more farcical than the post-WW2 trials because it's all down to he-said she-said in effect, unless they've since confessed to something, which would probably be thrown out anyways if their lawyers are halfway competent. And the stigma of victor's justice will attach anyways regardless, just as it attached to even the few just trials conducted at Nuremburg.

Having read the 9/11 Commission Report, I honestly don't believe that. Terrorism should be prosecuted as criminal behavior, not as an act of war. I think enough evidence could be gathered to have fair trials.

[Mustang19]

Erm, what is the point of that analogy? Things would have been better if we just shot all the Indians? I don't see how that would help anyone. I don't see how further ruthlessness would be a beneficial policy for anyone in that case. Better if they agree to peacefully settle onto a reservation and join our society.

That shows you don't understand the situation. I refer to the fact we moved them to reservations rather than exterminate them (the classic method) or try to integrate them (the one practiced in Canada). (And if you think the reservation system was any form of integration you have no concept of its history or how it works.) It's pretty much unique; no other example of something similar being done exists.

In essence being unable to exterminate but being unwilling to bring them in, we got the reservations, and that has gone awful, horrible places and killed hundreds of thousands in its time. (Arguably, it still is. There are rez in the northwest that might as well be third-world, where if you're alive you're addicted to meth and/or alcohol and the poverty rate is as close to 100% as makes no difference.) The option selected and how it played out was the one that would cause the most suffering and deprivation and the longest-lasting problems.

Gitmo is turning out pretty much the same way. It would have been better for the world and humanity as whole if we'd chosen an absolute in both cases.

The majority of the Indians chose to leave the reservation and join American society. Now that's a whole lot better than just killing them all if that's what you're suggesting. The reservations are ****holes but they don't represent how the majority of Native Americans live.

I'm not a big believer in the whole human rights thing so I can't really say anything new in this debate. I just believe that the risk of letting terrorists go far outweighs the cost of imprisoning innocents. At least one freed inmate ended up becoming a suicide bomber after being acquitted by American and Kuwaiti courts and killed 13 people. Every time a mistake like this is made, dozens of people could die. It's much better to just be safe. And yes, the person in question was a Taliban fighter captured in combat. I might understand releasing civilians that were arrested on circumstantial evidence, but actual POWs are too potentially dangerous to release or even put on trial.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/05/01/us-iraq-kuwait-guantanamo-idUSL0176218520080501?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews

[bobbtmann]

But these prisoners aren't POWs. POW's have rights under the Geneva convention. The term "enemy combatant" was invented so the USA could overcome such pesky things like human rights. Since enemy combatants are not POW's, the USA can do with them things that would otherwise be illegal.

Mustang19, on the human rights issue. It's easy to give up other people's rights and freedoms so that you feel more secure, but the tables can be turned on you very quickly. I find when I'm torn on these issues, I rely on the golden rule. I ask myself, would I want this to happen to me? If I'm innocent, do I want to be locked up and my name tarnished just so ungrateful people can feel safer?

[Mustang19]

I didn't mean POWs in the Geneva Convention sense of the term. I was referring to people taken prisoner during war, like captured Taliban.

As they say, a conservative is a liberal who was just mugged. A liberal is a conservative who was just arrested. Change "arrested" to "sent to Gitmo" and "mugged" to "blown up by a car bomb". It works both ways.

[redsniper]

I just believe that the risk of letting terrorists go far outweighs the cost of imprisoning innocents.

I disagree. We should all be free from the threat of wrongful imprisonment. The price of that freedom is a world more dangerous.

It's kind of like this Westboro church cluster****. The price of free speech is that you might have to deal with people heckling your son's funeral and such.

[Mustang19]

If you start freeing the prisoners at Gitmo after putting them on trial, some will rejoin the fight. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of people will die. What tangible benefit can be expected to make that worthwhile?

In retrospect, though, the US should have shot all these enemy combatants on the spot to avoid dealing with the fallout from detaining them. The international condemnation of the detentions made a lot more people hate the US and has probably given the terrorists quite a few recruits.

I disagree. We should all be free from the threat of wrongful imprisonment. The price of that freedom is a world more dangerous.

That is black and white thinking. Innocents are charged and convicted all the time every legal system. Does that mean we shouldn't have police?

[redsniper]

We would only free them after a trial if they were found to be not guilty......

[Mustang19]

We would only free them after a trial if they were found to be not guilty......

I redirect you to the example I gave above where this happened and it proved to be a mistake.

[redsniper]

Ehhhh, I don't know man. Saying we should cave on stuff like the right to fair trial because we're afraid of what terrorists will do sounds exactly like what the terrorists want. They win when we do that.

[Herra Tohtori]

People who are willing to sacrifice their liberties in exchange for safety will lose both and deserve neither.

Habeas corpus is something you don't just casually dismiss. You might as well move to North Korea if you take that route - I hear there's no terrorism problem there.

[Mustang19]

People who are willing to sacrifice their liberties in exchange for safety will lose both and deserve neither.

Habeas corpus is something you don't just casually dismiss. You might as well move to North Korea if you take that route - I hear there's no terrorism problem there.

I'm doing quite fine, thank you. I'll let you know once I get sent to Gitmo.

I will seriously bet you $100,000 over this.

[Herra Tohtori]

I'm doing quite fine, thank you. I'll let you know once I get sent to Gitmo.

Look, it isn't just about Gitmo, it's a fundamental basic human right to have a trial for the crimes you're accused of.

If you can accept just the accusation as basis for punishment, why not just simplify the judiciary process immensely? Let the police determine a suspect, let the prosecutor prosecute the suspect and then throw him in jail.

After all, if the suspect is given a trial and the verdict is "not guilty", the jury could still be wrong and the suspect would be free to continue their wrongdoing.


The refusal for a trial is a breach of human rights, and re-categorizing the inhabitants of Gitmo as something that international law doesn't have definitions for is just a clever justification for it.

If they're not prisoners of war, they're civilians and should be treated as such. If they're enemy combatants taken captive in a war zone, they're prisoners of war no matter how anyone tries to sugarcoat it.


And for the record, I am of the opinion that a hundred guilty criminals set free for insufficient evidence is better alternative than one innocent person unjustly incarcerated.

[Mustang19]

I am not talking about human rights. I never suggested that accusation is a basis for punishment. I am not trying to establish a broad legal philosophy here. I merely noted that a single terrorist if set free could end the lives of several people.

It may be okay to let the civilian inmates go. But being caught on the battlefield, possessing a weapon, fighting on the side of the Taliban and attempting to kill American soldiers is reason enough for imprisonment. A civilian court should under no circumstances be allowed to let that person free.

And for the record, I am of the opinion that a hundred guilty criminals set free for insufficient evidence is better alternative than one innocent person unjustly incarcerated.

In that case you should push for the abolition of every police force and judiciary in the world since probably at least 1 percent of people imprisoned are wrongly convicted. I don't think you seriously mean that.

[NGTM-1R]

People who are willing to sacrifice their liberties in exchange for safety will lose both and deserve neither.

You're misquoting.

People who are willing to sacrifice essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. The qualifiers are pretty important.

You're also spouting the same bull**** Karaj was. I've already laid out the relevant statutes and treaties. Under international law they are military prisoners suspected of espionage and have no rights and only the expectation of a quick death. International law does have a category for them and they're being treated quite leniently by those standards.

NGTM-1R, how many of those prisoners in Gitmo were actually captured in combat? How many were rounded up from their homes? Should all of them been shot on the spot? Even the idea that they're all guilty to begin with is wrong. They've never had a trial to determine if they were guilty, they were just thrown in based on suspicions. Their guilt was never established, yet you would have them shot.

An overwhelming majority, I would guess. There is no reason to assume anyone in Gitmo was rounded up from their home for the simple reason that anyone worth rounding up from their home (recall people are sent to Gitmo because they're thought to know something) wouldn't be at Gitmo, he'd have been brought to the mainland US for a much more thorough debriefing and incidentally being kept safe from anyone who might try to remove his temptations to talk by killing him.

You are deliberately lying about what I have said, sir. I do not appreciate that. I have already said that my personal preference is to let the majority of the detainees go, but that in the long term shooting them would have caused the US less problems than running Gitmo did.

[Flipside]

Deep breaths everyone. Count to ten.

[Mikes]

People are so ready and willing to give up their freedom and have people imprisoned or even shot because they "may be a danger" nowadays mh?

See... as a German i am quite sensitive to such bullsh**. Frankly, i don't know what else to call it,
Maybe because in not quite so distant history our country had the misfortune to experience firsthand what it really means, when sentiments like these are not just extrimist brabble, but become the law.

A little reminder:

First They came... - Pastor Martin Niemoller

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

[General Battuta]

The amount of harm these guys can do is minimal compared to the amount of harm we've done. One of them could probably organize another 9/11 attack and not manage to kill nearly as many innocent people as we've killed in our responses to 9/11.

We're the good guys here. We have an obligation to stand up for our principles, or we forfeit the moral high ground and become no better than them. Either they get trials or they get released.

[BlueFlames]

From my Facebook page:

"Old Tricks"

[Note:  This was written back in 2009.  The status of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility was in flux at the time, though, so I sat on this, until some resolution could be reached.  As it's turned out, no resolution was reached, and all of the involved parties were content to resume the status quo.  That said, here's a little reminder as to the implications of that status quo.]

I just finished up A Tale of Two Subs tonight.  Being a sucker for early submarine warfare, I quite enjoyed the glimpse into the history of the sister ships USS Sculpin and Sailfish, despite knowing in advance how the story of these two vessels would end.  In one of the most bitter-sweet moments of the war, Sailfish scored the first submarine-versus-carrier victory of the Pacific war, not knowing that many of the survivors of Sculpin, scuttled weeks before, were aboard the target ship.  The final chapters briefly describe the ordeal that the remaining survivors had to endure in wartime Japan.

But the tragedy didn't end with Japan's surrender, nor was it explicitly mentioned in the book.  "They also discovered that through a cute interpretation of international law, the Japanese had classified them not as prisoners of war but as 'unarmed combatants.'  As such, they would be afforded no protections under the Geneva Conventions, including provisions governing contact with the outside world ... and whether they would be tortured."  The book goes on to describe the repeated waterboarding of Lieutenant Commander John Fitzgerald, of the USS Grenadier.

Sixty-five years ago, the enemies of the United States held our soldiers, denied them what few rights they were guaranteed under international law by falsely labeling them anything but prisoners of war, and it was a war crime.  It was a war crime.  Today, the United States government retains the right to incarcerate someone, label that someone an "unlawful enemy combatant" and deny them the few rights that are supposed to be guaranteed by international law.  In fighting a new enemy, we have become an old one.

To add to that a bit, it's not Gitmo that's such an affront as much as it is the powers asserted and exercised in putting people there.  Closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay wouldn't address the problem so much as it distract people who might not be tuned-in enough to notice the real issue.  The issue is that "unlawful enemy combatant" is an entirely arbitrary label and anybody bearing that label has absolutely no rights or recourse.

It's a scary world we live in, but I find bombs far less frightening than unchecked executive power.