Christ almighty. Someone on page one claimed that detaining the prisoners at Gitmo was illegal. I challenged him to defend it, which he couldn’t do. I didn’t introduce the argument about the legality of the action, and if you don’t want to bog down threads with that kind of discussion, then don’t bring it up. People love to scream “it’s illegal”, and when they’re unable to prove it, say “I don’t care if it’s legal or not, it’s immoral.” Fine, then say it’s immoral in the first place and don’t even bring up the legal issue. But don’t get all pissy when you make a claim (or support a claim another poster has made) and someone asks you to back it up.
As to implying that I’m trying to argue that anything that isn’t illegl is moral… well, show me the damn quote where I even hinted at that or shut the fuck up, Evil Captor. If it wasn’t clear before, I do not consider the way we’re holding prisoners in Gitmo to be moral. Everyone doesn’t have the same moral code, however, but in the US we all share the same legal code (even if we argue about how exactly it should be interpreted And that legal code is in the written laws of the land, not in our wishes and dreams.
Not an issue on which you could have got everyone to agree to ignore the law (unfortunetly).
Yes, it does provide some level of justification. I’m not denying there are bad points; my response was to David Simmons who also pointed out a negative point which I agreed with. I’m just saying that there is a positive side; dealing in absolutes generally doesn’t help anything.
I’m not sure how defending an immoral action as legal gets the law changed. It appears to me that what gets laws changed, such as the case with legal racial segregation, is a general protest and forcing authorities (like Sheriff Conners of Montgomery) into extreme and well publicized brutality to enforce the law is what gets them changed.
As long as the Guantanamo Bay lockup is out of sight it is out of mind with most Americans because they don’t see its conditions on CNN. And many of them wouldn’t care if they did. After all those people are in detention so they must have done something against us, right?
It also appears that it is going to continue to be legal. Court decisions so far seem to have been narrowly drawn so as to apply only to the particular prisoner who finally managed to get a case before a court by some means or other.
No one seems to care that violating our general scheme of justice in the case of the detainees in the name of “national security” isn’t a great distance from violating that justice in the case of you and me.
“First they came for the gypsies, but I wasn’t a gypsy so I did nothing …”
Exactly. If the law is ignored, then there’s no need for those general protests, or at the least there’s going to be less of a turnout to protest events. Why protest something that isn’t enforced? To give an example, there are a lot of laws over here as to what the monarch can and cannot do; in legal terms, the system is still set up so that the head of state is in charge. Why don’t people protest that? Because the laws aren’t enforced. If the Queen suddenly tomorrow decided she was going to take up the actual duties she “gifts” parliament, then there would be protests, both by the public and the government - and the law would be changed.
I agree with pretty much everything else you’re saying; that quote (poem? statement? whatever you’d call those verses) looks as though it’s getting more and more apt as time goes on. You know, I wouldn’t even be that surprised if Bush tried to change the law so he could run for another term anymore.
I must be missing your point. The laws that are being circumvented here are those protecting civil rights. They are being ignored by the dodge that the detainees aren’t in any category narrowly defined by various treaties and are therefore outside the protections of the law. There is absolutedly no incentive for US citizens to protest the lack of enforcement of the laws protecting the civil rights of the detanees.
I’m not sure if i’m reading you right; are you saying that there’s no incentive for US citizens to protest the lack of enforcement of the laws because the laws simply don’t apply?
No. I’m saying that, so far, US citizens haven’t been affected by the circumvention of the protections of the detainees rights. Ergo, “what the hell do I care” seems to be the prevailing attitude. “After all, it’s legal ain’t it, so what’s all the bitchin’ about?”
A disgusting display of callous short-sightedness, in my opinion.
The U.S. is showing its moral superiority by brutalizing people? I just don’t get it. If anyone has lost moral superiority in this deal, it’s the torturers, and no, I don’t agree with John Yoo’s weaselly definition of torture.
The subhuman nature of any non-American? In most civilized places, it would be illegal to treat an animal like that; why is it somehow OK to treat a human like that, particularly one who has been charged with no crime?
But then I just don’t understand why it’s fun to hurt and abuse people. I guess that makes me un-American.
I made a mess of that. If the US had signed the 1977 addendum, the detainment of the Guantanamo prisoners would have been quite clearly illegal. The US hasn’t, so we’re stuck with the somewhat more convoluted 3rd and 4th convention.
Correct. Actually, I do not recall ever arguing that they have POW status, but it seems pretty clear, at least to me, that under the conventions, they have the right to enjoy that protection until a competent tribunal has heard their case.
Not being a POW means that you’re now in a harder spot: You’re a civilian committing a crime. But you’re still entitled to freakin’ trial. A soldier firing a rifle at an opposing army is just doing his job, and one of the basic ideas behind the whole POW system is that said soldier won’t suffer any repercussions for doing so if he falls into enemy hands. A civilian doing the same is basically attempting to murder someone, and the GC does not protect that.
Which means that he committed a crime. And the US, being in control of the area where the crime was committed, is obligated to arrange for courts and stuff. An occupying army has obligations towards the civilian population in the territory it occupies - even those who don’t throw flowers at the soldiers. Article 64 - 71of the 4th convention (somewhat too long to post) outlines in some detail what obligations the US has as an occupying power. One of these is to provide courts and appeals and all the other paraphernalia of civilisation.
And yes, the US is an occupying power. The Hague convention of 1907 is clear on that (my emphasis):
The idea that the GC has provisions for making people nonpersons to be whisked away at the local commandant’s judgement does seem rather far-fetched.
Well,the current administration has had enough respect for the conventions to actually put the Guantanamo detainess in front of “tribunals” - however, the detainees had a hard time defending themselves, as they were often denied counsel and weren’t told exectly what they were accused of - it was classified, see ? Kafka would have loved it.
We’d know, wouldn’t we, if the administration hadn’t been fighting tooth and nail against the SCOTUS getting anywhere near hearing the case ? For starters, they could have placed their little oubliette on US territory proper. That little bit of finesse seems to demonstrate that they knew they were on shaky ground.
Sure, voting for Bush doesn’t equate to being one of his administration weasels and finding legal ways of justifying torture. But the abuses at Abu Ghraib and to a lesser extent Gitmo were known before 2004, in fact, pics of the abuse at Abu Ghraib came out in April 2004. The people who voted for the Bush Admin. after that are, in my humble opinion, either ignorant fools (if they were voting and still managed to ignore this major, widely publicized scandal, or morally degenerate pigs if they ignored it. I’m not letting them evade their moral responsiblity – I took care of mine – I voted for change. Those who don’t like it need to look deep inside themselves and see who and what they have become. Cause when I look at them, I’m seeing an awful lot of ugly.
Then again, shouldn’t we be outraged when our own commit acts in our name that make disgusting thugs of us all? I’m pissed off, I think Americans are BETTER than this, or ought to be. I want some heads to roll, I want to see some big names on trial and sentenced to jail for thier crimes. They’re fucking with what it is to be an American, they need to see some fucking penalties.
Fair enough, John, I was a little quick on the trigger. I apologize for assuming that your legal points demonstrated a moral acceptance of the torture at Gitmo and elsewhere. I do think that you need to put a lot of prevarication into any statement about the torture and so forth at Gitmo that could be construed as defending it, to avoid the moral opprobrium of that torture. Perhaps we should establish some sort of standard disclaimer or something.
I could care less about the legality of imprisoning people forever without a trial due to a host of technicalities. Doing so is flat-out immoral, and gives support and comfort to terrorists everywhere that when they kill U.S. citizens, they truly are combatting an evil regime.
But if you want to understand the mindset of people who lock other people up forever, without trial, look to what should become the immortal words of the man who commands Guantanamo Bay’s detention center, Rear Admiral Harry Harris: “I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare against us.”
Three guys hang themselves in their cells, and it’s an act of war against their jailers.
It is stunning, slack-jawed open-mouth mind-numbingly stunning how a country took the support of the entire civilized world and pissed it away. Congratulations.
I dinna think that word means quite what you think it means.
What was there excuse before we imprisoned anyone at Gitmo? Any port in a storm, ehe? Or do you just mean that now that we have done something barbaric (and I do agree that imprisoning those folk without any kind of due process IS barbaric) it justifies any future atrocities they may feel compelled to commit?
There is that word again. I suppose its possible that you could just mean those folks who died while at Gitmo. If you mean the others though, I think ‘forever’ is going to equal no more than a year or two more the way things are moving. Even the arch-fiend Bush is starting to make noises about shutting down Gitmo and processing those folks there for trial.
Well, um…ok, I agree with you here. It WAS a rather stupid thing for him to say.
!! When was this exactly? Either you are even older than I am and can remember the day or two after WWII ended (if that long), or your hyperbole device is hopelessly jammed wide open.
OK, apology accepted. But keep in mind that the whole discussion started from this statement by Happy Clam on page one which I challenged:
Detention, period. Nothing about torture. I know these debates can get confusing sometime with posts and counterposts going back over mulitple pages. Unfotunately, that appears to be the case here.
In fact, the remainder of his post was:
which I specifically left out when I quoted his post, as I was not challenging that statement.
Why do you think I put “moral superiority” in quotes ? Americans think of ourselves as morally superior much as the Nazis thought of themselves as racially superior, with just as little reason. We think of foreigners as vermin; undeserving of moral considerations. We torture them in large part for the same reason we’ll step on a bug; we don’t consider them worthy of moral consideration, not even as much as we’d give to a cow or dog.
And no, I’m not saying we’re as bad as the Nazis - yet. We’re certainly headed in that direction; I never thought I’d hear people publically defending torture.
Apparently not; that’s why I don’t consider myself a good American, or want to be. I’m not evil enough.
The support we had after 9-11, obviously; even the Iranians were holding candlelight vigils for us. We took that, and threw it away; we’ve spent years effectively trying to convince the world we deserved 9-11 or worse, with quite a lot of success.
