The months after Le Monde printed the historic front-page banner headline Nous sommes tous Américains (We are all Americans [now]), on September 12, 2001. The sympathy was near-universal. It’s gone now.
Sep 12th 2001 and a good, long time after that. I lived in Germany at the time, I saw it. Did you notice how traditional allies - including, as a point of honour, France and Germany - were falling over their feet to assist, both legally and with troops in Afghanistan ? If the Germans - who hate, hate, hate war - are ready to send their troops to fight alongside yours far away, you can pretty much bet your last dollar that you have a good cause.
This current administration then tried to cash in on the goodwill and get carte blanche to invade Iraq - not realizing that the rest of the world isn’t quite as tuned in to Fox News and hence had no problem keeping bin Laden and Saddam Hussein apart.
Even if we forget all the legal an moral arguments, the pragmatic truth is that maintaining the Gitmo facility and our current policy of not charging and trying the individuals there seems to make us more vulnerable to a terrorist attack than otherwise. That’s the part I find mind boggling. Even if all the men there are really “terrorsts”, there is nothing these few hundred people can do (especially now) that thousands of other potential terrorists out there can’t. But Gitmo is probably a great recruiting tool for Islamic terrorists, so what’s the point? I don’t think it reducing the total number of terrorists in the world-- I think it’s increasing that number.
Thank you to the three people have already pointed out to XT when the U.S. had worldwide support, apparently without his knowing it.
As for what I mean by forever, it means what the goddamned dictionary says it means: “for a limitless time.” Gitmo equals Purgatory. If you don’t think that’s the case, ask someone to lock you in a box and throw away the key.
We are in 100% agreement on this. I am convinced that had we approached terrorist attacks as criminal acts and gone at them through cooperative international police action, diplomacy and financial actions we would be way further down the road toward making worldwide terror attacks relatively rare. I think the invasion of Afghanistan was OK because we had pretty definite information that the Taliban were harboring Al Qaeda members including bin Laden.
However it seems to me that Iraq has made the Pakistan governments job of controlling the country harder because it was an unjustifiable attack on a fellow Moslem country. That’s probably also true in Saudi Arabia. They have tighter control over the populace but that doesn’t stop a lot of resentment and funding of terrorists by Saudis.
Also, if GW means to keep at least some of them confined until the “war on terror” is “won” they are in for a long haul. That is if “won” means no more terror attacks.
Horse shit. Have you actually BEEN to Iran? I have. And if a few Iranians were ‘holding candlelight vigils for us’ I can state with some confidence that many others weren’t. And of course there were those pictures of celebration in Palestine, Syria, Jordan, Afghanistan, etc. Of course, perhaps Barb doesn’t consider them part of the ‘civilized world’…by which he probably meant ‘Europe’. Even there I would beg to differ that the sentiments were near universal…or that there was anything we could have done to keep them in any case. I WILL buy that there were things we could have done to make it not so bad as it is today…THAT I’ll buy.
And all that dancing in the streets we repeatedly saw from Palestine and other parts of ‘Arab Street’? Or do they not count? From my own personal experience I recall being in France a few weeks after Sept 11th…and being told quite seriously how it was a shame, but that we kind of had it coming to us, n’est-ce pas? This didn’t seem to be from some individual nutball, as there were nods all around…
I do agree that its gone now…but there has been a love/hate thing going with ‘the civilized world’ (a.k.a. Europe, since thats what is meant by that code word) for a hell of a long time…so I’m a bit skeptical that we pissed something that has been a bit lacking for decades away. What we’ve done, IMHO, is inflamed an ongoing situation needlessly.
I think you are over playing how much support we gained because of 9/11…but I will conceed the point. I still think ‘support of the entire civilized world and pissed it away’ is a hyperbolic statement, but YMMV…and obviously you guys are (as usual) in lock step and ready to close ranks at the slightest straying from the party line. 
Besides, I was just trying to be funny.
-XT
As if this whole debacle weren’t disgusting enough already…
Per BBC, “dead detainee ‘was to be freed.’”
“One of the three men who committed suicide at the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay was due to be released - but did not know it…[because] “These people are told they’ll be 50 by the time they get out, that they have no hope of getting out. They’ve been denied a hearing, they have no chance to be released,” he said…[Mark Denbeaux, representative of some detainees said] US policy was to refuse to tell prisoners they were due to be released until a location had been found.”
Is there anyone left who is a) not totally delusional and b) still thinks the whole Guantanamo paradigm is in any way a good idea?
I read today that 300 detainees have already been freed and only 460 are left. That’s at least a 40% error rate on arbitrarily detained people, by the USA’s own admission.
I’m not sure how it can still be contended, with such figures, that the detainees are somehow hateful criminals. Except, that is, if we assume that the USA is freeing dangerous terrorists by the hundreds after keeping them in cages for years .
I wasn’t aware the Gaza Strip had been annexed by France.
Which Unbeknown to you France has alot of shady dealings with the PLO right down to the Ayatollah Khomeini, who from the support given by France, subsequently bombed the country in return for it’s hospitality. With that kind of political character, I’d say France is right alongside the ‘Arab street’ if there is any such thing.
Freed ≠ determined to be innocent. It means determined to no longer be a threat. That could mean any number of things.
I would have thought they’d prosecute the ones they could; so freed means one of two things - they’re innocent, or they’re guilty and there wasn’t enough evidence to prove it.
It means they’re not accused of being guilty of anything. They don’t have to be “determined to be innocent.” They ARE innocent by default, they are not obligated to prove it. The US is obligated to prove that they are NOT. If 40% of the deatinees are being released because we can’t think of anything to accuse them of, then I don’t see how it can be argued with any intellectual honesty that their detainment (not to mention torture) was not a mistake…and more than a mistake, a crime.
The reason I can argue this with intellectual honesty is that I don’t suffer from intellectual laziness, and try my best not to assume that I know the answers in advance. The problem arises first from the characterization of those prisoners that have been released as “freed”. I mistakenly accepted this term, which does not accurately describe the action taken in all instances. Some have been transfered into the custody of their native governments where they remain in detention. Most, though not all, of the countries are in the Middle East or South Asia (Saudia Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Pakistan, etc.),but some are in Europe. This Washington Post article contains a complete list, although it doesn’t break down those who remain in custody in their home countries as opposed to having been freed from detnetion altogether.
The detention of these men at Guantanamo is a travesty, but that doesn’t make every negagtive statement about it true. Frankly, though, the only evidence of intellectual dishonesty in this post is the part I quoted from you in which you claim something is a crime when it demostrably is not.
Ah…so if the US refuses to release them, that makes them guilty. I get it now, thanks. I notice they still aren’t actually being accused of anything, though. How many years do you think the government should be allowed to hold civilian prisoners without charging them with anything?
These people are being held without any legal justification either as criminals or as enemies of war. That makes it a crime. Torture is a crime.
I know that since, IIRC, two of the three french detaines liberated so far have been charged and arrested (which, by the way isn’t the same thing as “being transfered or remaining into custody”. Actual charges had to be brought up).
Nevertheless, it doesn’t change the fact that these people have been abducted and detained by a country that couldn’t or wouldn’t come up with any charge against them after some years of detention and interrogation. I would count that as a mistake. : “we held you in custody for some years, but finally, we figured out we weren’t interested in prosecuting you for anything”.
As for the difference between your 139 and my 300, sorry if I was mistaken, “around 300” is the number I read today in a paper.
Do we have to go thru this again? Ok, which statute was violated?
If it happened it was. And we’ll never know that, because no one will ever be charged with having committed that act at that facility.
Don’t you just love the “I abhor what they are doing but defend their right to do it since it’s not illegal” approach to Guantanamo?
How about Habeas Corpus, for one thing. The Geneva Convention for another.
We know damn well it happened. The White House never even denied it, they just denied that it was really, technically torture. I don’t care if anyone was charged with it. I can’t understand why you think that’s even slightly relevant. Stalin was never charged with anything either. So what?