So your position is that the US government knows that all the people in Gitmo are innocent and is spending millions of dollars housing them , feeding them, and providing them medical care just because it is so much fun to be evil. Some of those lucky enough to be released were unlucky enough to be found fighting against our soldiers later. I guess some guys just can’t catch a break.
I have solution if Barry O decides to close down Gitmo, I am sure many liberals would be more than willing to open their homes to a terrorist down on his luck. Though if you do end up getting a terrorist to live with you and they want to fly somewhere for a vacation, I would suggest taking a different flight just to be cautious.
Are you suggesting that the very real possibility of a nut-kick to kick civil liberties, along with the potential to ignite, say, a Palin presidency isn’t worth recognition? I can see that if someone posted “You can’t let them out, they are foreigners and have different ideas about deoderant!” making the suggestion, but to lay claim to some sort of high road simply because another poster pointed out the risk involved is quite narrow minded.
Whether Palin’s (just to use her as an example) general domestic and foreign policies are worthwhile or not isn’t worth consideration – whether she’d open up ANWAR for drilling or expand free trade, for example – is not germane. But a future president (say, a Palin/Guliani administration) with a chip on their shoulders, an administration inclined to follow the mandate set by the demagouges of AM radio will be a very dangerous thing.
Either human rights are universal, or they are not. Anyone who takes away, or advocates the removal of human rights based on political considerations, or because of some potential threat, is not acting in a just fashion.
Do you really want to make an argument for the rights of the many trumping the rights of the one?
What about:
The US government, in its overzealous attack on suspected terrorists, captured a lot of people on the so-called battlefield and put them in a quasi-POW camp. These people came from a mix of backgrounds and were captured for a mix of reasons. As pointed out upthread, some were just “home,” and some had come to Afganistan for the same reasons that were OK and sanctioned by the US during the Soviet days. That those people were not sophisticated enough in geopolitical affairs to recognize a paradigm shift, or high enough in the Al-Q/Taliban organization to know what was being planned is worth noting.
Once the government had them imprisoned (somewhat as trophies – so while not necessarily “evil,” there certainly was a non-pure political motivation), they were stuck with them – and hence the OP. While it’s certainly likely that among the Gitmo prisoners are some with value, some intentionally sought, there are a lot that are just plain fucked.
Can anyone find that “Formidable Opponent” segment from Colbert? Summed up things kind of nicely.
Foreigner citizens do not have the right to walk the streets of the United States. That is a priveledge granted through diplomatic relations with your country of record, and visa status.
Therefore, I do NOT consider it an abridgement of someone’s human rights when I state that we can NOT simply release the Gitmo detainees into the US.
What we have yet to determine is how to classify foreign nationals captured on the field of battle in military conflict. We have yet to determine how to classify foreign nationals captured in the war on terror. We should have figured this out before we started collecting them at Gitmo (and other places).
- Do we take them through the US criminal court system? Are there some risks to doing that?
- Do we take them through the military court system?
- Do we hold them as POWs until the “war” is over?
- What do we do with them once their sentence has been served? What if other nations also wish to hold a trial? What if their host nation does not want them? What if their host nation can’t wait to get them so that they can kill them?
These are real questions that need to be answered FIRST. To be blase regarding the risk to US citizens by playing catch & release into the US is NOT what we expect of our President.
Is it your opinion that every citizen who is arrested for a crime actually committed that crime? Granted, that would certainly speed up the trial process…
I find this amazing: call up Air Lingus-we need 400 tickets to Dublin!
It is my position that any large organization can and will fuck things up beyond belief and, having done just that, all their energies go into covering their own butts.
The US Government took a bunch of people not really knowing much about them. Many, if not most, were not taken while they were fighting at all, they were turned in by their enemies in exchange for cash payments. It has later become quite apparent that the Americans were swindled by people who used them to settle their own scores. And now the US only cares about covering the whole thing up. Releasing all those who are innocent of anything means they get to tell their side of the story. In fact someone was released and one of the conditions of the release was that he do not tell his side of the story to the public. The American government has no shame and no regard for the truth.
But, I do not care if the guys in Guantanamo are guilty of the worst crimes. It does not matter to me because civilised nations, among them the USA, have signed agreements as to what they are allowed to do and what they are not allowed to do even in the worst of circumstances. And these pacts, including the UN charter, including the Geneva conventions, including the Declaration of Human Rights, which were signed by the USA forbid exactly what the USA is doing. The USA is breaking its commitments to the world and that is a low thing to do because if you do not intend to keep your promises then better not make them. We looked down upon the Communists because they did these things and they were disgusting then and they are disgusting now when America does them.
If they are prisoners of war then they have a right to a hearing to determine that.
If they are common criminals they have a right to a trial.
There is no other option. The whole “illegal combatant” thing is bullshit which nobody recognizes as valid. All human beings are entitled to Human Rights. No exceptions. Any nation which does not recognize that cannot call itself a civilized nation. America has declared these people are non-people and not due any human consideration. That is disgusting, half the American people know it is disgusting and the entire rest of the world know it is disgusting. America should not be the land of torturers.
ONE!!
We MAY take One for your torture victims off you.
Maybe you need to refresh your memory as to what constitutes human rights.
I has teh Spock.
Welcome to the great attack on Kantian nonconsequentialism. Keep in mind the OP was asking a very practical, real-world question and you may see my posts in the light they were intended. Also note the closing of my first post:
In other words, I’m not suggesting that they should be held in prison forever. I am suggesting that how to go about closing Gitmo and what to do with those poor souls ensconced within who really are just political pawns is not pragmatically straightforward.
Personally, I think after some careful vetting, they should each be let loose with a greencard/controlled passport but no social security card. They should have a team (two to three for 'round the clock watching) of agents assigned to them for the next fifteen years (extendable on executive order if Gitmo is still something of an issue). The agents should also act as trustees of sort, parseling out the millions of dollars in civil damages they should receive for unfair imprisonment, the balance they get access to in full upon the conclusion of the fifteen year period.
Clearly not thought out, but it gets them watched, keeps them in the country relatively safe, and offers some form of compensation for their ordeal. Not all of them – clearly some in Gitmo have done Very Bad Things and shoudn’t be let out. And it’s probably cheaper than keeping Gitmo open for the next fifteen years.
Or perhaps the little Stanford Prison Experiment has ended up with things done to the detainees that would be - embarrassing - were they to come out? More likely, the US Government just don’t know what the fuck they are going to do. There are no good options. Which is, perhaps, something GWB & cronies should have thought of before they decided on the idea of Special Camps for unpersons.
You abduct people, keep them locked up for a few years with no rights, and then they’re pissed when they return? Who would’ve known.
I’m saying that if you give the government the power to ignore other people’s constitutional rights, then you better get ready for the day when they take away your constitutional rights. And that includes your guns. All the government has to do is say you’re a terrorist and it’s too dangerous to let terrorists own guns. You’re not soft on terrorism, are you? You don’t think terrorist should have weapons to kill Americans, do you?
Don’t bother arguing you’re not a terrorist either. Why should we believe anything a terrorist says? You’re a terrorist because the government says you are.
Formidable Opponent – Guantanamo Bay
And that was about two years ago 
And if we treat every single prisoner captured in a war like they are someone picked up for shoplifting, we are going to have some serious problems too. Are we going to appoint an attorney for every private in the army before we can put someone into a POW camp?
The whole point is that they’re NOT in a POW camp.
Oops… I’m not sure I understand your intent. Perhaps I’m parsing things incorrectly or a thought went missing. “Putting someone in a POW camp” is putting someone in jail. We don’t (normally) do that for simple shoplifting of a candy bar. But if someone is at risk of incarceration, then a whole gammut of due process considerations kick in.
There’s actually a healthy body of law on the treatment of prisoners of war.
http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/FULL/305?OpenDocument
(I’m ignoring technical issues of whether geneva III applies to these prisoners-to show how the rules work).
One part of Geneva III is the right to a hearing to determine if you’re a POW or not.
The framework is: “having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy,” Generally, international law has no issue with treating you as a POW.
If the government would like NOT to treat you as a POW, they have to hold a hearing. (generally, because POWs have lots of protections, and unlawful belligerents do not).
In this case, the people in Gitmo fall into two categories:
People caught on the battlefield, who we are arguing are NOT prisoners of war.
People not caught on the battlefield, who we’re arguing we have a right to detain.
In the first case, I think there’s an issue of fact as to whether the person in question is a POW or not, and a hearing is warranted). We’d probably have little difficulty proving (if we even needed to) that someone who actually, directly attacked U.S. forces can be treated as a P.O.W… The problem is when we say they aren’t entitled to that treatment.
In the second case, it seems palpably clear that there is some right to make the argument that “you arrested the wrong guy.” Similarly, we would want to let them make the argument that “what I did isn’t a crime, and doesn’t let you detain me”.
it seems clear to me that if the people we’ve caught really are as dangerous as we say, these will be easy for the U.S. to prove.
But I’d also argue that these are fundamental to the legitimacy of our detaining people. If we can’t make some individualized showing as to these two factors, sufficient to prove a neutral decision maker who has heard from both sides, is there any real argument that the detention is legitimate?
I’m not saying the decision maker needs to be a federal judge-but this is the kind of determination we get federal judges to make a daily basis.
I’m not saying the evidence needs to be made public, or the tribunals need to be open-I’d rather it, but there are realities. Absent disclosure, there’s a much stronger need for as neutral a decision-maker we can find (Again, in all other contexts, judges are ideal) who says "i’ve looked at the evidence, heard the arguments, and while I can’t say what they were, they support the contention that this guy should be locked up. (and judges do work with sealed documents/private information/classified material on a frequent basis. The process, AFAIK, works well).
I’d be happy to rely on a federal judge who says that, without any knowledge of the evidence. I really don’t trust the bush administration, who arrested these guys in the first place-they just have too much of an incentive to conclude that they are properly detained regardless of the law and the facts.
IANAL
About 150 albanian muslims were rescued from the serbs, by US Forces. They later turned up in Afghanistan, fighting for the taliban. So, lest anyone think these people are innocent victims, I would rather keep them locked up.
I’d rather your preference not be enough to have someone thrown in prison for nearly a decade.
Note that I’m not against locking bad people up. I’m in favor of the rule of law-under which the government has to prove they’re entitled to lock someone up before they get to do so.
If these people actually fought against the U.S. (not just with the taliban), they can and should be locked up as prisoners of war.
If we can prove they’re not entitled to POW protection at the hearing mandated by the geneva convention, great, they’re unlawful combatants.
If these people did something that was otherwise a crime against the United States, or entitles us to lock them up, and we can prove it, again, good, lock them up.
But I don’t believe we have a right to lock people up “just in case.” I don’t believe we have a right to lock anyone up if we can’t at least prove 1) we have the legal power to jail the kind of person the prisoner is alleged to be, and 2) we can show facts to prove that the prisoner is in fact the kind of person that we claim he is.