Our soldiers should never, and I hope do never execute prisoners without due process.
Summarily executing prisoners who have surrendered is a war crime that, at least fifty years ago, justified us executing the people who did so. Commando Order - Wikipedia.
In my opinion, it still warrants the severest punishment we are willing to administer.
So I would hope it’s not just as simple as “Hell, we could, if we had chosen to, simply blown their brains out on the spot they were captured.”
Doh! I blame the guinness 
Gall.
(Note to current members of the US Armed Forces: No disparagement towards current servicemen intended. I am thinking about how I might have responded back when I was wearing a uniform).
They won’t capture - they will shoot to kill, and make sure that they are dead. That is the inevitable result of telling our military that POWs will be released to shoot at them again. The military will capture enemy combatants as long as they can trust that they will not have to fight those same combabants again. Once that trust is lost, behvioral changes will occur.
No prisoners of war are being released from Gitmo. There are no prisoners of war at GITMO, according to the current administration. If they were prisoners of war, we would certainly be able to detain them for the duration of the war.
We have this problem specifically because the administration tried to get out of calling battlefield prisoners POWs (or proving they weren’t), and trying to expand the definition of who we could imprison without trial.
And I don’t think it makes it any better that it’s perhaps understandable. If a combatant clearly surrenders without any suggestion of trickery, I hope a disciplined military unit will take them prisoner, regardless of their personal feelings. I thought that was part of the job.
I have never argued with this, and brought it up when I first joined in the discussion. My only question is whether, once we classify them as POWs, what will we consider the end of the “war” to be? Given the international nature of the war on terror / AQ / Iraq combatants from other nations / other factions in Afghanistan - do we hold them until ALL of those areas are “pacified”? If so, then we are arguing for life imprisonoment as POWs.
That’s a very good, and much more difficult question. I think it’s much simpler if we look at the “traditional” definition of POW-belligerents in the combat zone captured by the other side. The war in afghanistan will (god willing) have an end to it. Same to iraq.
With respect to terrorists not in a “combat zone” or attacking americans, I think the problem is that we lump them in with actual combatants. A terrorist plotting an attack in (say) spain isn’t a combatant. He’s a terrorist. Arrest, try, and send to prison for the rest of his life.
If this is true for each and every person there, then they should be tried, convicted, and face the appropriate penalties. If any of them were in fact “in a war zone by accident” (paraphrasing you), their release is in fact incumbent – and we are told on such good authority as is available that in a few cases, people who were politically embarrassing to U.S.-allied warlords were accused of terrorism when what they were doing was making a living at their home, which happened to end up part of a Afghanistan-wide war zone.
Note that the operative words are “tried and convicted.” We managed to run a country for 229 years, including a Civil War, depending on the court system to convict the guilty and acquit the innocent. I find it difficult to conceive how individuals in Afghanistan posed a sufficiently greater threat to the U.S. than Stonewall Jackson’s army, that we need to throw out the judicial system that worked then in order to protect ourselves from them.
Besides, Puddleglum, everyone knows you’re a terrorist. Granted you may deny it, but it’s obvious – even the fact you deny it proves that you really are. Now, this may seem like a horrible accusation – but my evidence proving it is so secret I surely cannot post it here, where prying eyes can see. Therefore, you should be locked up somewhere where we can insure you do not commit terrorist acts – permanently.
Or maybe you deserve a hearing on whether I have anything substantive behind my rhetoric, a fair trial if there’s even enough evidence to bind you over for one, and release if the hearing shows no substantive evidence or you are acquited at trial – and that I be punished for making such a false accusation?
Which one do you think is fair? Given that, which one is fair for someone imprisoned at Gitmo? Or is there an exception to the Golden Rule for accused terrorists?
I agree! Puddleglum definitely is a terrorist. And I have proof, too.
Sadly, my boss has told me the evidence is totally classified, and it’s gotta stay in the man-sized safe. But it’s real convincing! I think you should all trust me, and send Puddleglum to gitmo. After all, I’ve told you my evidence is real convincing, and from a totally trustworthy source. But you can’t see it-and neither can the judge.
“We” are not “they” though.
From a battlefield speech given by Lt. Col. Collins a British officer which ironically Bush supposedly hung the text of in the Oval Office.
Except that during the Civil War we did NOT have trials for enemy combatants. If you were captured in uniform, you were sent to a POW camp until the end of the war. If you were a spy, you were hanged.
We have different types of prisoners at Gitmo, and we will continue to have different types. Each types will require a different type of treatment, and those treatment types are not well covered in Hague or Geneva accords.
After a perfunctory look (I’m in no way an expert, and the list is very egregiously incomplete), all the executed civil war spies I can find had a trial first.
Further, a bunch were just imprisoned till the end of the war, then released, like POWs.
Further, no-one’s contending that there is a category of prisoner of war that can be imprisoned for the duration (effectively) without a hearing.
We need a hearing when 1) we want to categorize someone as NOT a POW.
2) we’re trying to imprison someone (like, say, a terrorist facilitator from algeria), who doesn’t fit into the traditional category of POW-and hence the power to detain.
And the conventions are pretty clear on the categories of people they cover (i.e Prisoners of War/non-combatants). The reason they’re unclear about (say) the “unlawful enemy combatants” is that that is a term created by the MCA.
And of course your false dilemma assumes that the “terrorists” and “criminals” are guilty. And it assumes that Americans have the right to kidnap and torture and imprison indefinitely people out of sheer paranoia and indifference to human rights.
In part, yes, evil is the motivation I believe; cruelty, power lust, and the egotistic desire to “prove” ourselves right by kidnapping living trophies and by torturing confessions out of people. But they are also embarrassing examples of American evil and incompetence.
And why should I believe that they were fighting against us ? And not just accused for the bounty, or to eliminate a personal enemy, or on the strength of “evidence” that was tortured out of someone ?
And for that matter, just because you fight and lose against someone invading your country doesn’t make you a “terrorist”. A POW, but not a terrorist.
Well, duh. If they didn’t hate us before ( and for all you or I know they may well have originally been pro-American ), they sure will now. Being kidnapped, imprisoned and tortured will do that.
You continue to miss the point. The government does not have the right to lock people up indefinitely because it just says they belong to the Taliban or Al Qaida or “Al Queda”. The government has to give you a trial and produce actual evidence that you belong to some criminal organization or have committed a crime.
To answer the OP, I think it’s clear Obama can close the Gitmo prison. He will have the authority, and there are no intractable practical or legal problems WRT the inmates. The debate is whether he should.
I take that you mean without whorfin knowing the evidence, not without the judge having full knowledge of the evidence.
:dubious: I’m not convinced that’s halal. Does Islamic law allow for burying a man alive?
I’m not sure how widespread it is, but after a little googling :
Five women buried alive in honor killing
Three men buried alive for sodomy
And in my understanding, there’s no actual central Islamic authority; so you could probably find “Islamic law” that supports just about anything.
That is the problem. I’d hug quite a few muslims. I’d take a baseball bat to the heads of a few other muslims. Ain’t that a bitch?
I’m cool with my conundrum though. I’m not a total dumbass and God taught me not to be a dumbass. I don’t even believe in God, and my God is still better than their stupid God. Want a baseball bat to the head? I’m pretty sure I know how you can make that happen.
Exactly. I trust a neutral federal judge enough to be willing to accept a finding he makes even if the evidence is kept under tight seal-available only to the court, and the lawyers.
On the other hand, a military commission picked by the same establishment responsible for the policy of keeping gitmo going? I’d only believe in the fairness of that process, and that it could reach a result that was fair (and release a prisoner whose detention wasn’t supported) with MUCH more disclosure about the process, the evidence, etc, etc.
The previously quoted Universal Declaration of Human Rights specifies that trials must be public. Too much has already gone on behind closed doors.
yojimbo, the words of Tim Collins are one of the few beautiful things to come out of this war. I’m going to make a copy of it to keep among my favorite things. It has given me some sense of release and connection to those who have fought. The Irish always come through for me with the poetry of their nobility. …“a terrible beauty”