According to the 10am Pentagon briefing it looks like one of the Gitmo detainees may be a US citizen- born Baton Rouge, returned to Saudi Arabia as a toddler. They say that he will definitely not face a tribunal if this is the case.
Five of the detainees are British. Britain is currently providing some 30% of active duty soldiers in Afghanistan. Yet these detainees still face the possibility of tribunals and consequent lack of due process protection.
I suspect that the reason why they have not been released back to the UK is that one of the only legal advantages of the British system is that politicians have absolutely no control over the judicial process of charging people with crimes and so any charges would have to be made according to ordinary criteria without political interference (we have no equivalent of Ashcroft in terms of politisisation of the legal process). (BTW, the US system is more liberal in almost every other way in legal process- this is an exception- I’m not defending the British Legal System as superior.)
If they were returned, the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) would almost certainly not have the power to charge them unless there was clear and compelling evidence that gave a 50% chance of conviction. This evidence would need to be collected according to British Law- all ‘confessions’ extracted at Gitmo would be inadmisable as they were not recorded and were not afforded due process rights. The liklihood of this is very low.
So, being technically an American, a person gets full rights.
Being fully culturally and technically British (an allied and militarily involved state) counts for nothing.
Can anyone defend this rationally?
As I maintained in earlier posts, the US has opened a can of worms with Gitmo.
How many times do we have to go through this particular issue, pjen until you finally understand it?
Under the U.S. Constitution, U.S. citizens have greater rights than foreign nationals. A U.S. citizen must be tried in a civilian court. The detainee to whom you refer is not “techincally” a U.S. citizen - he is a U.S. citizen. It’s called “rule of law”.
While I fully expect (and hope) the issue to be heavily litigated, the current precedent is that foreign nationals may be placed before a military tribunal. The five British detainees are foreign nationals. It would be rank hypocrisy to treat those particular foreign nationals differently simply because they are subjects of an Western allied nation. Many of the others are subjects of Saudi Arabia, a non-Western allied nation.
‘Race’ was not such a great issue in those times, and so is often not fully recorded as it was not noticed in the way that we would. It is a bit like a civilization in 5000AD who divide people by, say, eye color, trying to decide whether a group of Europeans were blu-eyes or brown-eyes- the information wopuld not be available.
It is fairly clear that they were not ‘white’. The liklihood is that some were light skinned (berber like) people, some were olive skinned semitic people and others were dark skinned East Africans, with all possible interpolations.
I like to think of Cleopatra as black,- as I like to think of God as female- as a reminder not to be a euro-centered male in outlook ;).
Sua Sponte- just because it is legal does not release it from being hypocritical.
The US is basically saying- sorry folks, our constitution forces us to give our citizens full rights (we’d prefer not to, but even Ashcroft has to pay some lip service to constitutional rights), but even though you are fighting with us in this cause, we are going to have to deliver second and third class justice to your citizens; of course, we could make an exception (as we made up the rules as we went along anyway) but we won’t, so there.
Not exactly good international relations, eh?
Try looking at it from the other end of the telescope- supposing Britain was holding American citizens and denying them justice, whilst ensuring full rights for Brits. I bet that Bush would be applying pressure then.
Maybe not good international relations, but certainly not hypocrisy. The position of the administration is that the detainees will only be excluded from eligibility for trial before a military tribunal if U.S. law requires such an exclusion. This may be good policy, it may be bad policy, but it certainly a consistent and non-hypocritical policy.
Treating the British detainees differently would be the hypocrisy.
Of course. And if I were a British subject, I would expect my government to behave in a consistent manner and resist such pressure.
I would suggest that the hypocrisy arises from the following:
‘With all our actions surrounding Gitmo we will attempt to circumvent as much of international law as we can get away with’
However, when it comes to US citizens
‘We will apply our own laws to the letter.’
It is also hypocritical to claim to be the ‘leader of the free world’ and then to treat undisputed citizens of that free world differently, merely by an accident of birth.
As I said, were the position to be reversed (US citizen ina British concentration camp, for instance), you can be sure that Shrub would be pulling every lever to ensure that a US citizen was not delivered of inferior justice, merely because they were not born a British Subject!
Look, I’m not going to defend the military tribunals, because I vehemently disagree with them. But look up the word “hypocrisy” in the dictionary - you obviously don’t know what it means.
The key to freedom is “rule of law, not of man”
If this is your beef, go yell at Tony and tell him to start pulling levers.
‘a feigning to be better than one is, or to be what one is not: a concealment of true character or belief (not necessarily conscious)’
Claiming to be following the rule of law whilst not doing so is hypocrisy.
Claiming that all men are created equal, then applying different rules by accident of birth.
It would be non-hypocritical to say: all of these people are suspected of terrorism- they will all be tried in the same manner. If some must be tried using US law under the Constitution with all those protections, then so must non-nationals.
However, Bush, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft have decided to treat US and others differently according to country of birth- as accidental as that- yet still maintain that this is a fair system that they are implementing. That is the hypocrisy- claiming to be acting fairly when actually acting in the interests of its own citizens- as the definition says:
‘feigning to be better than one is, or to be what one is not: a concealment of true character or belief (not necessarily conscious)’
Pjen, I’m begging you - please stop. YOu’ve managed to get Suaanddecember both arguing against you. that alone is enough to bring about the end of the world as we know it.
I have problems w/the whole situation at gitmo and don’t even get me started on the tribunals. But, simply put, Sua is absolutely correct, that it is normal and expected for a country to treat it’s own citizens differently WRT laws (immigration law in it’s totality demonstrate this issue). So those detainees who are US citizens get, by virtue of their citizenship, certain rights. The other detainees should be treated exactly the same , otherwise, it would be hypocritical in the extreme.
(as an aside, december I disagree that the premise presupposes that the tribunals will be unfair. It presupposes that the tribunals will operate under different rules. That seems to be an extremely safe assumption since A. they’ve already specified certain differences, IIRC, but more importantly, B, if there weren’t going to be any differences, then it’s silly to set up an entirely different system to deal w/them
fairness can be had under different sets of rules, it’s more difficult to demonstrate that similar fairness is achieved however - that old ‘seperate but equal’ gig)>
::sigh:: Of course, the Bush Administration is following the rule of law. They simply interpret the Geneva Convention - which, under the U.S. Constitution - is the law of the United States - differently than you (and I) do. The U.S. Supreme Court will eventually decide which interpretation is correct.
It is not “accident of birth” that is the issue here. It is to whom the British detainees paid their taxes.
U.S. citizenship, as does citizenship in every country in the world, imposes both special rights and special responsibilities. If you are free of those responsibilities, as the British detainees are, you also don’t get the rights. Nothing hypocritical about it.
You appear to think that there is only one course of action in a given situation that would not be hypocritical. You are wrong.
“Rule of law, rule of law.” Learn it, live it, love it. You cast your own prejudices on the situation. The situation can be more precisely and objectively described as “the Bush administration has decided to treat all the detainees as harshly as the law allows.”
Listen, I’m done with this. You are pleading for special treatment for your fellow subjects, but you accuse the Bush Administration of hypocrisy? Pot. Kettle. Black.
Got the “cannot find server message.” This is probably going to be a double post. Apologies in advance.
::sigh:: Of course, the Bush Administration is following the rule of law. They simply interpret the Geneva Convention - which, under the U.S. Constitution - is the law of the United States - differently than you (and I) do. The U.S. Supreme Court will eventually decide which interpretation is correct.
It is not “accident of birth” that is the issue here. It is to whom the British detainees paid their taxes.
U.S. citizenship, as does citizenship in every country in the world, imposes both special rights and special responsibilities. If you are free of those responsibilities, as the British detainees are, you also don’t get the rights. Nothing hypocritical about it.
You appear to think that there is only one course of action in a given situation that would not be hypocritical. You are wrong.
“Rule of law, rule of law.” Learn it, live it, love it. You cast your own prejudices on the situation. The situation can be more precisely and objectively described as “the Bush administration has decided to treat all the detainees as harshly as the law allows.”
Listen, I’m done with this. You are pleading for special treatment for your fellow subjects, but you accuse the Bush Administration of hypocrisy? Pot. Kettle. Black.
Can the US do this legally? Sure. Should it do it? NO.
The fact that a law is “legal” does not make it right and many laws which were considered right in their time would not be so considered today. Times change, thank goodness.
The US could pass a law that all foreigners in the IS had to wear a yellow cross with the name of their country. Legal? Yes. But it would cause the US more harm than good.
This law may be “legal” but it is morally indefensible and from a practical standpoint it will cause problems with other countries. Legal, yes, but unnecessary and will cause more harm than good.
Sailor, I’m in absolute agreement, but that wasn’t what the OP was about. Pjen accused the U.S. of hypocrisy for not giving special treatment to the British detainees.
One can be dead wrong and still not be a hypocrite.
Hipocrisy: a feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not;
Definitely the US cannot be accused of hypocrisy on this issue.
While the word “hypocrisy” was used in the title, I do not see it as the substance of the OP where it does not appear.
>> Being fully culturally and technically British (an allied and militarily involved state) counts for nothing.
Well, if the point is that nationality should not entitle one to privilege or hardship when being tried for a crime, trying to add Brits to the list of those privileged seems like somewhat inconsistent.
>> Can anyone defend this rationally?
I guess they can, and I can and do disagree with them.
>> As I maintained in earlier posts, the US has opened a can of worms with Gitmo.
I agree with that. The harm being done to American image and interests by the denying aliens the protections given to US citizens is going to be much greater than any gains achieved by it.
It has already caused friction with European allies and it is bound to cause more and will cost the US in support from other countries. It is giving ammunition to those who dislike the US and it is not an intelligent thing to do.
Personally I find it morally indefensible and practically dumb. But it does not make the US hypocritical.
Gad, is Pjen still on this topic? I also don’t see any hypocrisy in the actions of the U.S. It was declared very early on that U.S. citizens would not be subject to military tribunals. It would be hypocritical only if excuses were found to circumvent this statement. The treatment of foreign nationals might be questionable, but hypocritical? Exactly what statement made by any member of the Bush administration is being violated here? And if Pjen wants to keep quoting the Consitution, someone should remind him that the first sentence of the Preamble starts: “We the people of the United States…” The document clearly exists to protect the rights of American citizens. Assuming it can or should extend to all human beings is a stretch. Actually, I find it borderline offensive, since by implication it would overrule my country’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
I’m doubtful about the notion that foreign nationals will receive unfair trials. For one, any trial, conducted under any conditions can be called unfair by somebody. The most benign, gentle, nonthreatening traffic court could be bashed as a bastion of bias (oooh, alliteration!).
Trouble is, as far as I can tell, no trials have yet taken place so the claims of unfairness are wildly premature. Let’s see some evidence (transcripts of a rigged military trial mght suffice) before we draw any conclusions. Or maybe Pjen would find that to be less satisfying than proceeding without evidence.
Let’s leave the word hypocrisy aside. I have declared in the past many times and I repeat here that I consider the different venues depending on nationality immoral and repugnant. Furthermore, they are the cause of innecessary friction with America’s allies and of unnecessary tarnishing of America’s image abroad. America would gain by not using them. The fact that they have not been used yet is irrelevant. The fact that the law allows them is all that counts. If a law is enacted which allows cops to shoot at drivers just for speeding, I will oppose that law before the first driver is shot and the fact that “well, they haven’t used it yet” is not a good argument. The fact that they can doing is what counts. If you can defend different venues in this case you can defend racial segregation on the “separate but equal” kind. Sorry, but I find it morally indefensible. Legal maybe, but not moral.
If the purpose of all this stupid exercise is to protect the lives of innocent people then all suspected criminals should be treated equally harshly and equally protected by equal rights. I do not care if the military tribunals might be fair. It is the different venue for citizens and aliens that I obeject to. If the military tribunals are so equal then they should be good enough for US citiens accused of terrorism. And if they are not good enough for Americans they should not be good enough for foreigners.
Other countries, including European allies, have expressed grave reservations about this and have expressed that they may not cooperate with such military proceedings. Does the US really need to piss off its allies for no practical gain? It is not only immoral, it is a stupid thing to do.