If the state can decide when human rights apply and when they do not then the concept is meaningless. This is no different from the soviet gulags. Spain has endured decades of terrorism and has just been hit by a terrible attack and they see no need to suspend due process or judicial guarantees. (I will add that now the USA is suddenly very interested and willing to cooperate in antiterrorism but there was a time when ETA was considered by the American government a “separatist group” and they could find refuge in the USA)
Human rights abuses are a disgrace when they are done by Al Qaeda or by the US government. if your best response is “that is just the way things are” then we could say the same thing when Al Qaeda hits. No moral condemnation, just the way things are when the times are tough. Nothing wrong with planting bombs and killing civilians if that’s what it takes to win. Tell that to the families who lost loved ones in madrid or New york.
The USA is being criticised all over the world for this and rightly so. It is also paying a price in international support and rightly so.
Pretty bad analogy. Compare the treatment given to German captured in by the US in 1943: link. Relavent bits, bolding mine:
They were 1) considered prisoners of war and 2) transported to the US. Neither of which has happened to Gitmo enemy combatants, who are being held at Gitmo precisely because it is not US territory.
Surely it is a waste of time arguing with people who are unable to acknowledge the gross human rights abuses going on at Gitmo. How can it be contentious to propose that the indefinite detention of any person without charge is an affront to any concept of justice and fucking outrageous? The US government is denying those held at Gitmo their most basic rights, ones which US citizens take for granted every day. It boggles the mind that there are people outside of the US administration that defend this.
The 3rd GC requires detainee whose status (POW, Detained Person, Displaced Person, whatever) be offered all the protections of the highest protect class.
(That is to say until a determination is made, you have to treat them as POWs.)
The detainees in Cuba are being treated as POWs. If a tribunal determines they are not worthy of that status, they can then be treated as criminals and tried.
You cannot bring to trial a POW for the ‘crime’ of fighting in a war. That is not illegal. Bringing these guys to trial would be a demotion of their status so to speak.
So they are being granted all the protections offered POWs even though some question if they deserve it. Right now they are not being punished. (They seem to have done nothing deserving of punishment.) They are being detained, removed from the battlefield in furtherance of military operations.
What you say is ridiculous and you know it. The US government does not recognise them as enemy combatants. They have no access to the courts to determine their status. they are not being afforded the status of POWs. And the US government knows pretty well what it is doing is most probably illegal and that is the reason it will not bring them to US soil.
The fact that the US government considers it can circumvent the spirit of the law on the technicality that it is outside US soil just boggles the mind. Even so, the gulags were legal under soviet law, but that did not make them right. Guantanamo is an abomination by western standards of due process and even basic decency.
They are being treated as enemy combatants despite what some yahoo government officials have said.
POWs do not need access to lawyers. They do not need trials. Soldiers are not (generally) criminals and so they cannot be tried for just being soldiers.
As they teach in law school, when something is technically true, it is true.
Look, stop lying. The US goverment accuses them of being “illegal combatants” which clearly implies breaking the law but yet refuses to try them. The notion that they are just enemy soldiers being held is ludicrous and the US government does not say that. It has accused them of being “the worst of the worst” and of committing attrocities.
They have been interrogated which is prohibited by the Geneva convention and they are most probably being tortured.
In any case, I do not care about the technicalities of US law. If it permits this then it is a disgrace just like Soviet laws which authorized the gulags were a disgrace.
Maybe lawyers can find a hole in the law which would make it legal for the US government to round up homosexuals, take them just outside the 12 mile limit and feed them to the sharks. The fact that it may be legal does not make it right.
Guantanamo is a shame on the USA and it has rightly garnered the criticism of the rest of the world.
Sailor, your emotional outburst is uncalled for. I am simply stating the views I hold. That is no reason to be called a liar. I have not called you names and I would appreciate the same common courtesy.
I would point out you seem to be confused.
The Usages and Customs of War are not US law. They are international law. It is not the Americans who wish to kill homosexuals, it is the Islamic Fascists.
Sir, if you do not care about the technicalities of the law you simply do not care about the law. Respect for the law is critical to our civilization.
No, Paul- you are confused, and it is precisely respect for the law which is being ignored by the Administration. John Walker Lindh, against whom there was a good deal more evidence than the majority of those being held at Gitmo, was not only returned to United States soil, he is being tried. European and Middle Eastern nationals are being held at Guantanamo. That is not respect for the law- it is an obvious concession to the fact that the electorate will bitch about Americans being held in the manner that the Gitmo detainees are, but couldn’t give a rat’s arse about foreigners.
Here I am afraid you are wrong. On becoming signatory to the Geneva Conventions, those laws become part of US law as a matter of US constitutional law.
Accordingly as the US military is in breach of those governing laws as a matter of routine and policy the main question is:
What punishments are appropriate for those war criminals in US uniforms patrolling Camp Delta.
3 years of war crimes against 700 innocent persons: Summary execution? Dishonorable discharge and lengthy periods of detention & hard labor?
Who knows? Only that US military honor demands it respects US law.
In any case, all violations of the Law of War are war crimes. Not all war crimes are (what we as civilians would call) felonies, minor violations require only minor punishments.
[QUOTE=Paul in Saudi]
Sailor, your emotional outburst is uncalled for. I am simply stating the views I hold. That is no reason to be called a liar. I have not called you names and I would appreciate the same common courtesy.
I would point out you seem to be confused.
The Usages and Customs of War are not US law. They are international law. It is not the Americans who wish to kill homosexuals, it is the Islamic Fascists.
Sir, if you do not care about the technicalities of the law you simply do not care about the law. Respect for the law is critical to our civilization.
Try to calm down.[/QUOTEYou are stating as facts things which are untrue. The prisoners at Guantanamo are not being treated as POWs nor are they being considred POWs. OTOH they are not being tried or formally accused of any crimes. That is illegal under US law and it is a disgrace. The fact is that this flies in the face of the Constitution of the USA and in centuries of western values and civilization. There is not one country on the face of the earth which has defended the USA on this issue and many, including most western-style democracies have criticised it. Just because your government is doing it does not make it right. The president of the USA has invented this new legal limbo to get around the Constitution of the USA in letter and in spirit and it is a very shameful thing to do for a country which should do better than that.
You are stating as facts things which are untrue. The prisoners at Guantanamo are not being considered to be POWs nor are they being treated as POWs. OTOH they are not being formally accused or tried of any crimes. That is illegal under US law and it is a disgrace. The fact is that this flies in the face of the Constitution of the USA and in centuries of western values and civilization. There is not one country on the face of the earth which has defended the USA on this issue and many, including most western-style democracies have criticised it. Just because your government is doing it does not make it right. The president of the USA has invented this new legal limbo to get around the Constitution of the USA in letter and in spirit and it is a very shameful thing to do for a country which should do better than that.
No, in fact the term ‘Illegal Combatant’ was ‘invented’ by the United States Supreme Court in 1942 in ex parte Quirin:
Unlawful combatants are likewise subject to capture and detention, but in addition they are subject to trial and punishment by military tribunals for acts which render their belligerency unlawful. The spy who secretly and without uniform passes the military lines of a belligerent in time of war, seeking to gather military information and communicate it to the enemy, or an enemy combatant who without uniform comes secretly through the lines for the purpose of waging war by destruction of life or property, are familiar examples of belligerents who are generally deemed not to be entitled to the status of prisoners of war, but to be offenders against the law of war subject to trial and punishment by military tribunals."
The distinction (of legal and illegal combatants) are based up the Second Hague Convention (not the Third Geneva Convention as I previously stated). Article One states that Legal Combatants (Those deserving of the protections of POW status) must:
be commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
have a fixed distinctive emblem recognizable at a distance;
carry arms openly; and
conduct their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war
In any case, the 3rd GC requires that persons whose status has not yet been determined must be provided the full protections until the Detaining Power determines they are unworthy. Here I find some he reports quite disturbing.
In truth, there are aspects of the present situation in Cuba that trouble me. I encourage you to read the applicable case law and statutes. You will see several perfectly legitimate points to raise in this debate.
Look I believe it is probably illegal but that is not my argument, my argument is that it is wrong and I am not alone in that opinion. If the law is right then it should be followed, if the law is wrong then it should be changed. In any case, I do not care to discuss the legality of the issue but the morality. I believe it is morally wrong and pretty much the whole world is of that opinion.
If the USA wishes to continue disregarding public opinion at home and abroad it can do that but it cannot avoid the condemnation and antipathy it is generating. It is losing sympathy and credibility and cooperation from other countries.
When everybody is telling you that you are wrong then maybe you should consider what the others are saying. Otherwise the USA runs the risk of alienating the rest of the world and bocoming a pariah like the Soviet Union was in its day. Next thing you now we could see GWB banging his shoe at the UN.
I had not seen this post when I posted the above. Again, I am interested in the morality of the issue not in splitting hairs over whether a blow job qualifies as sex.
Well, now that the technicallities of language used to describe them are out of the way… Maybe we can come back to the real issue of this thread.
Do you find it acceptable that people picked up at random on an Afghan (or other) location -including children (!) - are transported to an other country, locked up in questionable circumstances and got questionable treatment? And this for such a long time before they finally got out and yet aren’t cleared at all from all those false accusations (see the mentioning of the released that they were almost forced to sign “confessions” etc…), let be that they got any form of compensation.