political foo: Guantanamo

[alpharaposa]

People are talking about Guantanamo again, and where the prisoners will go when it's gone. What does it matter? I asked. But Guantanamo's a symbol. A symbol of how terrible we are. And they want it gone.

We're such terrible monsters. Our soldiers catch these men. Men who rape women for not wearing enough clothes. Men who destroy homes and mosques because the people there don't pray enough. Men who pretend to surrender, just to get close enough to try to kill our soldiers. Men who take hostages, then cut off their heads and record their screams to broadcast them to the world. And our soldiers don't shoot them. We round them up and put them in a place where those men get meals and prayer rugs and Korans no infidel has touched. Guantanamo is such a terrible symbol of how horrible we are. The men we catch get fat in our prison. Sometimes, we keep them awake or play loud music. If we're really vicious, we might pour water over their faces, but always careful so that they aren't in danger of dying.

Maybe, if we were great men like them, we'd have shot them in the street. Our soldiers could have stopped wearing their uniforms and standing in front of innocents, and took them off and hid behind them.

And surely, we say, we do horrible things in these prisons. Look at Abu Ghraib!

Yes, look at it. Do you know what happened in Abu Ghraib before we were there? Husseins were there, and they raped women in front of their husbands. They killed children in front of their parents. And when they'd had all the fun they could, they took people and fed them feet-first into wood chippers so that they'd feel the most pain before death possible.

We stopped that.

And then, some small, mean people came with us, who did, yes, mean and cruel things. Nothing bloody or painful, but embarassing and stupid and cruel and classless. And we stopped that, too.

Not because the media found out. The military was almost done with its investigation into the matter when the pictures were shown on the media. The trials would have happened with the trumpets or without. But it should never have happened, of course, so we're horrible people because it did.

You know what I think is really terrible? What the great crime in Iraq is, that we'll have to answer for years from now?

Do you recall when Saddam sent his forces to invade Kuwait? We stepped in to save our ally (or for oil, take your pick). We drove him off. And then we told the Kurds, Rise up. Revolt and we'll protect you and help you.

And the Kurds rose up. And we didn't do a thing.

Saddam killed them. He took the gas that he wasn't supposed to have or use ever again, and he killed them. He gassed whole villages. He killed thousands of them. His men put them in mass graves, and now only God knows all the people buried in the desert because we didn't follow through.

Better to have never said anything at all than to promise help and not show.

Saddam held his own people hostages. He told us we had to buy his oil, or his people would starve! And we told ourselves, "We have to buy it! If we let him starve them, we're responsible!"

Twelve years of this, before we stepped in and got rid of him. It took, what, three weeks? That whole time, we could have stepped in and flicked him away. Sure, the aftermath would have been hard, but we have 12 years of standing by and watching him torment his people on us. This could have all been over by now. It could have been over and Iraq a free nation literally years ago. Even the rebuilding would be well in the past by now.

But because we refuse to let men that no other nation will even hold in a jail cell go free, we're horrible people. Because we won't treat them, who tried to kill their own people as well as ours, as if they were our people, we're the terrors.

I'm so sick of it all.

Comments

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

Me too.

[zeeth_kyrah]

You minimize the negative and accentuate the positive; but Abu Ghraib was a symbol of abuse, and Guantanamo is a symbol of abduction and torture. As for your description of waterboarding (and all the rest), you make it sound like it's as innocuous as taking a shower. "Oh, we're just noisy neighbors down the street, and we poke people who are falling asleep on their feet, and we water them like newly sprouted plants, all with the utmost of care and concern. Nobody ever really got hurt by any of it!"

From the top to the bottom, our leadership and everyone who followed those orders are responsible for broken minds and dead prisoners. We as a nation (because we are responsible for the leaders we select) are responsible for false and misleading confessions, made to stop terrible actions, people making up anything they can say between confused and panicked breaths in order to make the badness stop -- and we are responsible for wasting resources following up on all these empty leads, because someone confused "confession under duress" with "valid information".

We abducted people who committed no crimes. We tortured people with nothing to confess. We broke treaties and worldwide conventions created for the protection of our own citizens and soldiers, which were based on the presumption that if someone breaks the treaty, then their own people are valid targets for the same abuses which were inflicted.

On the matter of encouraging the Kurdish uprising, who was President at that time, and does it matter?

And in any case, the question is not whether these prisoners at Guantanamo were treated "as if they were our people", but whether they were treated as people at all. They certainly weren't before our media stepped in.

Guantanamo was, and is, a failure in every respect. What few actual jihadists and killers were put there could likely have been placed elsewhere. The excuse for putting them in Cuba is that it's not actually in the United States, and thus offered additional moral license to the people who worked there. "They're worse than the terrible people in our own prisons, and hey, we aren't even in America, so of course the protections they would have on our own soil don't apply to them here! (Even though this base is still property of the US Government, and thus actually part of our national territory just like a diplomatic embassy....)"

I think you need to peek outside your usual political echo chamber and take a few deep breaths.

[yechezkiel.livejournal.com]

Most of all, it simply does not matter if Guantanamo closes. The Obama administration has not curtailed any of the significant powers the Bush admin. has claimed to conduct the war on terrorism. It's simply a political fight, and one Republicans only look ridiculous trying to win. It's simple party politics on both sides: Democrats want it closed because the Other Guy did it, Republicans want it open because the Other Guy doesn't. Meanwhile, the status quo in every other respect remains intact. So, you should either be A) irritated about that or B) be satisfied with it and not get in the kids's fight.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Why do you assume that few of the prisoners in Guantanamo were actual terrorists?

[zeeth_kyrah]

Because nobody's produced numbers saying "this many people were kept here, this many were proven criminals", but there are a number of stories which suggest that many of the people kept at Guantanamo were not, and only a few were. Also the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" theoretically applies not just to citizens, but also to enemies. I mean, isn't that what trials are meant to prove? I'm sorry, I mean closed-session military tribunals which have regularly not allowed prisoners to see the evidence against them?

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what you mean by "proven criminals." The inmates at Guantanamo are claimed to have been enemy combatants rather than criminals, and thus the criminal justice procedures to which you refer would never have applied to them.

It's rather a simple point of law -- I'd be almost surprised at you for not understanding this after 7 1/2 years of warfare, except that I know that it's a common pose on the Left.

[zeeth_kyrah]

So it's not a criminal act for someone to make war without authority? It's not a criminal act to commit assault, to attempt murder?

And hey, we've had a ton of mercenaries (meaning non-military combatants) acting on our behalf (see Blackwater, et alii) -- how are they classified? Is "acting on behalf of an authority" enough to change everything? I know that a civilian with a weapon (even if they never use it) is considered a mercenary, and thus a combatant, but how are such persons treated when captured, and to whom are they given when prisoners of war are being released?

In any case, if these are enemy combatants but not criminals (for example, someone carrying a rifle for self-defense, who has never actually fired at our people), then why are we conducting these tribunals? Why put them on trial if they have done nothing for which they can be charged? Shouldn't we remand them to the care of their government? I rather suspect that trials are necessary simply to determine whether any of them have actually committed crimes or made war against us.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

You minimize the negative and accentuate the positive; but Abu Ghraib was a symbol of abuse, and Guantanamo is a symbol of abduction and torture.

Do you consider Abu Ghraib to have been a "symbol of abuse" mainly by Saddam Hussein's regime? If not, why not, considering that Saddam murdered tens of thousands of people there, and at worst it's been claimed that one or two of our prisoners died there?

Futhermore, the prisoners at Guantanamo were mostly taken in open battle, and few if any of them were tortured. In fact, for the most part the Guantanamo Bay prisoners have been treated better than even the Western Allies treated their prisoners in World War II -- and our prisoners in World War II were captured fighting against us in full uniform and military organization, and were thus subject to the Geneva Conventions -- which the Guantanamo Bay prisoners are not.

We broke treaties and worldwide conventions created for the protection of our own citizens and soldiers, which were based on the presumption that if someone breaks the treaty, then their own people are valid targets for the same abuses which were inflicted.

First of all, the articles of the Geneva Conventions which we signed do not apply to enemy combatants fighting both out of uniform and under no recognized command structure. You might want to actually read the relevant articles before you make yourself look like a fool by statements of this sort.

Secondly, if you want to go under the rule that "if someone breaks the treaty, then their own people are valid targets for the same abuses which were inflicted," doesn't this mean that, after 9-11 (in which the enemy both deliberately attacked civilian targets and murdered civilians they had made prisoner) that the Terrorists would become "valid targets for the same abuses which were inflicted?" Or are you only applying this principle in one direction?

[zeeth_kyrah]

Abu Ghraib is a symbol of American abuse. We took it over, we told people we would be different, and then we slid down the moral slope of "these people are prisoners, and inherently worth less".

As to the treatment of inmates at Guantanamo, media attention certainly improved it. Were these people treated better than our own criminals in our prisons at home? I'd say it was about even, but then, I haven't made or seen an in-depth comparison, just partisan talk.

Regarding the Geneva Conventions: Common Article 2, third point:
Although one of the Powers in conflict may not be a party to the present Convention, the Powers who are parties thereto shall remain bound by it in their mutual relations. They shall furthermore be bound by the Convention in relation to the said Power, if the latter accepts and applies the provisions thereof.

Now, yes, the Geneva Conventions primarily apply between "High Contracting Parties", but there are also definitions regarding those who spontaneously rise up (and bear arms openly), and then in Article 5 of the convention regarding Prisoners of War:

Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal.

This could be taken to refer to the tribunals currently under way: That these tribunals have the primary goal of determining status under the Geneva Conventions, rather than criminal prosecution. But that point has not been made by the relevant authorities, which leads to the current call against tribunals and for court trials, on the presumption that these are criminal proceedings.

I am using http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/y3gctpw.htm as my reference for these quotes, by the way.

Now, as to "breaking treaties" being a loss of protection... that seems to be how I read it: by breaking the relevant treaties and conventions, your moral authority is lost, and other participating parties have these particular restrictions dropped -- but may still be under other obligation, whether moral or legal in nature, to treat prisoners fairly.

The question of torture is separate from the question of imprisonment, but the two are intertwined in the symbol of Guantanamo.

[aefenglommung.livejournal.com]

Terrorists is just another word for pirates. They're not glamorous. Not dashing. Not heroic. They're violent and depraved. And the answer for them both is the same.

You give them a trial. The sooner, the better. If they're found guilty, then you hang them. (Or put them to labor in some prison, I suppose, but terrorism/piracy has usually been seen as a capital offense.)

[yechezkiel.livejournal.com]

This.

The problem with the US has been that it let these PR disasters happen by not being prompt about trial and then execution/hard labor. Had speedy tribunals and the like been the MO from the beginning, there would have been nary a peep from all but the usual suspects. As it was, the situation has got normal persons irritated and embarrassed.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

The problem with the US has been that it let these PR disasters happen by not being prompt about trial and then execution/hard labor.

Part of the problem is that Dubya was too restrained in his actions. There was good cause for many of the terrorists at Guantanamo to be put up on charges of war crimes, or even violations of martial law (lethally resisting duly constituted authority under conditions of martial law is a capital offense), convicted and executed. To show our fecklessness in this regard, consider that John Walker Lindh wasn't executed -- and he actually bore arms against his own country!

[stryck.livejournal.com]

And yet we get grief for not being even more lenient. That's what is so dizzying about all this. We were kinder than anybody else ever has been in similar circumstances. And we're still bastards by the left's standards.

There's just no winning this fight. Even while Obama adopts the same policies (because even he can't just throw out our country's security in one toss, it seems), they still tell us it was all wrong.