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|4.26.06 @ 8:45AM|#
I know what the best hawkish response will be: The best hawkish response will be that we are dealing with a new type of threat, an enemy that is neither a state nor organized crime, and therefore none of the traditional models apply. So we need new laws, procedures, and standards.
OK, fair enough, maybe we do need new laws, procedures, and standards. The thing is, there's a difference between new laws and no laws. When the administration's defenders talk about "inherent powers of the executive" they are implying that the executive branch should be able to function in a legal vacuum.
As currently run, Guantanamo is a legal vacuum, and it's not a particularly efficient one: A significant number of innocent men are locked up, and a number of released prisoners have apparently gone out and joined the fight against the US. If those are the results that we get when the executive branch operates without oversight, then maybe we do need some checks and balances.
Go ahead, tell me that I'm pro-terrorist.
|4.26.06 @ 8:47AM|#
Dr. T:
I am SO ashamed that I once thought that we were doing the right thing by locking these people up in Gitmo.
That said, you are pro-terrorist ;)
|4.26.06 @ 9:18AM|#
Thank you, jf :)
BTW, to anticipate another objection, I'm also aware that you can't apply traditional rules of evidence when a person is captured abroad in an area where local authorities are some mixture of corrupt, incompetent, and hostile. OK, fine. Maybe we need new standards for certain circumstances. But, as I said, there's a difference between new standards and no standards.
Also, I would propose that if we must release the state from certain constraints in response to changing times, then we compensate by imposing some new constraints in response to changing times. I'm not sure where to go with that, but I know that information technology enables a much greater degree of transparency than previous generations could enjoy. Maybe something alone those lines. I toss it out for discussion.
VM|4.26.06 @ 9:37AM|#
"local authorities are some mixture of corrupt, incompetent, and hostile"
um, Dr. T: are you talking about the local gov't in Kabul or Washington???
oooooh. sooooo confused.
|4.26.06 @ 9:39AM|#
"I'm also aware that you can't apply traditional rules of evidence when a person is captured abroad in an area where local authorities are some mixture of corrupt, incompetent, and hostile."
I've heard this spouted an awful lot here, especially by people with 0 experience with criminal prosecutions, but I've yet to hear anyone actually detail what specific rules need to be ignored, why, and how do you address the issues of credibility and abuse of power that they were formulated to address in the first place?
It's all well and good that these people feel that they "need" to sacrifice the rights of other people for their own sense of security, but how about someone trying to justify it beyond just the normal pants-peeing?
|4.26.06 @ 9:44AM|#
quasibill-
You may be right. My point is that, even if we grant the assumption that something must be done differently, there's a big difference between a new law and no law. That's all.
|4.26.06 @ 9:55AM|#
The did the crime. Now they're doing the time.
In silly orange pyjamas.
|4.26.06 @ 9:57AM|#
You're all ignoring the elephant in the room:
last February, the government has cited such common behavior as wearing a Casio watch, carrying a gun, or staying in a guest house as evidence of a detainee�s membership in Al Qaeda or the Taliban. And what should we make of the fact that the government identifies the affiliation of some detainees as "Al Qaeda or Taliban" (emphasis added)? How strong can the evidence be if the government can�t even say which group a detainee supposedly belonged to?
Strong enough to satisfy the Pentagon�s Combatant Status Review Tribunals, which rely heavily on hearsay, admit coerced testimony, and presume a detainee has been correctly deemed an enemy combatant unless he can demonstrate otherwise. Since detainees are not entitled to attorneys at these proceedings and often cannot see the evidence against them because it�s classified, that�s a tall order.
The Bush administration nevertheless insists the detainees are getting all the process they�re due. That question may ultimately be decided by the U.S.
Longest. Hyperlink. Ever.
|4.26.06 @ 10:01AM|#
I've heard this spouted an awful lot here, especially by people with 0 experience with criminal prosecutions, but I've yet to hear anyone actually detail what specific rules need to be ignored, why, and how do you address the issues of credibility and abuse of power that they were formulated to address in the first place?
I will argue that we should be giving the captured people traditional US trials in the places where they are caught, public trials where the "insurgent" is let go if evidence is insufficient or not credible.
Doing this would do a whole lot more to spread the good Enlightenment word about classical liberal values than all the things the US and Canada have actually been doing in Afghanistan and Iraq. That is why we are different than them supposedly, because people have rights and their freedoms and human rights matter. You know, show these people that there is a sharp distinction between the US way of doing things (eg, with lawyers) and the Islamonutter way of doing things (mullahs, Hussein's executions).
I am sure some of the freed prisoners, the ones who were guilty but couldn't be proved so, would go back and be insugents again. I also think this affect would be more than counterbalanced by the number of insurgents dropping the violent struggle in the face of these powerful classical liberal values that so inspired the West over the past few centuries.
Instead we take the Gitmo approach, which makes us look like our classical liberal values don't run that deep and are, according, bushit. Instead we buy newspapers to spread the good word. Who do we think we are kidding?
Timothy|4.26.06 @ 10:12AM|#
You know, like JF, I used to be in the pro-Gitmo camp, but as more and more of this stuff comes out I've turned against it. I still think the "Koran abuse" story was overhyped, and that there's a pretty big difference between wrapping a dude in an Israeli flag and torturing him, but I've concluded that there's enough total garbage going on at Gitmo that it ought be shut down.
Amazingly, and I truly can't believe I'm saying this, I pretty much agree with what Dave W. says here:
I will argue that we should be giving the captured people traditional US trials in the places where they are caught, public trials where the "insurgent" is let go if evidence is insufficient or not credible.
Doing this would do a whole lot more to spread the good Enlightenment word about classical liberal values than all the things the US and Canada have actually been doing in Afghanistan and Iraq. That is why we are different than them supposedly, because people have rights and their freedoms and human rights matter.
Jury selection would be a problem, methinks, because I'd guess it's hard to find an objective jury in terrorism cases, but it might be worth trying.
|4.26.06 @ 10:44AM|#
"You may be right. My point is that, even if we grant the assumption that something must be done differently, there's a big difference between a new law and no law. That's all."
I know, and I think it's a fair question also. (I didn't mean to intimate that you were one of the people who makes that statement). Your sentence just gave an excuse to ask the question I wanted to ask! And, well, my question is related to yours, in that I'm asking what specifically needs to be changed, and what do they propose replacing it with to address the problems that they address?
Dave's idea isn't bad, but there would still be questions of jurisdiction and choice of law. I kinda like the idea of imposing U.S. procedure and applying local substantive law, akin to how the fed courts handle state claims. That might actually be a good solution for terrorists accused of planning an attack on the U.S....
|4.26.06 @ 11:40AM|#
Well, here is the thing...
I can understand being against the war, and people being against U.S. troops overseas. But, when it comes to fighting a "moral war", I think that is a contradiction in terms. Wars are brutal, terrible, horrible things that cause grave and incomprehensible suffering to countless innocent people. If you are not comfortable with that, then oppose the war, not one specific bit of suffering.
I mean, you all know that the Allies, during WWII (that war that everything thinks was moral and just and wonderful), intentionally tried to kill as many civilians as possible. The Allies intentionally bombed schools, childrens hospitals, residential neighborhoods, etc., with the specific purpose of killing and maining civilians. The British even had a plan to drop chemicals on German crops that would cause massive birth defects and deformities in children to lower German moral (and cause hysteria about the food supply)... they didn't carry it out because of practicle concerns, not moral concerns.
War is vicious and evil and terrible and disgusting. So if you oppose War, that makes a lot of sense. But opposing some random specific cruelty of war, without opposing the war itself, is a bit silly.
|4.26.06 @ 12:00PM|#
The US release 4 British citizens being held at Gitmo to the UK -- they were released upon landing by the government -- The British are hardly easy on terrorists, just ask the Irish -- those 4 were certainly innocent -- there is an excellent movie about their 'adventure' called 'The Road To Guantanamo' - I don't believe its available in the US yet by director Michael Winterbottom (24 Hour Party People, Welcome to Sarajevo).
|4.26.06 @ 12:07PM|#
Rex Rhino's Right!
When I was running the show we did'nt take no stinkin' prisoners, or detainees or what have you!
Today we have even better means to avoid all that prisoner-or-criminal mumbo-jumbo: Drop more daisy-cutters and let god sort them out! There will no habeas corpus windbaggery be in for wussy shysters when the towel-heads have been evaporated properly.
|4.26.06 @ 12:32PM|#
Mr. Le May,
Perhaps you misinterpret what I am saying (but you have been dead quite a few years, so I will forgive you).
I was not defending Guantanimo Bay, I was trying to say that you cannot oppose that type of thing unless you oppose the war that caused it. If people are disgusted by Guantanimo Bay, and want to stop the cruelty, that is fine by me. But lets then bring the troops home from Afganistan, and end our occupation.
|4.26.06 @ 12:55PM|#
Just saying "AlQ or Taliban" is an elephant right there. A guy could end up a Taliban soldier just by hanging around his home town and obeying the authorities there. If we can determine that someone really was a Taliban soldier, we should be working on how to rehabilitate him back home.
|4.26.06 @ 1:45PM|#
Isn't there some sort of web design/style rule that says a link shouldn't span 3 paragraphs?
|4.26.06 @ 11:53PM|#
The Guantanamo Bay facility is an instant reality check: evidence of why the Founding Fathers insisted on due process in the first place. They citizens gave the government a little bit of rope in what they thought were extreme circumstances and the government proceeded to commit shocking abuses of power the moment they slipped the leash.
And, frankly, mystifying abuses of power: why do they care so little, after all? It's as if they think they have something to gain by punishing innocent people. They seem to take a childish delight in not explaining themselves, showing off to the whole world how little oversight anyone really has over them.
It's almost like unbridled power has corrupted them somehow.
|4.27.06 @ 12:29AM|#
I'm pleasantly surprised that this thread didn't draw too many advocates of unchecked power.
It's almost as though this is a libertarian site, or something.
As The Rightwing Tide Recedes |4.27.06 @ 7:14AM|#
It is our time now, T.! OOOOweee we goan have big fun cutting that military. RCD will be spinning in his bomb shelterer. We will show JMJ that we know what lesserer taxeres really meanz.
|4.27.06 @ 11:32AM|#
I was trying to say that you cannot oppose that type of thing unless you oppose the war that caused it.
Care to justify that?
|4.27.06 @ 9:11PM|#
War is vicious and evil and terrible and disgusting. So if you oppose War, that makes a lot of sense. But opposing some random specific cruelty of war, without opposing the war itself, is a bit silly.
This assumes there are no moral warriors and that is demonstrably false. It assumes that war MUST include the atrocities you mentioned, like targeting civilians, and that is demonstrably false. It's a black and white, either/or argument that doesn't really hold water, I think.