2) He wants to close Guantanamo. I know he hasn't done it yet, but it can't be easy.
It's not about being easy or hard, but about the gigantic class action civil suit awaiting the U.S. government the minute they release them.
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And rightly so.
You break it you get to buy it. It's amazing that so many people bought in to that stuff under Bush, I always thought that if there is one thing America will forever have to live with then it is Gitmo. Just like the Dutch have their colonial crimes and the Germans have world war II.
Some things can not be excused. Keeping people imprisoned without due process is such a crime that history will definitely remember, and that's besides the 'details' such as torturing them.
And doing it on foreign soil so you can pretend it's not an American thing is even more disgusting. If you do a thing like that at least have the balls to do it in your own country. And if that is impossible then don't do it.
Someone ought to end up in the Hague over that one.
To play the devil's advocate...
USA has a prison system that is 19th century, compared to the rest of the western world. How much worse is Guantanamo than that? Also, afaik prisoners of war can be held until the conflict is ended. The conflict in Afghanistan is arguable not ended.
What I find shocking is the water boarding and sending people for interrogation to places which are really barbaric.
Edit: A couple of grammar changes.
> USA has a prison system that is 19th century, compared to the rest of the western world. How much worse is Guantanamo than that?
Good point, so maybe upgrade the US prisons to Guantanamo Bay standards ?
> Also, afaik prisoners of war can be held until the conflict is ended. The conflict in Afghanistan is arguable not ended.
But it isn't a war. Besides that, even if it was there are pretty strict guidelines on the treatment of prisoners of war. So either they're civilians that have been arrested for crimes or they're prisoners of war. You have to choose and then play by those rules. Inventing new terms ("enemy combatants") isn't going to convince anybody but the most gullible.
> What I find shocking is the water boarding and sending people for interrogation to places which are really barbaric.
This we fully agree on. Even torture can be outsourced it seems. But I think that does not remove the responsibility for it.
So either they're civilians that have been arrested for crimes or they're prisoners of war. You have to choose and then play by those rules. Inventing new terms ("enemy combatants") isn't going to convince anybody but the most gullible.
The term is "unlawful combatant" and has the meaning of someone on the battlefield out of uniform. In the case of spies, they can be summarily executed perfectly legally - i.e. without breaking the Geneva Convention (which doesn't even apply in this case - it requires both sides to be signatories, and the Taliban aren't).
Certainly the Geneva Convention doesn't have legal force in this case, but I like to think that one can aspire to high standards of behaviour without the threat of legal sanction. In other words, do we obey Geneva Convention rules because we're forced to, or because it's right?
Well, I agree, we are supposed to be the "good guys".
But in response to "there are pretty strict guidelines on the treatment of prisoners of war" - those guidelines, by their own definition, carry no legal weight in this context. Since the Taliban fighters are not uniformed members of the Army of a Geneva Convention signatory, they aren't actually "prisoners of war" for a start...
I don't disagree with any of the above.
What gets my goat a bit is that you see attacks on Guantanamo for breaking the Geneva Convention (or even, as here, that it is as shocking as the Nazi mass murders!) -- and when it is pointed out that is a non-serious argument, there is never an answer.
I never could stomach propaganda written by people that know better. I like to think "the good guys" should be better than that, too.
Idealists lie, where pathos go in -- integrity go out.
>>Good point, so maybe upgrade the US prisons to Guantanamo Bay standards ?
That was as an answer to your original description of Guantanamo as equally shocking as the mass murders of Jews/Gypsies in WW II.
I would, without doing a Devil's Advocate, describe that position as lacking a sense of proportions.
>>But it isn't a war.
It is not a war in Afghanistan? Please inform the media.
>>So either they're civilians that have been arrested for crimes or they're prisoners of war.
But I just did a Devil's Advocate argument that the prisoners aren't treated worse than normal US' prisoners (which is horrible, but still much better than most any 3rd world prison system).
I thought the Red Cross had access to Guantanamo?
Edit: Grammar, sigh.
Edit: Historically, all countries I know of with terror problems (USA, Germany, Israel, Italy, Great Britain, etc) has played loose with human rights interpretations. I don't see a reason to judge the US harsher than others.
> That was as an answer to your original description of Guantanamo as of an equal shocking standard as the mass murders of Jews/Gypsies in WW II.
> I would, without doing a Devil's Advocate, describe that position as lacking a sense of proportions.
I wasn't comparing them on an objective level (which I think was pretty obvious), merely stating that they are all things that will be with those respective countries for a long time.
> It is not a war in Afghanistan? Please inform the media.
From the wikipedia article on the 'war' in Afghanistan:
"The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) did not authorize the U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom). There is some debate as to whether UNSC authorization was required, centered around the question of whether the invasion was an act of collective self-defense provided for under Article 51 of the UN Charter, or an act of aggression.[42]
The U.S. Administration did not declare war, and labeled Taliban troops and supporters terrorists rather than soldiers, denying them the protections of the Geneva Convention and due process of law. This position has been successfully challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court[43] and questioned even by military lawyers responsible for prosecuting affected prisoners"
And:
http://www.hrw.org/en/node/79295
So, to call it war is not clear cut. A war is something that is declared between nation states and the conflict in Afghanistan misses quite a few of the pre-requisites.
For the people in the region the difference is much less important, but in international law such things do matter.
> But I just did a Devil's Advocate argument that the prisoners aren't treated worse than normal US' prisoners (which is horrible, but still much better than most any 3rd world prison system).
So, do you waterboard people in your US prisons ? Do you torture them ? Desecrate their religious objects ? And far worse than that ?
> I thought the Red Cross had access to Guantanamo?
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/01/30/letter-obama-asking-ac...
http://ccrjustice.org/newsroom/press-releases/leaked-guant%C...
Apparently they were allowed to visit off-and-on during the Bush years, and then restricted in all kinds of ways, since Obama came to power this has changed but it is unclear whether they now have full access to the facility, I can't find any evidence of that.
I'm not American -- don't just assume people's nationality because you don't like their arguments.
>>I wasn't comparing them on an objective level (which I think was pretty obvious), merely stating that they are all things that will be with those respective countries for a long time.
See the note above, re that all countries I know of with terror problems thread on the limits of human rights.
>>The U.S. Administration did not declare war, and labeled Taliban troops and supporters terrorists rather than soldiers,
Afghanistan is a conflict against organized units which as standard behavior do terror attacks against civilians and misuse civilian dress.
Anyway, it is continuing military operations since the invasion 2001, where the term is used in the standard press.
I don't have a problem with the Afghan invasion -- and neither do neutral countries like Sweden which send soldiers there.
If you harbor terrorists which attack other countries' civilians, you might get invaded. I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing -- it is an incentive for countries to not destabilize other countries.
>>So, do you waterboard people in your US prisons ? Do you torture them ? Desecrate their religious objects ? And far worse than that ?
Check spr.org. How popular do you think these people would be, if put in US prisons?
Second, I do honestly think the judgment on US here is harsher than e.g. the British and their handling of IRA, etc.
Third, desecrating religious objects isn't illegal in civilized countries. (And is it really documented?)
Fourth, lots of the stories coming from Guantanamo prisoners are certainly made up. There are innocent people incarcerated (all prisons have that). The guilty are in the terror business -- which is more or less the propaganda business.
Edit: Grammar, sigh.