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Gitmo Is Killing Me

nytimes.com

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Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#71

Post by GHFigs »

mudil wrote: post #41
dublinben wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congress deserves as much or more blame for this situation. They've prevented the President from carrying out his intended solution to this problem. Without their support, he is powerless to release these people.

dublinben: Can you substantiate your claim that Congress is responsible for this? Seems like Obama is the Commander in Chief and is the head of the Executive branch...

For example: http://www.webcitation.org/5jPWyaCDq

In a major rebuke to President Barack Obama, the Senate voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to block the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the United States and denied the administration the millions it sought to close the prison. The 90-6 Senate vote—paired with similar House action last week—was a clear sign to Obama that he faces a tough fight getting the Democratic-controlled Congress to agree with his plans to shut down the detention center and move the 240 detainees.

That's from 2009, but it's been an ongoing problem with defense funding bills since then.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#72

Post by vxNsr »

wyager wrote: post #58
cmsmith wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not defending gitmo, but why wouldn't we remember its defenders the same way we remember those who have suspended habeas corpus in previous eras [1]? [1] Abraham Lincoln : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus_in_the_United_Sta...

Lincoln was not the man we make him out to be. The Emancipation Proclamation was purely political. Lincoln wanted to split the country and pick up the bigger half. I suspect that, if not for the Emancipation Proclamation, we might call Lincoln a bad president.

I suspect that you have no idea what you are talking about and like many others on the internet, like to marginalize good people with your 20/20 hindsight.

What does that even mean? What would Lincoln gain by splitting the country in half? Do you even bother thinking about points before you make them?

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#73

Post by r0s »

Locke1689 wrote: post #34
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #17

Gitmo was the first thing that clued me that I had made a mistake voting for Obama's promises (not that McCain would have ever gotten it instead!). It was such a complete reversal that I immediately knew his promises were completely worthless. I appreciate that there may be anger outs people in Gitmo, but they have every right to a trial I have. The double standard of what human rights mean if you are a US citizen an…

The problem is that to close Guantanamo, you need funding to a least move the prisoners to another facility. Introducing them to the justice system would require the same. As every American should know, Congress holds the purse strings here and has denied said request. The President has no power here.

The President has the power and the obligation to publicly speak against this on the world stage.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#74

Post by potatolicious »

Joeri wrote: post #39
pacdavidson wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, as the wikipedia entry states, he has been on Berkeley's faculty since 1993. His return to Berkeley after being seconded to Bush's DoJ was met with heated resistance and continual protest (e.g. waterboarding enactments outside the law school). As a tenured professor, though, he couldn't be tossed out.

I don't believe this argument of impotence. If they wanted to throw him out, they would have. Tenure is not written down in the constitution. These 'we want to but we can't' arguments bother me more and more as i grow older. It's usually a pretty transparent excuse for not doing the right thing, by scared old men or ambitious young men.

Tenure doesn't work this way. The whole idea about tenure is to give academics the freedom to pursue things that are controversial to the public - i.e., you can research controversial things without being tossed out by the angry mob. You can afford to go full-bore on your research rather than play politics and PR with the public.

Tossing one tenured professor out is a simple thing. After all like you said, it's not written down in the constitution.

The problem with removing tenure is that it destroys trust in the tenure system. If one professor is stripped of tenure for being controversial, then no one is safe. For this reason the only way to lose tenure is to do something illegal, since that's really the only line you can draw that doesn't move very much.

Tenure is an all or nothing deal. The entire effect of protecting your faculty is completely nullified as soon as you violate your principle for one guy. The floodgates open and suddenly every prof that's doing something controversial becomes a target.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#75

Post by ThrowawyAcctLOL »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #17

Gitmo was the first thing that clued me that I had made a mistake voting for Obama's promises (not that McCain would have ever gotten it instead!). It was such a complete reversal that I immediately knew his promises were completely worthless. I appreciate that there may be anger outs people in Gitmo, but they have every right to a trial I have. The double standard of what human rights mean if you are a US citizen an…

> not that McCain would have ever gotten it instead!

How are you so sure of that? McCain's neither a saint nor a philosopher-king: his personal narcissism seems to rival Obama's, and he often seems to be successfully flattered and managed by those around him. But he erratically takes stands on principle, and he also has personal experience of both torture and prolonged imprisonment. And in fact he took an anti-torture position which, while it wasn't absolute, was well out ahead of other Congressmen and presidential candidates and was hardly calculated to win votes.

There's also the fact that whatever about McCain's personal inclinations, he or any other Republican president would have been under much sharper pressure from others on the issue. The people and institutions who were shouting so much about detention and torture and drone strikes under Bush and then became silent or muted under Obama (or indeed rushed to bestow on him a Nobel Peace Prize) would have continued shouting under McCain.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#76

Post by vxNsr »

I think the most important part about this OpEd is the comments appearing here and elsewhere: Lots of righteous indignation for this poor fellow who claims that he's completely innocent of any charges brought against him and if he could only talk to someone they would understand. He feels the need to kill himself to prove a point, such conviction.

What do they say about a prisoner and his crime? oh yeah: there's no such thing as a guilty prisoner in Jail.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#77

Post by r0s »

dublinben wrote: post #21
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #17

Gitmo was the first thing that clued me that I had made a mistake voting for Obama's promises (not that McCain would have ever gotten it instead!). It was such a complete reversal that I immediately knew his promises were completely worthless. I appreciate that there may be anger outs people in Gitmo, but they have every right to a trial I have. The double standard of what human rights mean if you are a US citizen an…

Congress deserves as much or more blame for this situation. They've prevented the President from carrying out his intended solution to this problem. Without their support, he is powerless to release these people.

It's more likely he's apathetic to the issue.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#78

Post by raganwald »

richardjordan wrote: post #3

The hypocrisy of the New York Times in printing this is shocking. The newspaper which did so much to whip up hysteria during the years of the Bush administration now trying to raise concerns about the inmates of Guantanamo is shockingly cynical. It's a shameful state of affairs that our political process is so broken we cannot deal with this situation in a civilized fashion, with investigations, trials and an end res…

The hypocrisy of the New York Times in printing this is shocking.

As opposed to thinking it but refusing to print it because it would involve conflicting with something they printed four or eight or twelve years ago?

I would hope that a newspaper could be trusted to reverse the opinions it prints.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#79

Post by r0s »

cmsmith wrote: post #55
lbarrow wrote: post #2

The defenders of Gitmo in this era will be remembered by our descendants with the same shame and disgust we feel when remembering the slave holders and segregationists of the previous eras.

I'm not defending gitmo, but why wouldn't we remember its defenders the same way we remember those who have suspended habeas corpus in previous eras [1]? [1] Abraham Lincoln : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus_in_the_United_Sta...

Maybe Civil War is a slightly different context, just throwing that out there.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#80

Post by [deleted] »

Joeri wrote: post #39
pacdavidson wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, as the wikipedia entry states, he has been on Berkeley's faculty since 1993. His return to Berkeley after being seconded to Bush's DoJ was met with heated resistance and continual protest (e.g. waterboarding enactments outside the law school). As a tenured professor, though, he couldn't be tossed out.

I don't believe this argument of impotence. If they wanted to throw him out, they would have. Tenure is not written down in the constitution. These 'we want to but we can't' arguments bother me more and more as i grow older. It's usually a pretty transparent excuse for not doing the right thing, by scared old men or ambitious young men.

[deleted]
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