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Gitmo Is Killing Me

nytimes.com

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Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#401

Post by WiseWeasel »

Locke1689 wrote: post #46
Zak wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems unlikely that Congress micromanages the budget of the Department of Justice to the degree that it could not initiate prosecution of detainees in the civilian legal system. Whether that would be a reasonable solution is debatable, but it's certainly within the President's authority to attempt. There's always the nuclear option: threaten to release the detainees if Congress doesn't provide funding for another…

This back and forth has happened many times. The Defense Appropriations bills that have passed Congress have forbid the President from using fund for any of these activities. There is no nuclear option. Veto is not an option. What people don't seem to understand is that this isn't a failure of democracy to act: this is what the American people want . We don't care that Guantanamo is open and we'd rather see it stay o…

The nuclear option is for Obama to give a presidential pardon to each of the prisoners on his way out of Office. I could respect that.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#402

Post by ankitml »

dhimes wrote: post #287
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…

Here's an interesting thought experiment: Imagine you are Obama, newly elected president. Under what conditions would you reverse yourself and let Gitmo stand? What information would you have to become privy to that you weren't before in order for you to change your mind?

First, I would return my nobel peace .

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#403

Post by madebylaw »

yardie wrote: post #207
madebylaw wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't look like anyone on this thread has even tried to look for what this man is accused of doing and why he's in Gitmo in the first place. You can find a dossier from the US DoD of this man at the NYTimes' own website: http://projects.nytimes.com/guantanamo/detainees/43-samir-na... tl;dr: Member of al-Qaida, bodyguard of Osama, fought in the front lines against US and coalition forces, consistently lied to int…

> I'm not sure what kind of court he would be 'tried' in considering he's not a US citizen. I wasn't aware that to be tried in court citizenship is a requirement.

You're right, I don't think citizenship is a requirement. I guess this was my vague way of saying that these prisoners are in a legal gray area as to what court they would be tried in, what their legal rights are, and what would constitute a 'fair trial'.

This seems to be actively debated in the upper echelons of US law and politics:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp#L...

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#404

Post by enraged_camel »

Camillo wrote: post #399
enraged_camel wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood why people got mad at Obama for not closing Gitmo. The president is not the king. He/she still needs approval from Congress to get most shit done. In the case of Gitmo, his initiative got blocked by politicians who were too worried about what voting yes would mean for their own political careers. For anyone who actually understands politics, the failure to close Gitmo was not Obama's fault.

Then Obama was counting on many people not to understand politics when he chose to make promises on things he wouldn't have the power to change.

An argument could be made that Obama was young, inexperienced and naive when he made those promises. But that's leaps and bounds different than accusing him of making promises and then breaking them. Because that implies malice. It implies that he lied. And I don't think we have any proof of that. Personally, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. He's not a perfect president, but he's not awful either (like the parent implies).

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#405

Post by tibbon »

dhimes wrote: post #366
tibbon wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, especially on #2. Let's have a new international war treaty that assigns basic human rights to all people

Be sure you figure out how to enforce it first, especially for those who kidnap kids and turn them into suicide bombers (apparently they give them a 'magic amulet' which they tell the children will protect them from the blast). http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/10/20121014102...

I don't think that we can change that. But what we can do is hold ourselves to a higher standard of decency and treat people the way we'd want to be treated.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#406

Post by gruseom »

gyardley wrote: post #326
Nursie wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know of another country that has it quite so bad. I know of nowhere else in the western world where people fly flags or drape themselves in the flag with anything like the regularity of the US. It really sticks out compared to everywhere else I've been, and I've travelled to/in 30+ countries now.

In my experience, we Canadians fly our national flag and wear flag-themed garb much, much more than Americans. Even more than in Texas, where people usually fly the American flag because they think it'd be rude to fly the Texas flag solo. I suspect this Canadian flag-waving has more to do with our insecurities than it does with our comparative level of patriotism - we're not all that different from Americans, so we g…

Fascinating. I'm Canadian too and have made similar observations, yet was surprised to read what you wrote. Our self-image is so strongly one of not being nationalistic that we're for the most part unconscious of this behaviour. Most Canadians would react to your comparison to Texas as an obvious joke or a weird paradox.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#407

Post by pasbesoin »

Camillo wrote: post #399
enraged_camel wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood why people got mad at Obama for not closing Gitmo. The president is not the king. He/she still needs approval from Congress to get most shit done. In the case of Gitmo, his initiative got blocked by politicians who were too worried about what voting yes would mean for their own political careers. For anyone who actually understands politics, the failure to close Gitmo was not Obama's fault.

Then Obama was counting on many people not to understand politics when he chose to make promises on things he wouldn't have the power to change.

Especially during his 2008 campaign, as much as (or more so, parsing the details of his language) making specific, topical promises, Obama... "preached" and promised to be an advocate.

I think that as much as in specific deliverables, "the Left" feels rather thoroughly betrayed, on that front.

In this specific instance, he should have called Congress out on their behavior.

People understand real compromise. They also understand that when the other party is completely intractable, there comes a time when you confront them on this. Or you lose power.

Or... your original position was actually different from what you projected.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#408

Post by vxNsr »

ucee054 wrote: post #259
vxNsr wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cute story but unless you know something I don't about his case which you're not sharing then it's just that... a cute story. If that's what happened well it sucks to be him but technically under the Geneva Convention and current laws of war, the US is allowed to hold him until the war ends at which point it must try him before a court (which can be a military tribunal) or trade him for it's own soldiers who are bein…

this guy is far from innocent If you have reliable evidence then put him on trial or else shut up.

we don't need to put him on trial until the war ends

And he doesn't need a trial, we just don't want him to go back out there and fight again which is totally fair and how POWs work. Take a look at the Geneva Convention, not the Wiki version but the actual thing either from the part that I posted or go to the UN website and take a look.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#409

Post by DannyBee »

dhimes wrote: post #346
DannyBee wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you strongly misunderstand what drives the political system. You are nowhere near cynical enough ;) There is no real good and bad anymore. Doing good and stopping bad is not what drives folks in DC. I was once like this. I thought people in DC were, by and large, doing things for the right reasons, and they mostly just had better info than I did. After living in DC for 13 years, and being privy to a lot of th…

This saddens me and I hope you are wrong. For 40 years DC was the center of my life. I was born there and raised in the suburbs (went away a couple of times for school). I worked in the defense industry a bit between degrees. I taught college there for a decade. I left the area ten years ago, and I found the political climate there nauseating when I left. While I acknowledge that the population at large carries a spe…

First, almost anything can be prevented by the torturing, killing, or detaining of other people, as long as you involve enough people:

Kill all terrorists -> no more terrorist attacks

Torture all terrorists -> learn enough to prevent attacks.

Nuke entire country -> nobody left in that country to attack you

Detain everyone you ever find on a battlefield -> unable to get back to battlefield

Trying to apply some cost benefit to these mechanisms is certainly complex, as you say, but that actually makes it worse here:

None of these complex cost-benefit tradeoffs are at all changed by Gitmo being there. There is no material difference in these tradeoffs between a prisoner in Gitmo and a prisoner in the US other than the legal rights being afforded the prisoner.

Instead, they try to say "well, they are in gitmo for a reason". This is actually completely irrelevant to preventing the next terrorist attack. Either you need to torture them/deprive them/render them/whatever or you don't. The fact that they are in Gitmo does not change this.

The only thing closing down Gitmo or not closing down Gitmo does is allow certain folks to try to play fast and loose with the legal and political realities around us having a constitution and being a nation of laws.

As an example: We find a guy. He may or may not have been complicit in terrorism (he was a driver for a bad person). He may know the location/time of the next terrorist attack.

Torturing him (or not), detaining him forever (or not) certainly presents complex tradeoffs. None of these tradeoffs change whether I put him in Gitmo or not.

The only thing putting him in Gitmo does is:

1. Often make us feel better

2. Allow you to try to deny him what would otherwise be various rights he would have if kept in the US

3. Keep him out of sight and out of mind, and enable you to more strongly control the public narrative about the guy.

As you can see, none of these are related to the complex tradeoffs involved in deciding what to do with them, only the legalities of those tradeoffs, and ability to convince the public of those tradeoffs. We should not play fast and loose with these legalities, we should be straightforward and clear, and accept the consequences.

So, if the argument is "well, if we close Gitmo, to get the same effect we'd have to make torture/deprivation/indefinite detention legal in some cases in the US" (which is what you seem to be saying), we've already got a problem, and it's not related to closing down Gitmo or not.

If we want to declare torture and indefinite detention is okay in certain cases, that should be a national discussion we have, because, as you said, it involves complex tradeoffs.

Right now, with Gitmo open, it enables a lot of folks to ignore having this national discussion, and thinking hard about which tradeoffs they are willing to accept.

This, of course, is why Gitmo is still open. It's the only available compromise position between the two currently extreme sides around what it is okay to do to in the situations you posit that doesn't involve either of them really losing.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#410

Post by mirkules »

enraged_camel wrote: post #389
parfe wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/ClosureOfGuantana... Obama's second full day in office. How is that a reversal? Congress then blocked any and all money which the administration would need to take action to close the base. http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/111/senate/1/196

I never understood why people got mad at Obama for not closing Gitmo. The president is not the king. He/she still needs approval from Congress to get most shit done. In the case of Gitmo, his initiative got blocked by politicians who were too worried about what voting yes would mean for their own political careers. For anyone who actually understands politics, the failure to close Gitmo was not Obama's fault.

"For anyone who actually understands politics, the failure to close Gitmo was not Obama's fault."

I disagree. For anyone that understands politics understands that things can get done by applying a significant political push. I think Obama symbolically tried, then threw his hands up in the air in defeat when he got some resistance from Congress. I assume this is because the political chips he would lose by pushing harder on closing Gitmo are chips he was not willing to lose.

Meanwhile, CISPA, which was already defeated once, is making its way through Congress again. It's a perfect example of "political push" (and if you read between the lines, that means "money").

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