GOP Gitmo Fearmongering Continues

Pete,

Democrats used Gitmo as a symbol of why the Bush administration was evil. They promised to close it in order to rid the world of this terrible place.

Then they got elected and reality set in.

The prisoners at Gitmo aren’t criminals and they aren’t POWs – they are enemy combatants. Buildings that are designed for criminals don’t lend themselves to housing these enemy combatants like the Gitmo facility does. Personnel who are trained to deal with criminals do not have the specialized knowledge to deal with enemy combatants.

There is only one reason to go through the time, expense and dangers of closing Gitmo – for a personal public relations event for Obama.

It's true that that's a typical campaign ad which paints an issue in black and white and stokes emotional response.

Here are Senators McCain and Graham giving a more reasoned argument, not for keeping Gitmo open but for figuring out SOME solution rather than just pretending we can close it without further planning for how to handle the remaining detainees.

CStanley -- Thanks for the link. I had missed that.

I agree that the McCain and Graham op-ed is much more substantive than the featured video. As you note, it doesn't directly answer the questions I raised, but its core argument is effectively the same point I'm trying to make: We need a serious, fact-based, non-emotional discussion about detainee policy. In that vein, I especially appreciated this line from the McCain/Graham op-ed:

"Congress must be involved in crafting detainee policy. It is critical for all branches of government to work together to develop solutions to the complex legal problems presented by this war."

I think it was also relevant that McCain and Graham raised the issue which Dem partisans are trying to keep awfully quiet about- Bagram. Afghanistan is still an active front, and we have to decide how to handle detainees there who are actual enemy combatants (not people who may have been caught up in a broad net in Iraq, who probably never should have been detained in the first place at Gitmo.)

Seriously: I’m willing to be convinced.

They aren't trying to convince you through reason, they're just trying to scare the sh*t out of you. It's been the same game since America got attacked on their watch in 2001.

Seriously: I’m willing to be convinced. But rather than lowest-common-denominator tactics, could we please engage in an intelligent, fact-driven discussion of the merits of Gitmo versus all other facilities under U.S. control?

If you are forlorned over using negative emotion to influence decisions that should be rational, you need to ask the Dems why they aired the daisy-cutter ad back in '64.

How's that for taking the famous "you did it then, so we can do it now" meme back to its ultimate origin!!

CO is right about the daisy cutter ad bringing in this era, but really it's part of just about all political campaigning to one degree or another. I hope that those who are criticizing here will also note the fearmongering over health care that we're about to be deluged with as that debate gets underway. Is it really rational discussion about health care reform to present one family's plight or another's? Does that really inform the voter of what a particular plan is likely to do to help the overall situation, or is the intent really to get voters scared and pissed off that people in our country can't afford healthcare under the current system and lead the voters to throw up their hands and say "Just do something, anything!"

Or on the other side, we'll see the fearmongering over loss of patient choice. (I've already seen a bunch of those ads.)

So, in all of these cases, can't reasonable people pretty much ignore the noise from both sides and just discuss the issues?

President Bush and Co asserted we are at war. Are we not?

Prisoners are hence prisoners of war. Enough with these idiotic euphemisms. "Enemy combatants" is a made up euphemism for prisoners of war, and a dangerous one. Isn't every US soldier an "enemy combatant" to our enemies? If we are in a war (you know, armed conflict) in Afghanistan, any prisoners we take there are prisoners of war. We should treat them in accord with Geneva Conventions; in fact we are bound by law to do so.

Technically, though, while we're splitting hairs, 9/11 was a spectacular case of arson, a criminal act by non-state organized crime. Right? Either way, we have legal means of dealing with it. If it's arson, the police, FBI and Interpol were probably the appropriate bodies to investigate and prosecute. If we are now expanding "acts of war" to apply to non-state actors, then we are at war and our prisoners are prisoners of war.

CS, prisoners (not "detainees" they are IMPRISONED) at Bagram and everywhere else we control, should be treated as POWs just as we want our imprisoned soldiers to be treated. Period.

CS, this post is not about healthcare, but I agree that there is fearmongering on both sides. On that issue, if our goal is to provide the best health care for all Americans at the lowest cost, then rationally speaking, we have to consider the comparative cost of for-profit and non-profit delivery of payment to doctors (that's all it's about; assessing the claim and sending a check). A nonprofit approach is cheaper.

GD- Disagree with the 'arson' or criminal construct since there was in fact a declaration of war by al Qaeda and expressed intent to seek destruction of our nation, not just a couple of buildings.

So I'd agree with the war scenario, and the need to follow the protocol of war. I think you're off on interpretation of Geneva Conventions though because my understanding is that Protocol 1 sought to amend them to give POW status to nonuniformed guerrila fighters, but most countries have refused to ratify it or have done so only with exceptions. That's because part of the original intent of the Geneva Conventions was to deter that type of warfare (where guerillas blend in with the civilian population and use them as human shields) by granting the protections only to those who fight in uniform or with some identifying sign to distinguish themselves from civilians.

Personally I'm conflicted- I can see both sides of that, and I guess I'd say that we should determine a new protocol for dealing with the evolving practices of modern warfare.

GD,

“…..should be treated as POWs just as we want our imprisoned soldiers to be treated…”

We’ve gone through this a number of times, but here it goes again.

In order for us to maintain the spirit of the Geneva Conventions and to assure our soldiers are treated well under those rules, we cannot extend the same benefits to enemy combatants (hostile forces fighting outside of the rules set down in the Conventions) as we do to legitimate soldiers.

If we do, in order to feel some sort of moral superiority for the moment, we will say to those who engage in any future conflict that regardless of their actions, they will still receive the same benefits in captivity as those who acted in a civilized manner.

Innocents will die in greater numbers as a result of your need to assert your compassion for these enemy combatants. By alleging that the difference between an enemy combatant and a soldier is purely semantic, you are dishonoring all legitimate soldiers.

Look past your hate for Bush and Cheney and try to use reason to understand the words that are used and the logic present in the rules for armed conflict.

These congress critters are doing nothing but paying lip service about closing Gitmo. It's a classic case of the NIMBY argument, isn't it? I would agree with many here that we need to close this place, but seriously, where are these prisoners (or "enemy combatants") going to go? No congressmen or women are at the front of the line saying 'please, bring them to our state'. Everyone seems to want the place closed, but only as long as the prisoners held there go to someone else's state.

And I would think that we have had enough of the fear tactics, regardless of who is perpetuating them. Let's have an honest discussion. Let's close the place, fine. Where do the prisoners go?

Has American politics ever not been based on some sort of fear-mongering? The earliest days of our republic were filled with partisan smears over loyalty to Great Britain or France, over "softness" on the Indian question, over the role of the Bank of the United States in "strangling" American farmers, over the slave issue on both sides, etc.

In American politics we have these debates on three levels at once:

1) The political level, where partisan operatives horsetrade and get a deal that works.
2) The intellectual level, where serious analysts debate the policy implications.
3) The emotional level, where the media and politicians demagogue and simplify the issue to get the horsetraded and analyzed deal passed - or defeated.

This is as true for the prisoners of war and health care as it was the debate over the Whiskey Rebellion in the 1790s.

In my view, Obama's campaign promise to close GITMO was a preceding example of emotional appeal over rationale analysis. While it allowed him to appeal to the TMV voter base, it now leaves the pragmatic difficulty of delivery.

How much worse can four cinderblock walls in one location be compared to another set of four cinderblock walls somewhere else?

If he didn't like the treatment of detainees, fine, he is now the President....change it. Bring in the Sisters of Mercy and ChrisWWW to take care of them instead of soldiers. Why create all this extra mess of trying to find a replacement........concrete is concrete.

Beyond the fear mongering, which is indeed a tool of the party not in power but most recently by that same party when it was in power, the ad is dishonest.

As we learned from the bi-partisan (gasp!) 9/11 Commission investigation and elsewhere, the Bush administration had ample warning that attacks on high-density targets using hijacked passenger jets was in the offing.

Bush's CIA had, in fact, identified three of the hijackers as being in country. Bush's FBI had, in fact, identified two others.

But that vitally important information was not only suppressed, it was never shared although both Rice and Cheney had been separately warned of the possibility of an imminent attack. Both, of course, were still fighting the Cold War; Rice at least has had the guts to admit that.

Gitmo will be closed. Real-live terrorists and suspects deemed too dangerous or problematic to be sent back to their homelands will be incarcerated in maximum security federal or military lock-ups in the Lower 48 with spotless escape records. Casualobserver's mother-in-law will not be savaged by some jihadist who walked off a county work farm. The world will go on.

Shaun's right- clearly the Bush administration should have shut down all commercial aviation in the US after that early Sept. PDB. While they were at it, they could have declared martial law in all 'high density' population areas and rounded up all Muslims who'd overstayed their visas. I'm sure everyone would have agreed that those were the right steps to have taken.

The scary part is that Shaun was a “journalist”.

Can you imagine what the stories he wrote were like when he can’t even grasp the basic facts of events leading up to 9/11?

And Gandelman laments the passing of newspapers. I wonder why people choose not to rely on crack journalists for their information.

You guys are trying to have it both ways. You claim Al-Qaeda, which has no flag or uniform, 'declared war'. That is every bit as genuine as saying the mafia 'declared war'. And jwest claims that it's the uniform that makes one a soldier. Hmmmm. Pretty weak. By that standard our entire diplomatic corps, off duty soldiers or even hunters in foreign lands are 'enemy combatants'. Remember that many of those rounded up were not shooting, had no weapons and no papers to identify them as military personnel. There's a name for that, but it's not enemy combatant. That name is 'civilian'. When a civilian (like all those Jews rounded up, remember them?) gets designated as an 'enemy combatant' to declare them outside the protection of the law, then NONE of us have the protection of the law.

CStanley,
As Shaun points out, we knew who some of the hijackers were. Maybe we should have arrested them and interrogated them to see what they knew. That doesn't require shutting down all air travel.

Um, we knew who they were in hindsight, but we didn't exactly know they were hijackers before they were hijackers, Chris. And I'm not disagreeing with the conclusions of the 9/11 commission report which highlighted the agency turf battles and wall of separation that may have prevented a clearer picture from developing. Obviously I was engaging in some hyperbole to suggest that the only course of action would have been to round up all Muslims who didn't have current visa status, but it's still not accurate to portray the lapse of nabbing those particular guys as an administration that overlooked obvious steps- anymore than it would be to assert that Clinton should have acted to take out Bin Laden when a couple of opportunities presented. The whole point of the commission report was to show systemic errors, yet Shaun attempts to make it about individual culpability.

Aside from that, aren't we getting off of the actual thread topic quite a bit with that?

Chris,

There was a liberal-built wall to prevent useful information being passed from one agency to another.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-04...

If you’ve only been reading liberal blogs and TMV over the past 8 years, it’s tantamount to having been in a coma. Time to catch up.

Agree, Chris. That seems like a pretty knee-jerk comment for you CS. Those who had overstayed their visas could have and should have been deported. The FBI could have increased security procedures for airline workers, like those who placed the box cutters on the planes. And the reinforcement of doors to the cabin, coupled with a rule that the pilot does not open that door during a crisis, would seem to be no-brainer cautionary steps.

But this is about Gitmo. The GOP claims that jail isn't a safe place for criminals is extremely odd.

GD- both extremes represent people who 'want it both ways.'

On the one hand, guerilla fighters seemingly want to be able to engage in warfare which makes it impossible for the other side to protect against civilian casualty at all, but also get the protections of POW status afforded to them if they're captured (despite not following war protocol themselves.)

On the other hand, you're right that one could go to the extreme of rounding up innocent civilians.

I'm not advocating either one of those things. I'm saying that since we now face enemies who aren't state sponsored and use the tactic of blending in with the population, we need to find a middle of the road approach which doesn't ensare the innocent civilians with the guerilla fighters, but also shouldn't give them full POW status because they themselves broke important standards of war (which were put in place in order to protect civilians as much as possible.)

I'm not even saying that that middle of the road approach should be much different than POW treatment, but I think we need to consider how to get back that original intent of the Geneva Conventions to afford certain rights to those who themselves agreed to fight according to certain terms.

Your last comment may have cross posted with the one I made right before it GD, but I'll again note that my comment about rounding people up was made sarcastically and was purposefully exaggerated. I do agree with some of the increased security measures you mention, but then again it's easy to say that with perfect 20:20 hindsight. And again, that's what the commission intended- to point out what we can learn, not who was to blame.

Does anybody address the lies and distortion ofg this video. Balloon Juice response with a link to some decent Liebruls is spot on.
http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=20927
We have the likes of Manson and the Unibomber in prison, plenty more room for the Gitmo crowd here.

Rudi,

Manson and the Unabomber are U.S. citizens who committed crimes. We have laws, courts, prisons and decades of experience dealing with criminals of this type.

Gtmo detainees are enemy combatants. These are foreign citizens who engaged in hostile acts against the U.S. in time of war without identifying themselves by wearing a uniform or by acting under the orders of a legitimate government. We have decades of military experience dealing with people in this category, however, under the benevolent guidance of Bush and Cheney, these people were not summarily executed as was the common practice.

John Cole isn’t bright enough to see the difference, but I’m sure you are.

I agree with Rudi. Heck, they can come here to the Bay Area and sit in San Quenin with Charlie Manson. If the argument is that they are so scary and mean that it will be dangerous to have them closer, or that our prisons aren't good enough to hold them, why would we be any safer with them in Cuba? Didn't that kid make it to the states on an innertube from Cuba?

I think Switzerland has agreed to take a bunch of the Gitmo folks as well, in return for leaving their banking system alone.

jwest,
Common Article 3 of the Geneva convention provides protection for all prisoners regardless of their status. They have protection from torture and summary execution.

But don't let silly liberal concepts like "law" and "morality" get in the way of your desire to torture and murder suspected enemies.

I reject the "enemy combatant" designation completely. Those who break our laws, citizen or foreigner, are criminals. Those captured in a war are prisoners of war. Those who break the international code of conduct are tried and punished, as we did with Nazis and Japanese who tortured our soldiers. There is not a single person or act that requires us to have a different designation for them. It is illegal to torture criminals and it is illegal to torture prisoners of war. Trying to create a class that we can justify torturing is morally wrong and deplorable. It's not a matter of being "smart enough" (smart ass) to see this imaginary distinction.

Chris, GD,

You’re right. I guess you’re both just too smart to fool.

I was making all that silly “enemy combatant” stuff up. There is no such thing and of course, all people that are detained for any reason in a war zone – soldier, saboteur or civilian – are to be read their rights, given a lawyer and tried in the U.S. courts.

Sometimes, we neo-Nazi conservatives just need to see what we can get away with. If it wasn’t for liberals like you two who know big words and other smart things, we would be able to torture young children and puppies.

Drat! Foiled again.

There is no such thing and of course, all people that are detained for any reason in a war zone – soldier, saboteur or civilian – are to be read their rights, given a lawyer and tried in the U.S. courts.

Soldiers and saboteurs should be treated like POWs... and why are we detaining civilians?

roro80: "Heck, they can come here to the Bay Area and sit in San Quenin with Charlie Manson."

I'm sure Nancy Pelosi is all for that and will settle this matter once and for all. The problem is that as much as everyone (at least on the Dem side) wants the place closed, no one has put forth a viable alternative place to put them. Here in South Carolina, the state folks are crafting legislation and what not that forbids the Feds from even thinking of bringing them here to Charleston or elsewhere in the state. I believe this talk has been going on elsewhere; isn't Brownback talking with folks in Missouri about crafting something similar to keep Ft. Leonard Wood off limits?

“... and why are we detaining civilians?”

Because civilians are the ones harboring the puppies we long to torture.

Silly Liberal. Don’t you know anything about Evil?

OK, jwest. Official definition. "Enemy combatant: Any person in an armed conflict who could be properly detained under the laws and customs of war." (note that they're subject to Geneva Conventions)

"Unlawful combatant: An unlawful combatant or unprivileged combatant/belligerent is a civilian who directly engages in armed conflict in violation of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and may be detained or prosecuted under the domestic law of the detaining state for such action."

The Geneva Conventions apply in wars between two or more states. Article 5 of the GCIII states that the status of a detainee may be determined by a "competent tribunal." Until such time, he is to be treated as a prisoner of war.[2] After a "competent tribunal" has determined his status, the "Detaining Power" may choose to accord the detained unlawful combatant the rights and privileges of a POW, as described in the Third Geneva Convention, but is not required to do so. An unlawful combatant who is not a national of a neutral State, and who is not a national of a co-belligerent State, retains rights and privileges under the Fourth Geneva Convention so that he must be "treated with humanity and, in case of trial, shall not be deprived of the rights of fair and regular trial."

That, Mr. Torture Proponent, is the law.

jwest
"Gtmo detainees are enemy combatants. These are foreign citizens who engaged in hostile acts against the U.S. in time of war without identifying themselves by wearing a uniform or by acting under the orders of a legitimate government"

You mean like the French resistance in WW2. Perfect, you're making the Nazi argument.

You know how well that worked out for them, don't you?

exactly, HemmD. American and British soldiers were executed in Angola under that designation in 1976. Why in the world are we legitimizing the torture and murder of American soldiers in the future? Why do Republicans hate our troops?

GD,

"Spies and terrorists may be subject to civilian law or military tribunal for their acts and in practice have been subjected to torture and/or execution. The laws of war neither approve nor condemn such acts, which fall outside their scope. However, nations that have signed the UN Convention Against Torture have committed themselves not to use torture on anyone for any reason. Citizens and soldiers of nations which have not signed the Fourth Geneva Convention are also not protected by it (Article 4: "Nationals of a State which is not bound by the Convention are not protected by it".), whether they are spies or terrorists. Also, citizens and soldiers of nations which have not signed and do not abide by the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions are not protected by them. (Common Article 2: "[The High Contracting Parties] shall furthermore be bound by the Convention in relation to [a Power which is not a contracting party], if the latter accepts and applies the provisions thereof" (emphasis added).)"

Yes, let’s figure out what the law is.

HemmD,

Yes, it’s exactly like the Germans and the French Resistance. When someone in the French Resistance was captured while trying to sabotage a rail line or other military target, they were subject to summary execution.

This is the same treatment we gave German saboteurs who were caught in the U.S.

So, even though we know that some of our detainees are being held for no good reason, they should be thankful they weren't just murdered on the spot?

Word.

There's a couple things you keep missing jwest. One, our prisons are perfectly capable of detaining convicted terrorists. They already are. Two, not everyone at Gitmo is guilty or was doing anything remotely dangerous when they were captured.

No minds are being changed here. Jwest not only condones and rationalizes the deplorable and inhuman acts depicted in the Abu Ghraib photos, but believes it is proper for other countries to treat our soldiers that way. Pathetic.

I fear we have let the discussion gravitate once again towards partisan demonization and violated Pete's desire for solely pragmatic relocation resolutions.

To that end, since all of this is a Dem initiative, I think it only logical that the detainees be allocated out to the Blue States (where they will be accorded more welcome and respect as merely products of disadvantaged homes) and be enrolled in work release programs with ACORN since their CV's generally meet the employment requirements.

They can then spend the rest of their days working to pay back Republicans by enrolling more Dem voters, both real and imaginary. The Dems can be satisfied by their good deeds and be rewarded by cementing the likelihood of reelecting Dem candidates. Further, they will not have to suffer more annoying videos from Republicans and can turn their attention to more earth-changing issues like what Hannity might have said last night or parse every last word uttered by some 19 year old Miss America contestant.

Makes inordinate sense and everybody goes home happy, no?