----- Original Message ----- From: "Gary Denton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <brin-l@mccmedia.com> Sent: Friday, June 10, 2005 3:16 AM Subject: Re: Gulags
On 6/9/05, Dan Minette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Gary Denton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <brin-l@mccmedia.com> > Sent: Thursday, June 09, 2005 2:40 PM > Subject: Gulags > > > >Dr. Cole is right. > > IMHO, he amplifies and mirrors one of the worst tendencies of the Bush > administration: seeing adversaries as evil incarnate and not willing to > believe that their viewpoints can be opposed, except by evil. >We disagree. >I don't see him as amplifying that administration trait. The prison at Guantanamo was >expressly set up to circumvent laws the US had on how to treat prisoners, POWs and >other combatants. That isn't clear to me. What is clear to me is that they didn't want the complication of bringing prisoners taken in a war into the United States. Let's look back at a few wars. It is clear that the general Viet Cong (Nam), Chinese (Korea), German or Japanese (WWII) prisoners would be covered by the Geneva convention, but no one was arguing that they had a right to either a trial under the US court system or quick release. Further, there was summary justice practiced in Europe with lower level German officers found guilty of war crimes. I think it would be useful to see what the rules as well as the practices were in past wars. So, IMHO, going to Gitmo was initially defendable. Some of the prisoners (AQ) were clearly not protected by the Geneva Conventions. That was fairly well established on list at the time, by reference to the conventions. If you look at what was expected by a number of people, military trials within a few months, and then sentencing, it was not inherently unreasonable. That didn't happen. The administration now has prisoners there for 2.5 years, and seems most willing to hold most of them indefinitely without trial. I think they are caught, having prisoners that they are sure will return to fighting the United States if released, but without sufficient evidence of criminal activity to convict, even in a military court. Their justification is, at least, slightly based in reality. There is a war on terrorism, and they have caught AQ unlawful combatants in this war. They have the right to hold them until the war is over. The difficulty with this rational is obvious. While the adversary(ies) we are facing are not simply criminals...they have had many of the resources available to nations at their disposal, the war on terror is not fixed in place and time as older wars have been. So, these men could be held until they die of old age because of the vague boundaries involved in the war on terror. I consider this wrong. But, I consider the idea that AQ is just a bunch of criminals that should be left to the courts to be wrong. I think we are in a new type of situation....one in which the rules need to be worked out. None of the old templates work. Hyperbola doesn't help this process. >The administration set out to get and obtained from their lawyers advise >that the Geneva Accords were "quaint" and that the president was entitled >to authorize torture if he felt it necessary. IIRC, the question was more limited. It was whether the US president would have to forgo state trips to Europe because violations of the Geneva convention would be an arresting offence when he was there. The answer was no. It is somewhat germane, because a Spanish judge is looking at charging the American servicemen who fired a round into a hotel that they mistakenly thought was the source of shots fired at them. >The actions by the administration violate the laws of the >military justice system and are legal and constitutional systems and have >only been possibly matched at the worst times in our history. I'd be curious to see examples of the established laws of military justice system has handled captured combatants that have not been covered by treaty on this. I think part of the challenge for the Supreme Court is that this is new legal ground....so they are being careful where they step. I won't consider 19th century cases, because I think that would be like shooting fish in a barrel....besides being part of a very different time. I can think of a number of 20th century cases that are worse than this, so I don't see how you can say only matched at the worst time in our history. The cases I'm thinking of span about the first 2/3rds of the 20th century. 1) Lynchings of 30,000 blacks in the first 30-40 years. 1000 lynchings per year is a large number. 2) The internment >100k Americans as a result of their ethnic background (Japanese) during WWII. 3) The legality of segregation. 4) The legality of Jim Crow laws All of these are examples of extensively practiced denial of the US constitutionally guaranteed freedoms for Americans. There are other things that our military has done, that were wrong but not unconstitutional. 1) The firebombing of cities with minimal military value. 2) The treatment of prisoners in our regular prisons. Prison rape is winked at by government officials on both sides of the aisle. There is no national outrage concerning this. You may think it is an outrage, as do others of us on this list, but it really is off the radar. 3) It's probable that all the German and Japanese women who had children with GIs were not in totally consensual relationships. I rather suspect that, if we go back in time, we'll find that the government wasn't too worried about prosecuting GIs for sexual assault. 4) The record of abuse of prisoners by the military had improved remarkably....or the taking of prisoners for that matter. Omar Bradly issued orders that no German snipers be taken prisoner. Our present record, with all the blemishes we see, still represents a significant improvement over WWII. >All of those instances in the past had been subsequently denounced. Some of the worst instances I mentioned have been. Others have not...at least not by the general consensus of American opinion. >I don't believe only evil people support this, many frightened people do. OK, I stand corrected, evil people and the emotionally immature people they dupe. :-) I think a better vantage point is that our standards have changed over the years....mostly for the better. But, I see very little recognition of this in Dr. Coles comments. Further, I see denial of the complexity of the situation. Instead I see a black and white description of the Republicans as a combination of the evil and their witless dupes and courageous freedom loving people like him trying to save the nation from evil. It also seems clear to me that he considers Republicans a far greater threat to the US than AQ. In one real sense, the difference between his views and Bush's revolve around unspoken assumptions about the nature of the world. For example, I see a tacit assumption on Cole's part that the US is so powerful that they only way it can be seriously harmed by others is if it does evil...because then it will reap what it sows. Bush, on the other hand, sees a very significant risk to the US, and a number of folks who would rather spend their time nit-picking the US than facing this risk. I see something in the middle. Even before 9-11, Sen. Kerry of Nebraska was speaking out about the significant risk from terrorism that existed. We were very lucky that the death toll was as low as it was. If the first plane didn't strike until the second plane did, we might be talking about tens of thousands of casualties. There is a real possibility of a bioweapon, or a small nuclear devise being detonated in the US. I'd rate a serious attack (>10k dead) as at least a 50-50 chance during the next decade. One of the biggest problems I have with overstatements on both sides of the argument is that they tend to take attention away from what is a very difficult question. How do we engage in a conflict with enemies that are not really nations, but have been strong enough to control nations? What risks are inherent in the lowering price of weapons that can kill tens or hundreds of thousands in one attack? What changes are required to assure our security, and which are overkill or a risk to liberty? I think there can be a very intelligent discussion on these questions, with room for reasonable people to differ. Gitmo was a failure, on a number of levels. I have no argument with that. I do find argument with statements that the administrations actions are so vile that they are "only possibly matched at the worst times in our history. I simply can't see the basis for such strong statements. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
