4 ms·

I'm going to say something that seems to be way more controversial than I expect, but we also haven't really had a reign of terror in awhile.

pjc50 7y ago
Well, we did, but we exported it. In the case of the UK it was Northern Ireland; thereafter for both it was Afghanistan and Iraq. Admittedly there we took over from a different reign of terror, but the whole situation remained lawless. The US built a special law-free zone so it could apply indefinite unaccountable punishment to a few dozen people. A police microstate.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  I always saw Guantanamo Bay as proof that the cases against these people were for the most part so flimsy that they would not have held up in an actual court of law.
  - orthoxerox 7y ago
    I think the evidence was conclusive enough, but obtained in a way that made it inadmissible in any non-marsupial court. So the US had two options: try and free known terrorists who now harbour even deeper hatred against the US after having been tortured, or keep them in legal limbo until they die. We know which one they picked.
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      That's a possibility, but not all of the defendants in Guantanamo bay were captured in the same manner. For instance, there were a number of children there and I highly doubt the evidence would warrant holding children in this way or possibly even at all. Yes, won't someone think of the children. You raise another interesting point, that the torture and possible other crimes the United States committed would have come out in full. So what harm could a little legal black hole do? You are only a nation ruled by law if you apply the law equally, the damage that Guantanamo Bay's continued existence does is incalculable in the longer term, and not just to the United States.
    - PavlovsCat 7y ago
      > free known terrorists who now harbour even deeper hatred against the US after having been tortured Even more perversely, I've read people say that about people may very well not be terrorists at all, but by now they probably resent the US so much, it still would be a threat to release them. I just have to think of someone attacking a random person in the street, then choking them, then realizing the mistake but not letting go because they already attacked them and they might retaliate, so it's best to just "see it through". It boggles my mind.
      - Mirioron 7y ago
        And the citizens know of this and nothing is done. Doesn't that make them complicit?
        kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
        Most of America believes than Bin Laden worked in collusion with Saddam Hussein. They are oblivious to the body count in Iraq (assisted by an indifferent media). The citizens don't know much of anything at all.
      - baybal2 7y ago
        > I just have to think of someone attacking a random person in the street, then choking them, then realizing the mistake but not letting go because they already attacked them and they might retaliate, so it's best to just "see it through". It boggles my mind. Well, when you left so many half choked people around, no wonder when so many want to kill you. See, US always carries through its promise to "finish off" old adversaries. Saddam was once a US ally, but much more of a frenemy. US waited for decades to dispose of him. Ghaddafi, almost the same, once got a grudge against US no longer giving him carrot, and 30 years later, bang! Castro - they tried for whacking 20 long years, to no avail. Noriega - again, it took them near a decade to smoke him after their flirting with him went bad. A ton of other harebrained dictatorship in Latin America ended very similarly, the moment they antagonise US, the clock is set ticking. US may even keep supporting them enthusiastically, while supporting a coup against them: Arellano was a US darling until US threw a bananagate at him, then deposed his deposer. It went even more wild in Salvator, where US sponsored a free trip to Hague for both Daubuisson and Duarte, after supporting them both against each other. But ultimately that logic is both self defeating and amoral. Any war, no matter how tiny and "manageable" it looks like carries a lethal risk, eventually you will get killed no matter how tough you are. I can bring a parallel with life in a lawless city. People who survive the longest are not the strongest ones. The "tough guys" on other hand, almost always tend to get killed in meaningless fights over stupid things because they can not concede a thing. Like a crime king of mid-naughties Moscow who was killed in a fight over... a parking spot, by a single hit to the head with a stone... I can not imagine that somebody who comes with such policy lines is an actual military man. Nobody who went through a real war, and not ended up a psycho, would ever meaninglessly provoke an enemy. But that reeks of doctrinalism of political theoreticians dressing up as generals. Very much along the lines of thought in places like RAND institute, or the more MBA-brained parts of Westpoint.
dkural 7y ago
If you are black in America, your neighborhoods got redlined and demarcated by highways, your children were called super predators and jailed, even after the civil rights movement your right to vote was curtailed (and still is), and before that, you were lynched with no justice following afterwards. You are given fewer pain medications even today, compared to white people. You are murdered with impunity by the police meant to protect you. That's a reign of terror. If you were a native in America, you were not always considered a US citizen until after 1924 (Indian Citizenship Act), and you were banned from voting in some states until 1957, your children were subject to medical experiments by Ivy-educated doctors, taken away from you, or subject to eugenics experiments. All your lands were taken away, or replaced with less productive ones, repeatedly breaking treaty after treaty, after mass genocide. That's a reign of terror. If you are a women, you couldn't vote until 1920, and barred from the top educational institutions that would've allowed you to make your case why women are deserving of education (that's a catch-22!). In some states, you don't enjoy real reproductive freedom, most states, no maternity leave, and until recently, no guarantee of healthcare. If you were a lesbian, black, or native, you of course had it and have it much worse. This one it is less clear to me is a reign of terror - due to lack of mass lynchings and killings that happened in the previous two cases. And btw, USA is an outlier in terms of healthcare, and other social benefits, not due its "freedom loving nature" (lack of freedom for most Americans should be clear from above see: lack of voting until 20th century), but because it was constructed as a slave state from the beginning and didn't want THOSE people from getting the social benefits.
fit2rule 7y ago
You should pay more attention to the refugee children who have walked across Europe to escape American wars. They definitely feel they have been reigned by American terror campaigns at the rate of one bomb dropped every twenty minutes for the last 19 years. Pay attention to the victims of America's wars. That is true terrorism.

pjc50 7y ago

Well, we did, but we exported it. In the case of the UK it was Northern Ireland; thereafter for both it was Afghanistan and Iraq. Admittedly there we took over from a different reign of terror, but the whole situation remained lawless. The US built a special law-free zone so it could apply indefinite unaccountable punishment to a few dozen people. A police microstate.

jacquesm 7y ago
I always saw Guantanamo Bay as proof that the cases against these people were for the most part so flimsy that they would not have held up in an actual court of law.
- orthoxerox 7y ago
  I think the evidence was conclusive enough, but obtained in a way that made it inadmissible in any non-marsupial court. So the US had two options: try and free known terrorists who now harbour even deeper hatred against the US after having been tortured, or keep them in legal limbo until they die. We know which one they picked.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    That's a possibility, but not all of the defendants in Guantanamo bay were captured in the same manner. For instance, there were a number of children there and I highly doubt the evidence would warrant holding children in this way or possibly even at all. Yes, won't someone think of the children. You raise another interesting point, that the torture and possible other crimes the United States committed would have come out in full. So what harm could a little legal black hole do? You are only a nation ruled by law if you apply the law equally, the damage that Guantanamo Bay's continued existence does is incalculable in the longer term, and not just to the United States.
  - PavlovsCat 7y ago
    > free known terrorists who now harbour even deeper hatred against the US after having been tortured Even more perversely, I've read people say that about people may very well not be terrorists at all, but by now they probably resent the US so much, it still would be a threat to release them. I just have to think of someone attacking a random person in the street, then choking them, then realizing the mistake but not letting go because they already attacked them and they might retaliate, so it's best to just "see it through". It boggles my mind.
    - Mirioron 7y ago
      And the citizens know of this and nothing is done. Doesn't that make them complicit?
      - kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
        Most of America believes than Bin Laden worked in collusion with Saddam Hussein. They are oblivious to the body count in Iraq (assisted by an indifferent media). The citizens don't know much of anything at all.
    - baybal2 7y ago
      > I just have to think of someone attacking a random person in the street, then choking them, then realizing the mistake but not letting go because they already attacked them and they might retaliate, so it's best to just "see it through". It boggles my mind. Well, when you left so many half choked people around, no wonder when so many want to kill you. See, US always carries through its promise to "finish off" old adversaries. Saddam was once a US ally, but much more of a frenemy. US waited for decades to dispose of him. Ghaddafi, almost the same, once got a grudge against US no longer giving him carrot, and 30 years later, bang! Castro - they tried for whacking 20 long years, to no avail. Noriega - again, it took them near a decade to smoke him after their flirting with him went bad. A ton of other harebrained dictatorship in Latin America ended very similarly, the moment they antagonise US, the clock is set ticking. US may even keep supporting them enthusiastically, while supporting a coup against them: Arellano was a US darling until US threw a bananagate at him, then deposed his deposer. It went even more wild in Salvator, where US sponsored a free trip to Hague for both Daubuisson and Duarte, after supporting them both against each other. But ultimately that logic is both self defeating and amoral. Any war, no matter how tiny and "manageable" it looks like carries a lethal risk, eventually you will get killed no matter how tough you are. I can bring a parallel with life in a lawless city. People who survive the longest are not the strongest ones. The "tough guys" on other hand, almost always tend to get killed in meaningless fights over stupid things because they can not concede a thing. Like a crime king of mid-naughties Moscow who was killed in a fight over... a parking spot, by a single hit to the head with a stone... I can not imagine that somebody who comes with such policy lines is an actual military man. Nobody who went through a real war, and not ended up a psycho, would ever meaninglessly provoke an enemy. But that reeks of doctrinalism of political theoreticians dressing up as generals. Very much along the lines of thought in places like RAND institute, or the more MBA-brained parts of Westpoint.

dkural 7y ago

If you are black in America, your neighborhoods got redlined and demarcated by highways, your children were called super predators and jailed, even after the civil rights movement your right to vote was curtailed (and still is), and before that, you were lynched with no justice following afterwards. You are given fewer pain medications even today, compared to white people. You are murdered with impunity by the police meant to protect you. That's a reign of terror. If you were a native in America, you were not always considered a US citizen until after 1924 (Indian Citizenship Act), and you were banned from voting in some states until 1957, your children were subject to medical experiments by Ivy-educated doctors, taken away from you, or subject to eugenics experiments. All your lands were taken away, or replaced with less productive ones, repeatedly breaking treaty after treaty, after mass genocide. That's a reign of terror. If you are a women, you couldn't vote until 1920, and barred from the top educational institutions that would've allowed you to make your case why women are deserving of education (that's a catch-22!). In some states, you don't enjoy real reproductive freedom, most states, no maternity leave, and until recently, no guarantee of healthcare. If you were a lesbian, black, or native, you of course had it and have it much worse. This one it is less clear to me is a reign of terror - due to lack of mass lynchings and killings that happened in the previous two cases. And btw, USA is an outlier in terms of healthcare, and other social benefits, not due its "freedom loving nature" (lack of freedom for most Americans should be clear from above see: lack of voting until 20th century), but because it was constructed as a slave state from the beginning and didn't want THOSE people from getting the social benefits.

fit2rule 7y ago

You should pay more attention to the refugee children who have walked across Europe to escape American wars. They definitely feel they have been reigned by American terror campaigns at the rate of one bomb dropped every twenty minutes for the last 19 years. Pay attention to the victims of America's wars. That is true terrorism.