4 ms·

Great idea. Here's some ideas to toss around. Maybe.. - We cannot have a proper trial for these men because many were actually innocent but should we turn them

by utunga 13y ago

Great idea. Here's some ideas to toss around. Maybe.. - We cannot have a proper trial for these men because many were actually innocent but should we turn them loose now we would lose a huge amount of face (but whose face would be lost under an incoming president?) - We cannot have a proper trial for these men because many were actually innocent but now we have turned them into such dangerous killers, that, given their freedom they would now pose a significant thread (it seems unlikely to me that untrained non-killers could've learnt the skills of trade craft while under this type of detention regime). - We cannot have proper trial for these men because if we did then in the nature of an honest trial, certain secrets would come out and that can't be allowed.. (seems more plausible?) What else?

dhimes 13y ago
For me, I think your third point would do it if (and only if) I had been shown that the workings at Gitmo saved tens of thousands of lives. It would also be a secret worth keeping (from your enemies) that Gitmo was working to that extent.
- DannyBee 13y ago
  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 the inner workings of some of this stuff, I no longer believe that. I've seen how too much sausage is made. I believe what you think would have been true once, but simply isn't anymore. That isn't to say there aren't young, idealistic folks in government. There are plenty. There just aren't any old, idealistic folks in power anymore ;)
  - dhimes 13y ago
    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 spectrum of pathological traits, and perhaps DC tends to attract and keep those with certain types of pathologies, I still like to think that most people are trying to do the "right thing" but in situations that are enormously complex. Back to my thought experiment: You are Obama. You truly believe that torture is horrible and wrong. Yet when you are briefed on our operations you learn that information obtained as allowed us to derail a few large scale terrorist attacks. Do you close it down? If you do and a bomb goes off at the World Series killing thousands, how would you feel? Again, complex.
    - DannyBee 13y ago
      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.

by utunga 13y ago

dhimes 13y ago

For me, I think your third point would do it if (and only if) I had been shown that the workings at Gitmo saved tens of thousands of lives. It would also be a secret worth keeping (from your enemies) that Gitmo was working to that extent.

DannyBee 13y ago
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 the inner workings of some of this stuff, I no longer believe that. I've seen how too much sausage is made. I believe what you think would have been true once, but simply isn't anymore. That isn't to say there aren't young, idealistic folks in government. There are plenty. There just aren't any old, idealistic folks in power anymore ;)
- dhimes 13y ago
  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 spectrum of pathological traits, and perhaps DC tends to attract and keep those with certain types of pathologies, I still like to think that most people are trying to do the "right thing" but in situations that are enormously complex. Back to my thought experiment: You are Obama. You truly believe that torture is horrible and wrong. Yet when you are briefed on our operations you learn that information obtained as allowed us to derail a few large scale terrorist attacks. Do you close it down? If you do and a bomb goes off at the World Series killing thousands, how would you feel? Again, complex.
  - DannyBee 13y ago
    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.