7 ms·

So they would let you die? I'm not sure that's clearly more humane.

by thufry 13y ago

9h1d9j809s 13y ago
Yes, it is. If you make my life hell, at least give me the freedom to die.
madaxe 13y ago
Were I in the shoes of one of the kidnap victims at Guantanamo (for that is all they are - they are neither prisoners nor combatants, just abductees), I would not wish to continue that existence. The right to death is as important as the right to life.
- rayiner 13y ago
  Oh please. You can argue about whether the Guantanamo Bay detainees are being treated fairly as prisoners of war, but they were caught fighting against Allied forces in a war zone. It's an absurd characterization to call them "kidnap victims." And the U.S. does not recognize a "right to death" for anyone in the U.S. You can argue about that policy, but the Guantanamo detainees are not being treated inconsistently there. Our policies are strongly anti-suicide across the board. See: http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/guantanamo-is-not-an-anomaly-prisoners-in-the-us-are-force-fed-every-day http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/guantanamo-is-not-an-an....
  - epistasis 13y ago
    > but they were caught fighting against Allied forces in a war zone. Wow, that is incredibly misinformed. And even if it were true (it is not), it does not justify torture. Torture is always despicable, and there's a permanent moral stain on the nation that perpetrates torture, no matter who is being tortured. There is no excuse. No excuse.
    - rayiner 13y ago
      Torture is despicable, but there is an ongoing debate about whether anything going on at Guantanamo (as opposed to Abu Ghraib) is actually torture under the international definitions. It's not a settled issue like you're making it out to be.
      - yardie 13y ago
        > there is an ongoing debate Is this like the debate on climate change? Where 99.99% of the scientists agree it's man made, yet a few others think it's natural. > It's not a settled issue like you're making it out to be. Yeah, I think it's pretty much settled by everyone but the US government.
      - tptacek 13y ago
        It seems pretty clear that torture did happen at/around GTMO, and that it ceased (modulo force feeding) under Obama.
      - jayfuerstenberg 13y ago
        I think this is why Mod Def decided to volunteer for this procedure. He wanted to show us the degree to which it is or isn't torture.
  - flexie 13y ago
    Maybe they were caught on the battlefield, maybe they weren't. These prisoners were tortured and deprived of habeas corpus. Without a fair trial it's fair to question anything regarding their detention. Seeing it as kidnapping seems quite reasonable.
    - rayiner 13y ago
      That's fallacious reasoning. Just because they were treated wrongly in one way does not mean it becomes correct to mischaracterize "anything regarding their detention." And Guantanamo prisoners are getting habeas petitions heard: http://ccrjustice.org/GTMOscorecard http://ccrjustice.org/GTMOscorecard. It's not happening fast enough, and partly for logistical reasons (no U.S. state wants to host trials for them and foreign countries don't want them back), but it is happening.
    - tptacek 13y ago
      Enemy combatants do not have habeas corpus rights and never have. When Allied forces captured German soldiers in World War II, they were not required to present them to a judge and those soldiers weren't sentenced; they were held until the conflict ended. If Allied forces accidentally rounded up German civilians in the process, those civilians could also expect indefinite detention. In a world historical sense, such treatment is a mercy; in total war, the only alternative, of course, is to kill the detainees. GTMO represents a great moral failing of the United States, but let's also not forget that the USG is the lesser of two culpable parties; the greater responsibility lies with an irregular army that deliberately exploits its civilian host population to conceal itself, relying on the fact that retaliation will inevitably harm more innocents than fighters. The Taliban isn't the Viet Cong. The cause of the Taliban and "Al Qaeda" (whatever that means) is a lost one, fueled entirely by an obscene willingness to see thousands of innocent people murdered solely prolong the inevitable.
  - madaxe 13y ago
    Oh please. 1) Many (most) weren't "caught" doing anything, other than going about their business. The majority were kidnapped from airports. 2) "Allied forces"? We white. Them black. Therefore them bad. Try to see the world from a perspective other than your own. 3) "War zone" - no it wasn't. It became a warzone after most of those in Gitmo were disappeared. That's like saying that what happened to jewish people before WWII was fine because it became a war zone. 4) It's not a characterisation, it's exactly what it is, if you interpret the situation through the Geneva convention, which the US is inexplicably a party to.
    - tptacek 13y ago
      1. Many of them were in fact armed combatants. A significant problem in securing the release of GTMO detainees is that they were handled so clumsily that it was difficult to sort out which detainees were victims of circumstance and which were violent. Several people released from GTMO have later been killed or captured in armed conflict with NATO forces. 2. By "allied" he meant "NATO". There are plenty of "black" people in NATO. 3. Afghanistan was in fact a war zone long before 2001. At its most orderly, under the brutal control of the Taliban, it was a loosely organized state embroiled in a civil war destined to produce a breakaway non-Pashto state. Also: the word "disappeared" means something specific, and you dilute that meaning by using it here. The "disappeared" of Central and South America are so named because they're never heard from again; they're often murdered by death squads. 4. Nothing in the Geneva Conventions speaks to the definition of "kidnapping".
      - FireBeyond 13y ago
        "Several people released from GTMO have later been killed or captured in armed conflict with NATO forces." I think few things would want to make me take up arms more against an invader than the false imprisonment of myself or my family at GTMO for said act.
      - geon 13y ago
        > Several people released from GTMO have later been killed or captured in armed conflict with NATO forces. So kidnapping people and torturing them makes you enemies? Who would have thought...
  - pstuart 13y ago
    The are not all guilty: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/04/former-state-department-official-team-bush-knew-many-at-gitmo-were-innocent/275327/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/04/former-s... You, on the other hand, are guilty of providing moral support for this travesty.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    Neither characterization is true. GTMO detainees weren't kidnapped, but there's little evidence to suggest that most of them were actual combatants. It upsets me a little to see discussions about things like GTMO distracting themselves from the core issue. The problem isn't detention at GTMO, or drone strikes, or the citizenship status of targets. To engage yourself fully with any of those problems is to nibble around the edges of the real issue. The problem is that in 2001, Congress issued a declaration of war (that's what the AUMF was) against an ideology. At the time, that might have seemed sensible; a way to take the threat of armed terrorism more seriously than we had. But the problem with it is obvious and it's something Obama is facing down now: you can't eradicate an ideology, which leaves us in a permanent state of war. If we'd declared war against Afghanistan, the status of prisoners at GTMO would be clearer; we'd at some point declare the conflict over (we'd have to, because contra the Daily Kos left, the USG does not actually want to station hundreds of thousands of soldiers in Afghanistan) and the prisoners would be released.
    - rayiner 13y ago
      To be fair, the AUMF was not a declaration of war against an ideology. It was a declaration of war against whichever specific non-state military groups planned and committed the September 11 attacks and anyone who harbored them. From the AUMF: "(a) IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons." The AUMF refers to prevention of "future acts of international terrorism" but specifically authorizes force only against those who were involved with the 9/11 attacks.
      - tptacek 13y ago
        "Those nations, organizations, or persons [...] planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks [...] or harbored such organizations or persons" describes an ideology. The problematic word is "organizations". The most important lesson we should learn from the 2000s is "never allow the word 'organizations' (or any of its synonyms) to appear in an AUMF again". You can invade a nation, you can kill a person, but there's simply no clear definition of what it means to eradicate an organization.
DanBC 13y ago
People have the right to refuse medical treatment if they have capacity to make that decision. There is a range of choices - people die much sooner than they need to because they refuse blood, or people die a little quicker than they need to because they refuse painful cancer treatment. When someone refuses to eat they'll eventually need the medical treatment - force feeding - to keep them alive. Some of those people have capacity to make that decision. Others (people with anorexia) don't.

So they would let you die? I'm not sure that's clearly more humane.

by thufry 13y ago

So they would let you die? I'm not sure that's clearly more humane.

9h1d9j809s 13y ago

Yes, it is. If you make my life hell, at least give me the freedom to die.

madaxe 13y ago

Were I in the shoes of one of the kidnap victims at Guantanamo (for that is all they are - they are neither prisoners nor combatants, just abductees), I would not wish to continue that existence. The right to death is as important as the right to life.

rayiner 13y ago
Oh please. You can argue about whether the Guantanamo Bay detainees are being treated fairly as prisoners of war, but they were caught fighting against Allied forces in a war zone. It's an absurd characterization to call them "kidnap victims." And the U.S. does not recognize a "right to death" for anyone in the U.S. You can argue about that policy, but the Guantanamo detainees are not being treated inconsistently there. Our policies are strongly anti-suicide across the board. See: http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/guantanamo-is-not-an-anomaly-prisoners-in-the-us-are-force-fed-every-day http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/guantanamo-is-not-an-an....
- epistasis 13y ago
  > but they were caught fighting against Allied forces in a war zone. Wow, that is incredibly misinformed. And even if it were true (it is not), it does not justify torture. Torture is always despicable, and there's a permanent moral stain on the nation that perpetrates torture, no matter who is being tortured. There is no excuse. No excuse.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    Torture is despicable, but there is an ongoing debate about whether anything going on at Guantanamo (as opposed to Abu Ghraib) is actually torture under the international definitions. It's not a settled issue like you're making it out to be.
    - yardie 13y ago
      > there is an ongoing debate Is this like the debate on climate change? Where 99.99% of the scientists agree it's man made, yet a few others think it's natural. > It's not a settled issue like you're making it out to be. Yeah, I think it's pretty much settled by everyone but the US government.
    - tptacek 13y ago
      It seems pretty clear that torture did happen at/around GTMO, and that it ceased (modulo force feeding) under Obama.
    - jayfuerstenberg 13y ago
      I think this is why Mod Def decided to volunteer for this procedure. He wanted to show us the degree to which it is or isn't torture.
- flexie 13y ago
  Maybe they were caught on the battlefield, maybe they weren't. These prisoners were tortured and deprived of habeas corpus. Without a fair trial it's fair to question anything regarding their detention. Seeing it as kidnapping seems quite reasonable.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    That's fallacious reasoning. Just because they were treated wrongly in one way does not mean it becomes correct to mischaracterize "anything regarding their detention." And Guantanamo prisoners are getting habeas petitions heard: http://ccrjustice.org/GTMOscorecard http://ccrjustice.org/GTMOscorecard. It's not happening fast enough, and partly for logistical reasons (no U.S. state wants to host trials for them and foreign countries don't want them back), but it is happening.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    Enemy combatants do not have habeas corpus rights and never have. When Allied forces captured German soldiers in World War II, they were not required to present them to a judge and those soldiers weren't sentenced; they were held until the conflict ended. If Allied forces accidentally rounded up German civilians in the process, those civilians could also expect indefinite detention. In a world historical sense, such treatment is a mercy; in total war, the only alternative, of course, is to kill the detainees. GTMO represents a great moral failing of the United States, but let's also not forget that the USG is the lesser of two culpable parties; the greater responsibility lies with an irregular army that deliberately exploits its civilian host population to conceal itself, relying on the fact that retaliation will inevitably harm more innocents than fighters. The Taliban isn't the Viet Cong. The cause of the Taliban and "Al Qaeda" (whatever that means) is a lost one, fueled entirely by an obscene willingness to see thousands of innocent people murdered solely prolong the inevitable.
- madaxe 13y ago
  Oh please. 1) Many (most) weren't "caught" doing anything, other than going about their business. The majority were kidnapped from airports. 2) "Allied forces"? We white. Them black. Therefore them bad. Try to see the world from a perspective other than your own. 3) "War zone" - no it wasn't. It became a warzone after most of those in Gitmo were disappeared. That's like saying that what happened to jewish people before WWII was fine because it became a war zone. 4) It's not a characterisation, it's exactly what it is, if you interpret the situation through the Geneva convention, which the US is inexplicably a party to.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    1. Many of them were in fact armed combatants. A significant problem in securing the release of GTMO detainees is that they were handled so clumsily that it was difficult to sort out which detainees were victims of circumstance and which were violent. Several people released from GTMO have later been killed or captured in armed conflict with NATO forces. 2. By "allied" he meant "NATO". There are plenty of "black" people in NATO. 3. Afghanistan was in fact a war zone long before 2001. At its most orderly, under the brutal control of the Taliban, it was a loosely organized state embroiled in a civil war destined to produce a breakaway non-Pashto state. Also: the word "disappeared" means something specific, and you dilute that meaning by using it here. The "disappeared" of Central and South America are so named because they're never heard from again; they're often murdered by death squads. 4. Nothing in the Geneva Conventions speaks to the definition of "kidnapping".
    - FireBeyond 13y ago
      "Several people released from GTMO have later been killed or captured in armed conflict with NATO forces." I think few things would want to make me take up arms more against an invader than the false imprisonment of myself or my family at GTMO for said act.
    - geon 13y ago
      > Several people released from GTMO have later been killed or captured in armed conflict with NATO forces. So kidnapping people and torturing them makes you enemies? Who would have thought...
- pstuart 13y ago
  The are not all guilty: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/04/former-state-department-official-team-bush-knew-many-at-gitmo-were-innocent/275327/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/04/former-s... You, on the other hand, are guilty of providing moral support for this travesty.
- tptacek 13y ago
  Neither characterization is true. GTMO detainees weren't kidnapped, but there's little evidence to suggest that most of them were actual combatants. It upsets me a little to see discussions about things like GTMO distracting themselves from the core issue. The problem isn't detention at GTMO, or drone strikes, or the citizenship status of targets. To engage yourself fully with any of those problems is to nibble around the edges of the real issue. The problem is that in 2001, Congress issued a declaration of war (that's what the AUMF was) against an ideology. At the time, that might have seemed sensible; a way to take the threat of armed terrorism more seriously than we had. But the problem with it is obvious and it's something Obama is facing down now: you can't eradicate an ideology, which leaves us in a permanent state of war. If we'd declared war against Afghanistan, the status of prisoners at GTMO would be clearer; we'd at some point declare the conflict over (we'd have to, because contra the Daily Kos left, the USG does not actually want to station hundreds of thousands of soldiers in Afghanistan) and the prisoners would be released.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    To be fair, the AUMF was not a declaration of war against an ideology. It was a declaration of war against whichever specific non-state military groups planned and committed the September 11 attacks and anyone who harbored them. From the AUMF: "(a) IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons." The AUMF refers to prevention of "future acts of international terrorism" but specifically authorizes force only against those who were involved with the 9/11 attacks.
    - tptacek 13y ago
      "Those nations, organizations, or persons [...] planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks [...] or harbored such organizations or persons" describes an ideology. The problematic word is "organizations". The most important lesson we should learn from the 2000s is "never allow the word 'organizations' (or any of its synonyms) to appear in an AUMF again". You can invade a nation, you can kill a person, but there's simply no clear definition of what it means to eradicate an organization.

DanBC 13y ago

People have the right to refuse medical treatment if they have capacity to make that decision. There is a range of choices - people die much sooner than they need to because they refuse blood, or people die a little quicker than they need to because they refuse painful cancer treatment. When someone refuses to eat they'll eventually need the medical treatment - force feeding - to keep them alive. Some of those people have capacity to make that decision. Others (people with anorexia) don't.