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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 q

by 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.

by flexie 13y ago

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.