9 ms·

No One Reads Kafka At Gitmo

125 points by nqureshi 13y ago

beloch 13y ago
Why is the Star Trek geek in me reminded of Cardassians?
jacquesm 13y ago
The fact that Guantanamo still exists is an absolute blight on Americas reputation and the cost of that will resonate for many many years into the future even if it were disbanded today (which it really should be). Obama claims his hands are tied but to me that smacks of a lack of resolve, he has several options at his disposal (such as threatening to resign if congress won't bend on this or playing hardball in return on every other subject). It's a pity that America is so tied to the 4 year regimen for elections and that the president does not have a direct way to call for earlier elections (as far as I know).
- eru 13y ago
  What would calling for earlier elections solve? Tangentially related, the post-war German constitution was carefully crafted to avoid early elections---as a reaction to the frequent elections in the Weimar Republic.
  - jacquesm 13y ago
    If he had the option he could use that to strong-arm congress into doing the right thing. After all it would be their jobs on the line as well and those voting against would be on the record as having done so. Memories are short and if it is 4 years between elections such issues will have faded from the public consciousness. But if they're the direct cause of an election round then they will carry much more weight.
    - eru 13y ago
      Oh, you want the president to be able to force an election for congress (and not just his own position)? Sounds dangerous.
      - jacquesm 13y ago
        Both.
        eru 13y ago
        Would the term limit for president still be two election periods, or be redefined to 8 years?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
  - jacquesm 13y ago
    > At least it isn't the biggest shame anymore. The NSA is it now. That's simply not true. At least, not in the eyes of many.
  - krapp 13y ago
    No, Gitmo is far worse.
  - e12e 13y ago
    I think of it as "no shame fits everyone" -- if you live in rural Pakistan -- it's the constant threat of drone attack. If you're a radical "arab" -- it's indefinite detention without appeal. For the intellectuals of the west, it's NSA. I know I'm glad I personally don't have to (rationally) fear being disappeared or caught in a the blast of an hell-fire missile. At the same time, it's sad that people in the west, in general, seem to not really care about these abuses that happen on a physical level, and gets riled up just because privacy is invaded and we're all voting a new global Stasi into existence. We seem to get the government we deserver, all around. Lets hope something good comes out of the global #occupy movement over the next decades.
    - icecreampain 13y ago
      Incorrect. Everybody gets the government the majority voted forth. If there are two smart people in the room, and eight stupid people, the stupid people are gonna get what they want. At least if they stay in the room. If they're smart and have money they'll leave the room and buy the whole building - controlling all rooms in the building. I'm talking about the banksters and the bankster's masters (and maybe their masters also, I'm unsure as to how many levels of control exist). Us little people are all getting fucked, no matter the color nor the wealth. We're not as rich and powerful as the people who are doing the fucking anyways.
      - e12e 13y ago
- yareally 13y ago
  > It's a pity that America is so tied to the 4 year regimen for elections and that the president does not have a direct way to call for earlier elections (as far as I know). Honestly, if Obama decided he could not or would not close the prison, I don't foresee the next president, regardless of party, doing so either. Not trying to find excuses for Obama not doing that, but from looking at presidents throughout history, they all seem to have a finite limit on how many battles they can choose to fight (and maybe get passed by a wishy-washy congress). Issues like the National Healthcare Act just barely managed to get passed in Obama's first term when his party had control of congress still. Based on that and how long it took to get pushed through, something just as touchy as Gitmo would be just as tough and probably impossible with the extremely partisan state of congress right now. The impotency of the US Government right now to accomplish even trivial things is also a mixed blessing. When one party controls everything, we get situations like the first decade of the 21st century where the majority party gets to basically rubber stamp every whim and desire. With two party deadlock, issues are not being solved, but the alternative of either party being in full control is not always desirable and becomes a "be careful what you wish for" scenario much of the time. Though neither party is really that different from the other on most issues, when one has control of the presidency and the other does not, the opposing party will go out of their way to distinguish themselves for the sake of being contrary. A few months ago there was a discussion on NPR about the partisanship shown in congress being related to the gerrymandering done in redistricting last time. The lines being drawn up to make each district more polarized to one side or the other makes any representative that faces election every 2 years less likely to compromise (versus their counterparts in the senate every 6 years), for fear their constituents will end up nominating someone even more polarized than they are perceived to be. I don't know if that is entirely true as gerrymandering is not new (or new to criticism), but it does explain some of the congressional silliness in the past 5-6 years as the house of representatives has been opposed to compromise more often than the senate. It would take more statistical research to decide if gerrymandering is causing congress to become gradually more polarized over time or if it varies with each time the congressional lines are being drawn up. Looking at the number of bipartisan bills proposed and passed over the last 100 years as well would be a starting point.
  - jacquesm 13y ago
- icecreampain 13y ago
  > Obama claims his hands are tied but to me that smacks of a lack of resolve Obama's hands are tied by his masters who haven't given him permission to close Gitmo. I'm surprized people still think that the POTUS (or indeed any part of the government) has any real power in that country.
- simonh 13y ago
  So then you'd have an election, another president and Gitmo would still be open for business. Or alternatively the legislature would be even more locked up than it has been over the last few years at a time of severe economic hardship, none of Obama's other policies would have got anywhere, and Gitmo would still be open for business.
- VLM 13y ago
  "Obama claims his hands are tied" Its a pity he's not Commander in Chief of the military. Then he could issue orders to soldiers in charge of a military facility. Perhaps whoever is the Commander in Chief should step forward and solve the problem. I am well aware of the true arguments that he would be unable to defund or outright eliminate the facility, Congress would have to do that. It is WELL within his ability to, say, directly order all prisoners released, or order all troops to leave the facility and no troops to re-enter the facility.
  - MichaelSalib 13y ago
    It is WELL within his ability to, say, directly order all prisoners released Released where? To Cuba? Into the sea? If you want to release people, you need to send them someplace. Congress has banned the government from sending them to the US. You can't send them to other countries because those countries won't take them. So...where do they go? or order all troops to leave the facility and no troops to re-enter the facility. How do the prisoners eat after the US Navy leaves?
    - rdtsc 13y ago
      > Released where? To Cuba? Into the sea? If your father/mother/son/daughter was kidnapped when you were 5, and you didn't know where they were for years and then found out he is in Gitmo, pretty sure you'd like to see them back at your house? Why "the country/town/house" they were kidnapped from isn't even a choice on your list?
      - MichaelSalib 13y ago
        Because those countries generally don't want them back. Or because they don't want to go back. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_detainees_at_Guantanamo_Bay#Asylum_in_Albania http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_detainees_at_Guantanamo_... for an example The US government has ruled that many Gitmo detainees are no threat and have been trying to repatriate them but their home countries (which are not always the countries they were taken from) resist. That is stupid and wrong, just like taking them in the first place. But you can't just wish that inconvenient fact away. I get that this is a nightmarish horrific injustice. But that shouldn't allow us to lose all rationality and start living in a fantasy world. Ordering the US Navy to abandon the facility won't help Gitmo detainees: they're run out of food and water and they'll still be thousands of miles from their families with no way to get home.
- MichaelSalib 13y ago
  that smacks of a lack of resolve This is what political scientists call "green lanternism". That's the phrase they use to make fun of people like you, i.e., people who insist that leaders can break institutional constraints by sheer force of will whenever they please. American government is complex and has a great many more veto points than peer governments. This complexity is annoying, so there's a natural tendency to just wish it all away and assert that the President can do whatever he wants. (such as threatening to resign Is this a joke? Do you not understand that Obama resigning is the best possible outcome for the majority of the House and almost a majority of the Senate? You can't credibly threaten someone by offering to do something they desperately want you to do. You understand that, right? if congress won't bend on this or playing hardball in return on every other subject The Senate has voted 98-0 against transferring Gitmo detainees to the US. I don't think they'd vote so strongly against Hitler. Congressmen have decided that having Gitmo detainees in the US is political suicide. Whether they're wrong about that is irrelevant.
  - jacquesm 13y ago
    Thank you for not making this personal, it is appreciated. There are options, Obama chose to pursue none of those. Obama resigning about a particular subject would definitely have consequences that would help the opposition but it would also send an extremely strong message that this president will not be co-opted into doing the wrong thing. As it stands he's as guilty as the rest, 'my hands are tied' does not work any more here than 'dog ate my homework' worked in school. The senate voted 98:0 against because they don't want to be part and parcel of the aftermath of giving these people the minimum level of rights that they should be afforded. Guantanamo is simply a concentration camp and the US is running it pretending that because it is outside of its borders inmates have no rights. The rest of world is looking on and not doing much about it but you can be sure that this turns attitudes against the US the world over and that the long term costs of this will far outweigh the short term political fall-out of dealing with the problem.
    - MichaelSalib 13y ago
      There are options, Obama chose to pursue none of those. Of course there are options. The President could simply have ordered the military to start executing members of opposition leaders' families until they complied. He's the commander in chief, right? Simply having options is not enough. We need options that are legal and likely to work. You have not demonstrated the existence of any of those options. When you tried to come up with some, you failed badly. So, what are the feasible legal options that the President has? Can you name any? Obama resigning about a particular subject would definitely have consequences that would help the opposition No, that's not the issue here. The problem is that you can't threaten someone by offering to do something they want. That's not an effective way to change their behavior. It has nothing to do with helping the opposition; at a much more basic level, your proposed solution doesn't work. but it would also send an extremely strong message that this president will not be co-opted into doing the wrong thing. Let's say Obama resigns. Congress throws a party and does nothing about Gitmo. How does that help anyone at Gitmo? Or is resigning just a perfect expression of moral superiority?
- drjesusphd 13y ago
  Obama could pull a Reagan sell arms to Iran to pay for Gitmo's closure.
- rayiner 13y ago
  > he has several options at his disposal (such as threatening to resign if congress won't bend on this or playing hardball in return on every other subject) I think it would be tremendously unfair to his voters if he compromised his ability to work on the issues they do care about (health care, the budget, etc), for an issue they don't care about.
- MichaelSalib 13y ago
  threatening to resign if congress won't bend on this jacquesm, I want you to change your position. If you don't do that, I'm going to give you $100,000. There, that should be effective. I'm sure you'll change your position monentarily.
  - jessaustin 13y ago
    That's credible. I'm sure we'll see more from Jacques as soon as you send him details on the escrow account.
    - jacquesm 13y ago
      Still waiting.
- the_watcher 13y ago
  >>threatening to resign if congress won't bend on this I don't think this is nearly the threat you seem to think it is. It doesn't seem likely that the Republican House would worry too much about him resigning. >>playing hardball in return on every other subject. He's arguably already done this in letting Pelosi and Reid drive the Congressional Democrat agenda. Both are much more partisan hard-ballers than he is, and both have a lot of experience strong-arming the legislature (see: getting ObamaCare passed). These are just observations of a politically disinterested observer, not endorsements of either side.
616c 13y ago
I am sure not many people are reading the Quran either.
- AimHere 13y ago
  It's likely they all are. If you read the article, the Koran is one of the items pre-stocked in the empty cells alongside toiletries, waste paper bin and a prayer cap.
  - 616c 13y ago
    It was a sarcastic quip. I read the article.
jscheel 13y ago
In the article, Crabapple describes Guantanamo as "a factory consuming money, morals, and decades of human life." The counterpoint that governments (plural, not just the US) are making is that Guantanamo is now a factory for seething hatred that, given the opportunity, would produce new, fanatical warriors for violent jihad. No country wants to take these men on because of this perceived risk. Honestly, given the nature of indefinite detention, most humans probably would harbor a deep-seated hatred for their captors. I'm not saying it's right, but that's the other side of the argument.
- asgard1024 13y ago
  And it's a pretty stupid argument as they come. First of all, where is the evidence that "Guantanamo is now a factory for seething hatred", I mean, in its prisoners? I don't think there is any evidence for that based on behavior of political prisoners around the world. Sure, they may have hatred, but they are I think quite unlikely to incite more violence. Second, even if what you say is true, U.S. (government) created them. They are responsible to take care of them, for better or worse. And by "taking care" I mean giving them freedom and citizenship, if they are unable to return them to their home countries (in most cases unlikely, as they have families there).
- vermontdevil 13y ago
  I think the drone attacks will or has create more violent people than Guantanamo ever will. And one can't blame people for reacting in that manner to the drone attacks.
PhrosTT 13y ago
I guess this relates to technology since it's on medium?
quantumpotato_ 13y ago
Maybe we should send some Kafka.
bhauer 13y ago
I only skimmed this, so I apologize if my sense of it is woefully off mark. I just wanted to say that my fleeting thought was that this reads like one of those odd reports from wealthy fringe tourists who have paid the North Korean regime to witness a choreographed tour of their country-sized Potemkin village (something I find contemptible, but I'll put that aside). The amount of procedure invoked by the Gitmo staff and the strictness of the touring directly reminded me of reading an incredulous and boggled report from a visitor to Pyongyang. If this read is even remotely valid, it's simultaneously alarming that we have something that elicits a similar emotional response in me and also reassuring that our worst is but a diminutive slice of an island in the Atlantic. However, the alarmist in me worries that our mainland is inching closer and closer to the unthinkable.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
jessaustin 13y ago
Ayn Rand shares shelves with Tintin, Eli Weisel and Twilight.... Banned are books with... anti-establishment ideas. Poor Ayn Rand. Actually, I wonder if they have The Fifth Head of Cerberus? That's just as much a trip as The Trial, and the last novella, "V.R.T.", would really speak to the abductees at Guantanamo. I'm not sure how much Wolfe has been translated to Pashto, however.
FrankenPC 13y ago
What I find interesting about America is the LACK of a Siberia equivalent incarceration system. In other words, why not just make these people disappear? probably because America is so absolutely in love with war profiteering that every single prisoner is politically valuable. I've got $164 million reasons/year why they are still incarcerated. At this point I don't see how anyone could argue that corporate lobbying isn't at the crux of all this.
drderidder 13y ago
What an article. I think the legacy of Guantanamo will haunt America forever.

125 points by nqureshi 13y ago

Why is the Star Trek geek in me reminded of Cardassians?

The fact that Guantanamo still exists is an absolute blight on Americas reputation and the cost of that will resonate for many many years into the future even if it were disbanded today (which it really should be). Obama claims his hands are tied but to me that smacks of a lack of resolve, he has several options at his disposal (such as threatening to resign if congress won't bend on this or playing hardball in return on every other subject). It's a pity that America is so tied to the 4 year regimen for elections and that the president does not have a direct way to call for earlier elections (as far as I know).

eru 13y ago
What would calling for earlier elections solve? Tangentially related, the post-war German constitution was carefully crafted to avoid early elections---as a reaction to the frequent elections in the Weimar Republic.
- jacquesm 13y ago
  If he had the option he could use that to strong-arm congress into doing the right thing. After all it would be their jobs on the line as well and those voting against would be on the record as having done so. Memories are short and if it is 4 years between elections such issues will have faded from the public consciousness. But if they're the direct cause of an election round then they will carry much more weight.
  - eru 13y ago
    Oh, you want the president to be able to force an election for congress (and not just his own position)? Sounds dangerous.
    - jacquesm 13y ago
      Both.
      - eru 13y ago
        Would the term limit for president still be two election periods, or be redefined to 8 years?
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- jacquesm 13y ago
  > At least it isn't the biggest shame anymore. The NSA is it now. That's simply not true. At least, not in the eyes of many.
- krapp 13y ago
  No, Gitmo is far worse.
- e12e 13y ago
  I think of it as "no shame fits everyone" -- if you live in rural Pakistan -- it's the constant threat of drone attack. If you're a radical "arab" -- it's indefinite detention without appeal. For the intellectuals of the west, it's NSA. I know I'm glad I personally don't have to (rationally) fear being disappeared or caught in a the blast of an hell-fire missile. At the same time, it's sad that people in the west, in general, seem to not really care about these abuses that happen on a physical level, and gets riled up just because privacy is invaded and we're all voting a new global Stasi into existence. We seem to get the government we deserver, all around. Lets hope something good comes out of the global #occupy movement over the next decades.
  - icecreampain 13y ago
    Incorrect. Everybody gets the government the majority voted forth. If there are two smart people in the room, and eight stupid people, the stupid people are gonna get what they want. At least if they stay in the room. If they're smart and have money they'll leave the room and buy the whole building - controlling all rooms in the building. I'm talking about the banksters and the bankster's masters (and maybe their masters also, I'm unsure as to how many levels of control exist). Us little people are all getting fucked, no matter the color nor the wealth. We're not as rich and powerful as the people who are doing the fucking anyways.
    - e12e 13y ago
yareally 13y ago
> It's a pity that America is so tied to the 4 year regimen for elections and that the president does not have a direct way to call for earlier elections (as far as I know). Honestly, if Obama decided he could not or would not close the prison, I don't foresee the next president, regardless of party, doing so either. Not trying to find excuses for Obama not doing that, but from looking at presidents throughout history, they all seem to have a finite limit on how many battles they can choose to fight (and maybe get passed by a wishy-washy congress). Issues like the National Healthcare Act just barely managed to get passed in Obama's first term when his party had control of congress still. Based on that and how long it took to get pushed through, something just as touchy as Gitmo would be just as tough and probably impossible with the extremely partisan state of congress right now. The impotency of the US Government right now to accomplish even trivial things is also a mixed blessing. When one party controls everything, we get situations like the first decade of the 21st century where the majority party gets to basically rubber stamp every whim and desire. With two party deadlock, issues are not being solved, but the alternative of either party being in full control is not always desirable and becomes a "be careful what you wish for" scenario much of the time. Though neither party is really that different from the other on most issues, when one has control of the presidency and the other does not, the opposing party will go out of their way to distinguish themselves for the sake of being contrary. A few months ago there was a discussion on NPR about the partisanship shown in congress being related to the gerrymandering done in redistricting last time. The lines being drawn up to make each district more polarized to one side or the other makes any representative that faces election every 2 years less likely to compromise (versus their counterparts in the senate every 6 years), for fear their constituents will end up nominating someone even more polarized than they are perceived to be. I don't know if that is entirely true as gerrymandering is not new (or new to criticism), but it does explain some of the congressional silliness in the past 5-6 years as the house of representatives has been opposed to compromise more often than the senate. It would take more statistical research to decide if gerrymandering is causing congress to become gradually more polarized over time or if it varies with each time the congressional lines are being drawn up. Looking at the number of bipartisan bills proposed and passed over the last 100 years as well would be a starting point.
- jacquesm 13y ago
icecreampain 13y ago
> Obama claims his hands are tied but to me that smacks of a lack of resolve Obama's hands are tied by his masters who haven't given him permission to close Gitmo. I'm surprized people still think that the POTUS (or indeed any part of the government) has any real power in that country.
simonh 13y ago
So then you'd have an election, another president and Gitmo would still be open for business. Or alternatively the legislature would be even more locked up than it has been over the last few years at a time of severe economic hardship, none of Obama's other policies would have got anywhere, and Gitmo would still be open for business.
VLM 13y ago
"Obama claims his hands are tied" Its a pity he's not Commander in Chief of the military. Then he could issue orders to soldiers in charge of a military facility. Perhaps whoever is the Commander in Chief should step forward and solve the problem. I am well aware of the true arguments that he would be unable to defund or outright eliminate the facility, Congress would have to do that. It is WELL within his ability to, say, directly order all prisoners released, or order all troops to leave the facility and no troops to re-enter the facility.
- MichaelSalib 13y ago
  It is WELL within his ability to, say, directly order all prisoners released Released where? To Cuba? Into the sea? If you want to release people, you need to send them someplace. Congress has banned the government from sending them to the US. You can't send them to other countries because those countries won't take them. So...where do they go? or order all troops to leave the facility and no troops to re-enter the facility. How do the prisoners eat after the US Navy leaves?
  - rdtsc 13y ago
    > Released where? To Cuba? Into the sea? If your father/mother/son/daughter was kidnapped when you were 5, and you didn't know where they were for years and then found out he is in Gitmo, pretty sure you'd like to see them back at your house? Why "the country/town/house" they were kidnapped from isn't even a choice on your list?
    - MichaelSalib 13y ago
      Because those countries generally don't want them back. Or because they don't want to go back. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_detainees_at_Guantanamo_Bay#Asylum_in_Albania http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_detainees_at_Guantanamo_... for an example The US government has ruled that many Gitmo detainees are no threat and have been trying to repatriate them but their home countries (which are not always the countries they were taken from) resist. That is stupid and wrong, just like taking them in the first place. But you can't just wish that inconvenient fact away. I get that this is a nightmarish horrific injustice. But that shouldn't allow us to lose all rationality and start living in a fantasy world. Ordering the US Navy to abandon the facility won't help Gitmo detainees: they're run out of food and water and they'll still be thousands of miles from their families with no way to get home.
MichaelSalib 13y ago
that smacks of a lack of resolve This is what political scientists call "green lanternism". That's the phrase they use to make fun of people like you, i.e., people who insist that leaders can break institutional constraints by sheer force of will whenever they please. American government is complex and has a great many more veto points than peer governments. This complexity is annoying, so there's a natural tendency to just wish it all away and assert that the President can do whatever he wants. (such as threatening to resign Is this a joke? Do you not understand that Obama resigning is the best possible outcome for the majority of the House and almost a majority of the Senate? You can't credibly threaten someone by offering to do something they desperately want you to do. You understand that, right? if congress won't bend on this or playing hardball in return on every other subject The Senate has voted 98-0 against transferring Gitmo detainees to the US. I don't think they'd vote so strongly against Hitler. Congressmen have decided that having Gitmo detainees in the US is political suicide. Whether they're wrong about that is irrelevant.
- jacquesm 13y ago
  Thank you for not making this personal, it is appreciated. There are options, Obama chose to pursue none of those. Obama resigning about a particular subject would definitely have consequences that would help the opposition but it would also send an extremely strong message that this president will not be co-opted into doing the wrong thing. As it stands he's as guilty as the rest, 'my hands are tied' does not work any more here than 'dog ate my homework' worked in school. The senate voted 98:0 against because they don't want to be part and parcel of the aftermath of giving these people the minimum level of rights that they should be afforded. Guantanamo is simply a concentration camp and the US is running it pretending that because it is outside of its borders inmates have no rights. The rest of world is looking on and not doing much about it but you can be sure that this turns attitudes against the US the world over and that the long term costs of this will far outweigh the short term political fall-out of dealing with the problem.
  - MichaelSalib 13y ago
    There are options, Obama chose to pursue none of those. Of course there are options. The President could simply have ordered the military to start executing members of opposition leaders' families until they complied. He's the commander in chief, right? Simply having options is not enough. We need options that are legal and likely to work. You have not demonstrated the existence of any of those options. When you tried to come up with some, you failed badly. So, what are the feasible legal options that the President has? Can you name any? Obama resigning about a particular subject would definitely have consequences that would help the opposition No, that's not the issue here. The problem is that you can't threaten someone by offering to do something they want. That's not an effective way to change their behavior. It has nothing to do with helping the opposition; at a much more basic level, your proposed solution doesn't work. but it would also send an extremely strong message that this president will not be co-opted into doing the wrong thing. Let's say Obama resigns. Congress throws a party and does nothing about Gitmo. How does that help anyone at Gitmo? Or is resigning just a perfect expression of moral superiority?
drjesusphd 13y ago
Obama could pull a Reagan sell arms to Iran to pay for Gitmo's closure.
rayiner 13y ago
> he has several options at his disposal (such as threatening to resign if congress won't bend on this or playing hardball in return on every other subject) I think it would be tremendously unfair to his voters if he compromised his ability to work on the issues they do care about (health care, the budget, etc), for an issue they don't care about.
MichaelSalib 13y ago
threatening to resign if congress won't bend on this jacquesm, I want you to change your position. If you don't do that, I'm going to give you $100,000. There, that should be effective. I'm sure you'll change your position monentarily.
- jessaustin 13y ago
  That's credible. I'm sure we'll see more from Jacques as soon as you send him details on the escrow account.
  - jacquesm 13y ago
    Still waiting.
the_watcher 13y ago
>>threatening to resign if congress won't bend on this I don't think this is nearly the threat you seem to think it is. It doesn't seem likely that the Republican House would worry too much about him resigning. >>playing hardball in return on every other subject. He's arguably already done this in letting Pelosi and Reid drive the Congressional Democrat agenda. Both are much more partisan hard-ballers than he is, and both have a lot of experience strong-arming the legislature (see: getting ObamaCare passed). These are just observations of a politically disinterested observer, not endorsements of either side.

616c 13y ago

I am sure not many people are reading the Quran either.

AimHere 13y ago
It's likely they all are. If you read the article, the Koran is one of the items pre-stocked in the empty cells alongside toiletries, waste paper bin and a prayer cap.
- 616c 13y ago
  It was a sarcastic quip. I read the article.

jscheel 13y ago

In the article, Crabapple describes Guantanamo as "a factory consuming money, morals, and decades of human life." The counterpoint that governments (plural, not just the US) are making is that Guantanamo is now a factory for seething hatred that, given the opportunity, would produce new, fanatical warriors for violent jihad. No country wants to take these men on because of this perceived risk. Honestly, given the nature of indefinite detention, most humans probably would harbor a deep-seated hatred for their captors. I'm not saying it's right, but that's the other side of the argument.

asgard1024 13y ago
And it's a pretty stupid argument as they come. First of all, where is the evidence that "Guantanamo is now a factory for seething hatred", I mean, in its prisoners? I don't think there is any evidence for that based on behavior of political prisoners around the world. Sure, they may have hatred, but they are I think quite unlikely to incite more violence. Second, even if what you say is true, U.S. (government) created them. They are responsible to take care of them, for better or worse. And by "taking care" I mean giving them freedom and citizenship, if they are unable to return them to their home countries (in most cases unlikely, as they have families there).
vermontdevil 13y ago
I think the drone attacks will or has create more violent people than Guantanamo ever will. And one can't blame people for reacting in that manner to the drone attacks.

PhrosTT 13y ago

I guess this relates to technology since it's on medium?

quantumpotato_ 13y ago

Maybe we should send some Kafka.

bhauer 13y ago

I only skimmed this, so I apologize if my sense of it is woefully off mark. I just wanted to say that my fleeting thought was that this reads like one of those odd reports from wealthy fringe tourists who have paid the North Korean regime to witness a choreographed tour of their country-sized Potemkin village (something I find contemptible, but I'll put that aside). The amount of procedure invoked by the Gitmo staff and the strictness of the touring directly reminded me of reading an incredulous and boggled report from a visitor to Pyongyang. If this read is even remotely valid, it's simultaneously alarming that we have something that elicits a similar emotional response in me and also reassuring that our worst is but a diminutive slice of an island in the Atlantic. However, the alarmist in me worries that our mainland is inching closer and closer to the unthinkable.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

jessaustin 13y ago

Ayn Rand shares shelves with Tintin, Eli Weisel and Twilight.... Banned are books with... anti-establishment ideas. Poor Ayn Rand. Actually, I wonder if they have The Fifth Head of Cerberus? That's just as much a trip as The Trial, and the last novella, "V.R.T.", would really speak to the abductees at Guantanamo. I'm not sure how much Wolfe has been translated to Pashto, however.

FrankenPC 13y ago

What I find interesting about America is the LACK of a Siberia equivalent incarceration system. In other words, why not just make these people disappear? probably because America is so absolutely in love with war profiteering that every single prisoner is politically valuable. I've got $164 million reasons/year why they are still incarcerated. At this point I don't see how anyone could argue that corporate lobbying isn't at the crux of all this.

drderidder 13y ago

What an article. I think the legacy of Guantanamo will haunt America forever.