Let’s Talk about Gitmo
By Callimachus | Related entries in Foreign Policy, General Politics, History, Supreme Court, The War On TerrorismBased on the comments threads, some of us are itching to talk about Guantanamo Bay. Here’s a place to do it.
First, a question: “Accurate or not? People on the right tend to see Guantanamo principally in terms of the War on Terror, and people on the left tend to see it principally in terms of domestic civic rights.”
[Not "exclusively;" "principally."]
And for context, a quote:
“Of how little value the constitutional provisions I have quoted will be rendered, if arrests shall never be made until defined crimes shall have been committed, may be illustrated by a few notable examples. Gen. John C. Breckenridge, Gen. Robert E. Lee, Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, Gen. John B. Magruder, Gen. William B. Preston, Gen. Simon B. Buckner, and Commodore Franklin Buchanan, now occupying the very highest places in the Rebel war service, were all within the power of the Government since the Rebellion began, and were nearly as well known to be traitors then as now.
“Unquestionably if we had seized and held them, the insurgent cause would be much weaker. But no one of them had then committed any crime defined in the law. Every one of them, if arrested, would have been discharged on habeas corpus were the writ allowed to operate. In view of these and similar cases, I think the time not unlikely to come when I shall be blamed for having made too few arrests rather than too many.” [Abraham Lincoln, letter to Erastus Corning and others, June 12, 1863]
It seems to me there is nothing like a consistent right-center attitude toward the allegations of abuse at Guantanamo. Perhaps in part that’s because the range of people who inhabit that political turf includes a lot of military folks, who have complex attitudes about it that are personal as well as ideological.
Perhaps, too, it’s a result of the bizarre effect of holding up for examination our American standards for our servicemen and women during a time of war against ruthless terrorists — and condemning our own. Panties on the head vs. chopping off the head; which one is the war criminal? People who care about those standards but think in big picture terms can find that mind-boggling. Trying to get your head around it is like trying to pour hot tea in a glass made of ice.
[The range of bad behavior in Abu Ghraib and Afghanistan treads into far more serious territory, of course. There have been deaths and incidents of serious maltreatment that most honest folks would call torture. But even there, the question of "what standards" applies, and a comparison to World War II -- the Good War -- is illustrative.]
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July 21st, 2005 at 1:53 pm
Consistancy is really all I’d like to see. Tell the bastards that we consider them scum and if we catch them, we’ll torture every piece of information they have out of them… then kill them. Make very clear that the US laws protect US citizens… if a US citizen commits treason, we kill them.
What really bothers me, is the number of people, citizens and otherwise who are, apparently, simply being ‘held’. Either get information out of them and kill them, or let them go.
July 21st, 2005 at 2:39 pm
I don’t think of it in terms of ‘domestic civic rights’ but in terms of ‘natural rights.’
The tenants of of due process, habeas corpus, and burden of proof don’t come from the laws of the US. Our laws and constitution reflect the ideal that the US was founded upon: that there is a human (or natural) right to liberty.
In gitmo there is no end in sight. We have the Deputy Associate Attorney General going before congress and saying, in regards to the prisoners there, “It’s our position that, legally, they can be held in perpetuity.” I had to look it up; but ‘perpetuity’ means forever. This just flies in the face of what I thought America was supposed to be all about.
As for “Panties on the head vs. chopping off the head”; I think it is a mistake to make the comparison. We should hold ourselves to the absolute highest standard, regardless of what our enemies do. Make it obvious to all that they are the villains.
If we want to convince the world that we mean to do good, we can’t limit the recognition of human rights to Americans only.
July 21st, 2005 at 3:26 pm
Doesn’t it all come down to whether you think we are fighting a war with them or not? Does it make much sense to release the enemies soldiers back to him?
I just don’t want to have to fight them and attempt to kill or capture them again.
July 21st, 2005 at 6:22 pm
I’m tired of people quoting Lincoln as a justification for Gitmo.
Let’s get a few things straight:
1) More than 50,000 people died in a single battle at Gettsburg. Far less than 1/10th that number died on September 11th.
2) The Civil War threatened the very existence of the United States. Modern day terrorists, by contrast, can threaten to take out a few thousand lives, at best. Obviously that’s a lot — but compared to the threat to national security and loss of life posed by the Civil War, it’s practically trivial.
3) There’s one exception to 2), and it’s the threat of a well-placed nuclear explosive in the heart of Washington D.C. But you know what? We have faced down that threat before. In fact, during the Cold War we lived (and to some extent still live with) the threat of total nuclear destruction within a matter of hours. And yet, by and large, we never thought it necessary to trample constitutional rights in response. (The exceptions being a handful of nutcases like Joseph McCarthy.)
So quit quoting Lincoln in support of Gitmo. Anybody who does so is doing a great disservice to the tens of thousands who died to keep our union intact, in total ignorance of the historical context in which Lincoln spoke such words.
July 21st, 2005 at 6:27 pm
But, Montag, “The tenants of of due process, habeas corpus, and burden of proof” do in fact come from the laws of the U.S., and from English common law before it. Even among some of our democratic friends, they do not exist in the form we know them, Look at the workings of the Dutch-based justice system in Aruba, for instance, revealed by the case of the missing Alabama teenager.
We are not required to hold foreign nationals not in America to our laws. In fact, in some cases we’re forbidden by international law from so doing.
If you’re talking about the Jose Padillas there, that’s a different story. But they are a small minority.
Somehow, that message isn’t getting through. Perhaps the coverage in al Jazeera has something to do with it. But perhaps there is a mindset that a Crusader’s insult to the dignity of a Muslim man is a crime worthy of punishment by suicide bombers, while chopping off the head of an infidel or apostate Muslim is a God-sanctioned act of holiness.
July 21st, 2005 at 6:58 pm
“Make very clear that the US laws protect US citizens…”
You obviously aren’t a lawyer and you know very little about the law. There are plenty of federal laws (including constitutional provisions) that protect non-citizens.
Go ahead, ask me to list them. And when I do, I’ll ask you to admit how completely wrong you are.
July 21st, 2005 at 8:38 pm
Its not like Gitmo is some new thing that nobody’s ever done before. And its no Gulag. Its exactly akin to the Maze, Northern Ireland, circa 70s/80s, both in purpose and in legal status of the inmates. In fact, its better than that one, conditions-wise.
I note that some prisoners have begun a hunger strike. This will make it exactly the same symbol the Maze was.
Now: What can we learn from that prison’s history that will teach us something about this one?
July 21st, 2005 at 10:00 pm
And our laws are based on our ideals and the concept of natural rights. It’s a chicken or the egg thang. Except we know that natural rights are what comes first. They exist whether the law reflects them or not.
We should aknowlege that natural rights aren’t only for Americans, and prove to the world how great our system really is when it is allowed to work. Bush has repeatedly stated the goal of ‘spreading democracy’. I’m just sayin’ we should lead by example.
July 21st, 2005 at 10:01 pm
I’m a liberal and I think Gitmo is about both civil liberties and the war against Islamists. If I knew for a fact that everyone in Gitmo was an Islamist I’d be tempted to endore heinous methods for killing every last one of them. But this is a long-term, largely civil war within Islam and we need a long-term strategy for helping the moderates in any way we can. Gitmo works against that.
July 21st, 2005 at 10:25 pm
Simmer down, Mahan. Nobody’s quoting Lincoln to justify Guantanamo. But if you are looking for the historical parallel to the modern situation with regard to U.S. citizens detained there, Lincoln is where you look.
And you either have to blame both Bush and Lincoln for violating the Constitution, or excuse them both, or find some compelling reason to separate the case.
I think it was Constitutionally wrong when Lincoln did it — the power to suspend the writ lies with Congress, not the president, and the situation when he did it did not meet the conditions set forth in the Constitution. And therefore I think it’s Constitutionally wrong for Bush to do the same thing.
You seem to want to take the third path and draw a distinction between the two. You want to have your Lincoln and bash Bush, too.
What does that have to do with anything? Does the Constitution allow the suspension of habeas corpus based on a certain number of military casualties in any one battle? What clause is that found in?
The Civil War era suspensions of civic rights in the North had nothing to do with Gettysburg. The first occurred on April 27, 1861, more than two years before the battle. The nationwide suspension occurred on Sept. 24, 1862, again long before most people living more than 50 miles from Gettysburg had ever heard of the place. This act specifically cited not military defeats, but the unpopularity of the (unconstitutional) national draft.
“Whereas, it has become necessary to call into service not only volunteers but also portions of the militias of the States by draft in order to suppress the insurrection existing in the United States, and disloyal persons are not adequately restrained by the ordinary processes of law from hindering this measure and from giving aid and comfort in various ways to the insurrection ….”
[Oh, by the way, Gettysburg casualties = 3,155 killed from the North, 2,592 killed from the South. You may be confusing "casualties," which in military terminology means not just dead but wounded and missing, with "deaths." The "casualties" at Gettysburg are near 43,500. See E.B. Long]
Manifestly false. There still was a United States in 1862. It was just smaller than it had been. And irrelevant. The preservation of the union is nowhere made the explicit goal of the American Constitution, overriding basic rights of its citizens. In fact, the conditions under which the Great Writ may be suspended are outlined in that document, in Article 1, section 9, and “in the event of states seceding” is not among them.
Leaving aside the patently absurd notion that modern nuclear and biological weapons are less deadly than muzzle-loading smoothbore firearms (or, should I call them, “weapons of mass destruction”), you would ask me to believe that a group of states seceding from the union, forming its own nation, and asking to be left alone is more treatening to the lives of Americans than a fatwa to kill Americans.
Exactly.
You’re fond of numbering your responses. Here’s my enumeration. 1. Learn to read. 2. Learn to think. 3. Complete 1 and 2 before writing in public.
July 21st, 2005 at 10:27 pm
Agree with you, Montag, but
So is he right about that?
July 21st, 2005 at 11:53 pm
We should hold ourselves to the absolute highest standard, regardless of what our enemies do.
First, I don’t think there is any prison in the world with 100 or more Islamic prisoners who get better treatment. If you can’t tell me one, I’ll claim we DO have the absolute highest standard.
If you say that’s not good enough (pictures of Abu; deaths in Afghanistan), I’ll say you want Unreal Perfection.
If you say no … I’ll ask what imperfections you accept.
I’ll also claim it’s likely that a prison or two in YOUR OWN state has more prison rapes and AIDS infections, for instance, than Gitmo. Why isn’t that a bigger issue?
How to measure the standards, to what other prison systems should it be compared to — the media isn’t talking about this.
July 22nd, 2005 at 8:05 am
Callimachus,
We should promote human rights as much as possible. And perhaps encourage democracy as a means of empowering people. I don’t know that imposing US-style democracy everywhere is practical. Providing an example to the world is cheap and should be easy.
TomGrey – Liberty Dad,
Even if we can’t expect perfection, we should strive for perfection in good faith. Why do anything less?
As for the rest of your comment, I wasn’t addressing abuse charges. I was concentrating on the fact that we are holding people “in perpetuity” without giving them a fair and transparent way to legally defend themselves and challenge their detention. The abuse charges exacerbate the problem though.
As for bad conditions in our domestic correctional facilities and, I’d add, the extraordinarily high incarceration rate we have: Yes. It is a big issue. We could ask the question why isn’t this issue addressed in a ‘bigger’ way in corporate media? There are local and independent media outlets out there that do take this issue seriously.