Guantanamo Bay
My brother Hardeep is questioning my views on detainees in Guantanamo Bay.
Before I respond, let me just say that this issue is a messy one. There's no easy or straightforward answer. On one hand, you have people who are almost certainly all violently anti-American. On the other hand, they're still human, which theoretically entitles them to "rights". The Americans claim that although the Gitmo prisoners are not entitled to Geneva protection as prisoners of war, they still receive that same protection anyway. So basically, the Americans will not call them POWs, yet they claim they offer them the same protection as POWs.
Also, let me say that I didn't try to start this argument with my brother. He came up to me and asked me questions that were designed for me to disagree. After being asked about Gitmo, as the supposedly pro-Bush guy that I am, it would be silly to expect me to blast the US government's human rights record, even if I have reservations with parts of it.
Hardeep raises a strange point. He claims that the prisoners should be "charged" in order to be held. I don't see any rational reason to do so. They're not US citizens or immigrants and are not entitled at all to "due process" as far as I know. The American government claims that they're at war with Muslim fundamentalists, so I suspect that they could be held until the war is "over", which is exactly what a Defense Department official says in an article in today's New York Times:
"Our top choice would be to win the war on terrorism and declare an end to it and repatriate everybody," a senior Defense Department official said in an interview. "The next best solution would be to work with the home governments of the detainees in order to get them to take the necessary steps to mitigate the threat these individuals pose."
"Winning the war on terrorism" is obviously hard to claim and likely, it'll never actually happen. However, If detainees a) no longer pose a threat, b) no longer have any value for intelligence, c) can be transferred to "humane" prisons in their home countries, then releasing them would seem to be a rational thing to do. Having said that, I still suspect that there are numerous current detainees who would do everything in their power to strike the US, at home or abroad, if they had the chance. It violates basic self-interest to release prisoners knowing that they would try to kill American servicemen/women or civilians if given the opportunity. Did allied forces in WW2 release Japanese or German POWs just because they weren't charged?
What would be their rationale? "Sorry for not charging you, now please leave, go back to your countries and continue with your plans to kill us."
Or as Hardeep naively (liberally) suggests, give them compensation as well. "Yes, here's some compensation as well for all of the mean things we did to you, promise not to put that money towards building big and bad bombs to kill us later?"
Also, I'm sure if the government was put through enough trouble, they could charge these people if necessary, but that itself wouldn't make sense. You don't charge POWs, do you? And the reason they're not being classified as POWs is to avoid any possible legal problems that come with POW status. It's much safer to keep them as "enemy combatants", in the legal sense. Is Hardeep telling me that if they prisoners were officially granted POW status, Gitmo would be far more legitimate?
As for torture, I've never actually bought into the fact that American "torture" or what is described as Americans using torture is particularly strenuous or shocking. Stress techniques, something about making people think they're drowning when they're actually not, standing up for long periods of time, this all sounds very light in comparison to torture in other countries, especially considering that I haven't yet encountered a single incident of American "torture" that would leave permanent physical damage. There were a couple examples in Abu Ghraib and those people are being court marshalled right now, no? One guy was just sentenced to like twenty years.
I get a lot of trouble because Sikhs themselves were targetted as terrorists mostly in the 1980s, and obviously, their human rights were violated immensely, but there's just no rational comparison between Muslim extremists today and certain Sikhs in Punjab during the 1980s. Those Sikhs did not target civilians. They did not want to "destroy India". Sikhs were "citizens" of the Indian state and India itself was far more brutal than the Americans today (my personal assessment). When that Muslim sniper guy was shooting and killing random civilians in and around the Washington, D.C. area, he was given a trial and found guilty. If anyone in Gitmo was a United States citizen, I would expect the same.
Before I respond, let me just say that this issue is a messy one. There's no easy or straightforward answer. On one hand, you have people who are almost certainly all violently anti-American. On the other hand, they're still human, which theoretically entitles them to "rights". The Americans claim that although the Gitmo prisoners are not entitled to Geneva protection as prisoners of war, they still receive that same protection anyway. So basically, the Americans will not call them POWs, yet they claim they offer them the same protection as POWs.
Also, let me say that I didn't try to start this argument with my brother. He came up to me and asked me questions that were designed for me to disagree. After being asked about Gitmo, as the supposedly pro-Bush guy that I am, it would be silly to expect me to blast the US government's human rights record, even if I have reservations with parts of it.
Hardeep raises a strange point. He claims that the prisoners should be "charged" in order to be held. I don't see any rational reason to do so. They're not US citizens or immigrants and are not entitled at all to "due process" as far as I know. The American government claims that they're at war with Muslim fundamentalists, so I suspect that they could be held until the war is "over", which is exactly what a Defense Department official says in an article in today's New York Times:
"Our top choice would be to win the war on terrorism and declare an end to it and repatriate everybody," a senior Defense Department official said in an interview. "The next best solution would be to work with the home governments of the detainees in order to get them to take the necessary steps to mitigate the threat these individuals pose."
"Winning the war on terrorism" is obviously hard to claim and likely, it'll never actually happen. However, If detainees a) no longer pose a threat, b) no longer have any value for intelligence, c) can be transferred to "humane" prisons in their home countries, then releasing them would seem to be a rational thing to do. Having said that, I still suspect that there are numerous current detainees who would do everything in their power to strike the US, at home or abroad, if they had the chance. It violates basic self-interest to release prisoners knowing that they would try to kill American servicemen/women or civilians if given the opportunity. Did allied forces in WW2 release Japanese or German POWs just because they weren't charged?
What would be their rationale? "Sorry for not charging you, now please leave, go back to your countries and continue with your plans to kill us."
Or as Hardeep naively (liberally) suggests, give them compensation as well. "Yes, here's some compensation as well for all of the mean things we did to you, promise not to put that money towards building big and bad bombs to kill us later?"
Also, I'm sure if the government was put through enough trouble, they could charge these people if necessary, but that itself wouldn't make sense. You don't charge POWs, do you? And the reason they're not being classified as POWs is to avoid any possible legal problems that come with POW status. It's much safer to keep them as "enemy combatants", in the legal sense. Is Hardeep telling me that if they prisoners were officially granted POW status, Gitmo would be far more legitimate?
As for torture, I've never actually bought into the fact that American "torture" or what is described as Americans using torture is particularly strenuous or shocking. Stress techniques, something about making people think they're drowning when they're actually not, standing up for long periods of time, this all sounds very light in comparison to torture in other countries, especially considering that I haven't yet encountered a single incident of American "torture" that would leave permanent physical damage. There were a couple examples in Abu Ghraib and those people are being court marshalled right now, no? One guy was just sentenced to like twenty years.
I get a lot of trouble because Sikhs themselves were targetted as terrorists mostly in the 1980s, and obviously, their human rights were violated immensely, but there's just no rational comparison between Muslim extremists today and certain Sikhs in Punjab during the 1980s. Those Sikhs did not target civilians. They did not want to "destroy India". Sikhs were "citizens" of the Indian state and India itself was far more brutal than the Americans today (my personal assessment). When that Muslim sniper guy was shooting and killing random civilians in and around the Washington, D.C. area, he was given a trial and found guilty. If anyone in Gitmo was a United States citizen, I would expect the same.
posted by Japnaam Singh at
12:23 PM
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