Guantanamo Blues
May 26th, 2009 - 9:02 am
Closing Gitmo might make President Obama popular in Europe, but less so here at home:
Forty-nine percent (49%) of voters nationwide now disagree with President Barack Obama’s decision to close the prison camp for suspected terrorists at the Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey, conducted after the President’s speech on Guantanamo last week, shows that 38% agree with his decision.
Just 25% share the President’s view that the Guantanamo camp weakened national security. Fifty-one percent (51%) disagree with that perspective.
Can anyone remember the last time Dick Cheney was on the popular side of anything?
Can anyone remember the last time Dick Cheney was on the popular side of anything.
Depends on what you mean by “popular”.
If you mean “Popular with Minitru”, then “No”.
If you mean popular with your average American, then “yes”. All the darn time.
It’s why he’s so effective. He says perfectly reasonable things in such a way as to drive the left all frothy (frothier?).
Then when they, predictably, freak out and tell everybody what a tremendous meany and stupid-head Cheney is, people say, “Ummm, but he made sense.”
Cheney is one of the only conservatives who can get his message out through Minitru’s filter and it makes me laugh each and every time.
I freaking love Cheney. He can cut through so much crap with just a few direct comments. He’s almost painfully blunt. Love him.
I agree with Obama.
How on earth is Gitmo good for our security?
For the US to have an offshore prison for the sole purpose of being able to treat prisoners without consideration of US principles does NOT help our cause, which is, I think, to promote individual freedom.
Gitmo essentially says out principles are not strong enough, our cause not good enough, our country not sure enough to be worth staying the course for even in the face of extreme adversity. No, Gitmo says the only way to beat the bad guys is to operate on their level. It says to them you are right, we are wrong, it says that to persuade others to come around to your point of view you need to be free of the constraints of decency.
Please, someone out there argue with me on this. Persuade me, through your right to free speech, that I am a bozo, a pinko commie liberal, a pussy. Show me that I am not a patriot, whatever the hell that means. Show me I’m not an American.
I will wager you can’t.
Jeff
http://www.cerebellumblues.com
Jeff –
I’ve got mixed feelings on Gitmo. It’s probably the least-bad solution, but it’s enough of a thorn that if someone (anyone!) comes up with a slightly less-bad solution, then we ought to go with it.
As of yet, I haven’t seen that solution — least of all from the President, who ought to have had something in mind before putting a timetable on closing Gitmo. Right now, that looks like it’s going to become yet another broken promise. And it’s one he didn’t need to break, simply by holding off on making an announcement until he had his ducks in a row.
Dick Cheney is the first bald, silver-haired, thick-waisted, 60-something I’ve ever considered sexy. I may never go back.
Stephen,
Thanks for the comment.
Why is Gitmo a solution at all? What has it achieved? It’s ludicrous to talk about what didn’t happen because of Gitmo (plots foiled, etc.), because logically you can’t prove what didn’t happen, you can only prove what did. And while proving that Gitmo harmed our standing as a country that believes in freedom is also impossible, there is no doubt that it has given given ample encouragement and validation to those that oppose our views. After all, say you’re some Taliban caveman who’s busy sawing off some guy’s head because the unfortunate wretch said that Muhammad wasn’t that different from David Koresh (which, in my opinion, he wasn’t), and the US sees this act and starts calling you an inhumane caveman. Well, you think to yourself, “Okay, they kinda have a point, but Jeses H. F’g Christ, given Gitmo, they’d do what I’m doing if they could get away with it. In fact, they probably are.” Well, such thinking does not help our cause. Far better would be for the worm-eating, hunter/gatherer Taliban nutjob to say, “S–t, those high and mighty US mofos sure are… well, whatever.. they’re um… yeah, uh, crap, this spinal column is tough to saw through. Wish I lived in a country where I could start a dotcom. Wait a minute…”
As for arhooley, given the wit of your comment I can see why you like Dick.
Jeff
Jeff –
Unless we’re willing to take no prisoners, you’ve got to lock these guys up somewhere. And Gitmo is about as secure a location as you can find. Also, they don’t qualify as either prisoners of war, nor do they fall under US laws. They’re in a gray area — just like GItmo.
Stephen,
Why don’t they quality as as POWs? Also, we got along fine for over 200 years and through several major wars/conflicts (Civil War, WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf I and II) with nothing like Gitmo. Why now?
Jeff
Jeff –
POW is a legal status granted to those who wear a uniform, serve a government, have a command structure, and obey the laws of war, etc. Terrorists fail on all counts. Furthermore, Al Qaeda and the Taliban aren’t signatories to the Geneva conventions, and treating them as though they are does nothing to encourage them to follow the rules. (Rules such as the ones forbidding hiding amongst civilians, intentionally targeting civilians, using hospitals or religious sites for military uses, and the like.)
Under existing (and inadequate) laws and treaties, terrorists are more like saboteurs or spies — and so as I understand it, it’s completely legal to get whatever information out of them you want or can, then shoot them. Or just shoot them.
But again, our laws and institutions don’t really govern these areas very well. So if we seem to be fumbling along and making things up as we go, it’s because we are.
Um, Jeff, we did have POW camps in the US for German soldiers during WWII. The folks at Gitmo are not common criminals, as they are attacking others for political reasons much as nation states do. However, they do not qualify as POWs a la those German soldiers because they do not wear uniforms or have a command and control structure that nation-state armies do. We could release enemy POWs at the conclusion of hostilities because their nations, which controlled their actions, agreed to ceasefires (even before peace treaties were signed) and thus would tell the soldiers to stop fighting.
There are those on the Left (I’m not saying you do) who make fun of the military for uniforms & ranks & insignia & discipline, but those are all important in maintaining control over people who are trained and equipped to kill other human beings.
In contrast there is no control by bin Laden over every AQ cell. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t part of the Madrid train bombings. There aren’t any of the trappings of a recognizable nation-state army, yet AQ is fighting for political ends. Even when Pablo Escobar was using terrorism against Columbia’s government over extradition with the US, his end goal was merely to sell more cocaine and get richer. That’s a criminal.
So really, Gitmo detainees do not fit either of the two long recognized categories: captured criminals and captured soldiers. They are a different species, really relatively new, and US & international law aren’t up to speed.
Soldiers get released at the end of a war. How will we know when the end of this war is? There’s no nation state to sign an agreement with (indeed we are fighting to prevent a Taliban/AQ take over of Afghanistan/Pakistan), no capitol to march down.
I’m not sure what the answer is, but releasing them back into the wild isn’t the answer.
Stephen, good info, thanks. I guess all I would say is that we should walk our talk, and if our talk is that ” all men are created equal before the law” (I think that’s the right lingo), we should walk it, yes, even for non-US citizens.
RBJ, good stuff, too, thanks. I didn’t mean we had no POW camps in past wars, just that we had nothing, at least not to my knowledge, like Gitmo.
Jeff
Jeff, there’s no wit in an ad hominem attack.
Also, we got along fine for over 200 years and through several major wars/conflicts (Civil War, WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf I and II) with nothing like Gitmo.
I’ll bet you never heard of Elmira or the Philippine Insurrection. Given that you named Gulf War II as a period during which “we got along fine…with nothing like Gitmo”, I would hesitate to wager on your awareness of much.
given Gitmo, they’d do what I’m doing if they could get away with it. In fact, they probably are.
I can’t tell if you’re accusing the US of beheading people, or saying we need to prevent illiterate tribesmen on the other side of the world from believing lies about us. If it’s the latter, that’s a very difficult task, and my best suggestion would be to convince leftists such as yourself to stop spreading hateful, harmful lies. If it’s the former, of course, go fuck yourself.
Jeff, then I’m just not sure what you mean by “we had nothing like Gitmo”.
If you think this is the first time the US has used “enhanced interrogation techniques”, especially during wartime, then you are being naive.
The problem with Gitmo is that many of the detainees had nothing on them other than the word of people we paid other people to finger. Sure, many of them are the proverbial worst of the worst, but others just had the temerity to be in the wrong place at the wrong time fighting the wrong war that went even more wrong when some somewhat distant associates of the wrongs went and did something in the US. In other words, they got hung out to dry by some profiteering asshole rebels in a country filled with profiteering asshole rebels. Uniforms and such arguments fall flat when we pretend that this is a judicial processing center and no judicial proceedures occur. If it’s a prison, we have to convict. If it’s a POW camp, we have to treat them like POWs. If it’s not a POW camp, we have to try them judicially. And the circular logic goes on and on and on while our credibility goes down and down and down. And we accomplished what by having Gitmo be that way? Are we any safer? Knowing that two-thirds of these evil cretins were released under the Bush Administration kind of undermines a lot of the rhetoric about us needing them. And Cheney’s assertion that the 2002 foiled plot to bomb LAX was foiled by our 2003 capture and torture of Klalid S. M. which I guess also turned it into a nuclear plot against LA according to his recent statements doesn’t help the cause of credibility all that much either.
If we are so fragile that we can’t try these guys in a court and allow any testimony about how we treated them and also allow us to testify about what evidence we have against them, then we are not America. It’s time to try these assholes for whatever it is they did, and it’s also time to let the truth out. We can handle it.