Hucksters and Rubes
Closing Gitmo is a useless, phony public relations ploy aimed to give the impression that the rule of law has become important to GWB in the Phony War on Terror.
"Senior administration officials said Thursday that a consensus is building to shut the center and transfer detainees to one or more Defense Department facilities, including the maximum-security military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. . . The Guantanamo facility houses about 380 detainees.
"Cheney's office and the Justice Department have been dead set against the step, arguing that moving "unlawful" enemy combatant suspects to the U.S. would give them undeserved legal rights" (Plan Afoot to Shut Guantanamo.)
Of course, the real struggle with terrorism will only be achieved with real actions that address the actual threat posed by terrorism.
Gitmo and secret prisons must be closed because they violate U.S. and international laws. Contrary to GWB and Cheney claims, these prisoners are lawful enemy combatants--soldiers, like ours-- captured on the field of battle, and their detention can only be justified under the auspices of the Geneva Convention.
The G.C. does not authorize the use of prisons or solitary confinements when dealing with combatants.
Several prisoner, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (he of long-term CIA affiliation), are hard core al Qaida operatives, and were not captured on the field of battle. Therefore, their incarceration should appropriately be as prisoners within the criminal justice system. That sort is a criminal, since they conspired to kill American civilians in the civilian sector.
This is the terrorism that U.S. policy should address. That is the threat posed to America. A Taliban rifleman in Afghanistan or Iraq is totally inconsequential to the safety of Americans.
The problem with Gitmo is that both groups of prisoners were treated inhumanely, some actually shanghied and bought for bounties; all were degraded and tortured.
Most importantly, many may have long-term CIA ties that are most embarrassing to the U.S., and we'll never know unless there are open, non-secret trials. What is the administration trying to conceal from the taxpayers? It would seem this fact must be kept secret at all costs.
What is the administration trying to conceal from the taxpayers? What could be worse than the torture that we already know about?
Secrecy is a policy which should not be utilized merely to hide embarrassing facts. Like the fact that the State Department gave $245 million to the Taliban in 2002. It seems that U.S. policy buys the best enemies we can afford.
Closing Gitmo and the secret prisons is a must-do action which is meaningless unless accompanied by a return to the rule of law by the U.S. administration.
"Human Rights Watch said the continued detention of hundreds of men without charge undermined U.S. efforts to end terrorism. (U.S. Struggles With Shutting Down Guantanamo.)
"'Guantanamo has hurt the United States far more than it has hurt its enemies," said Jennifer Daskal, senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch. 'Its closure would help restore the moral authority America needs to effectively fight terrorism and promote the rule of law.'"
The American people, including Congress, must realize that this entire Phony War on Terror is the worst stain on American jurisprudence, leadership and credibility since, well, since GWB became President. I can think of no precedent in the annals of damaging and outrageous national behavior.
Are we so gulled by a flourish, like the demolition of a building? I thought the grand gesture over the Abu Ghraib destruction was affected to appeal to a simpler mindset, for people who saw the thing as inseparable from the behavior.
We have not come far from the days of Aimee Semple McPherson's preaching. We are still the same hucksters and rubes.
The American people are responsible for this grave miscarriage of justice. I see the term in the literal, for the Republicans have aborted the Constitution from the way it conducts business.
Labels: gitmo, khalid sheikh mohammed
posted by rangeragainstwar at 11:53 AM
9 Comments:
after the first battle of the peloponniesian war between athens and sparta pericles in a funeral oration warned the athenians that if they allowed the spartans to turn them away from the things that made them a distinct and vital people, if they relinquished their democracy, if they quit the public funding of art and theatre, if they allowed the war to make them cease to be the people we are then the spartans would have won regardless of any outcome on any battlefield.
by his assaults on the constitution, by allowing cheney's usurpations and crimes to not only flourish, but prosper, the bush administration has handed the terrorists their victory.
look at the share price of halliburton before september 11th, look at it today. then, go ahead, try to tell me that this has been about anything but bog simple greed.
osama should have been caught and tried, in open court by now. that would have been the perfect response.
minstrel boy,
Eloquently said.
It so simple, really. We have the Constitutional and legal mechanics in place to deal with all such eventualities as 9-11 and OBL.
How noble it would have been to track down the perpetrators and bring them to justice. What a shining example of what democracy can do. What a well-spent use of dollars and manpower.
The signs have been around a while far as the Sparta leanings of our society. The culling of "unnecessary" art and science programs from some public schools was one such indicator.
We are losing far more than the precious lives on the battlefield. We are losing a nobility and a rectitude as a people,
Lisa
+++Closing Gitmo and the secret prisons is a must-do action which is meaningless unless accompanied by a return to the rule of law by the U.S. administration.+++
Good luck with that---this (mis)administration is ever more lawless. The precedents they set will alter American practice forever, I fear.
Lisa,
Even Sparta had more rectitude than this administration. A sad truth is that every society occasionally needs what is too sweetly called "Spartan virtues"....the trouble with the crowd in power now is they have NONE of those. They have no real fear or reverence for any deity---which the Spartans DID have, they and theirs do not go to war---they send the children of others to death; the Spartans sent their own and their best. The only thing this crowd has in common with the Spartans is the desire to make the bulk of Americans into slaves to their needs. For, in Sparta, there were ten helots (Greek slaves) to every Spartan. And for the Cheney/Bush crew, that likely sounds about right.
labrys,
Yes, a return to the rule of law would entail jettisoning their m.o. of the last five years.
We can only hope for a visceral disgust to animate the American people to demand propriety.
And for many of the ostriches who did vote for GWB to come to an awareness of what they are losing, so that they may join in.
labrys,
This is a fine point.
We mustn't make a facile Spartan analogy. You have made me think: True Spartans demonstrated an ethos our leaders lack, as you point out.
There are those for whom wearing the mantle of "warrior" makes them feel somehow protected and virile. Yet lacking a cohesive cultural ethos, this impulse can devolve into mere aggression and lawlessness.
labrys,
From Ranger: This has not started with the Bush administration. Ultra secrecy was the hallmark of the Manhattan Project, so this secrecy is nothing new to the American scene.
In that scenario it was appropriate.
Starting with the Gipper, we see presidential attempts to sidestep congressional oversight, and GWB is only refining the techniques of the last two republican administrations.
There is secrecy necessary...as in the Manhatten Project, most certainly appropriate. Then there is secrecy just to cover up venal profit taking, sheer idiocy, outright lawlessness, and degradation of the foundations of the country. Having been an intelligence analyst during the Cold War years, and an amateur student of history and philosophy, I take no issue with REAL security needs. It is the "Oh, lets not let 'em know I got tanked and shit on the White House copy of the Constitution in the Oval Office." sorts of "national security" that I take issue with. But, I am prickly and bitchy that way.
labrys,
We are in agreement over the necessary, vs. the venal, sort of secrecy.
We all need to become more prickly and outraged re. the outrage confronting us.
Silence is not golden in this era. It just means you're fodder to become roadkill.
L.
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