[Newsbot]

Filibuster Cartoons
Title: The Gitmo alternative (click to view)
Date: July 7, 2011
A government guided solely by ideology is a dangerous thing. But an even more dangerous thing may be a government that doles out ideology in random dollops, without any uniting sense of portion, predictability, or consistency.

Though he carries a lot of ideological baggage and certainly has his share of ideologically-inspired interests, President Obama is not an excessively ideological politician — his soft-spined compromises on contentious matters like tax cuts and (soon) the debt ceiling seem to be ample evidence of that. Yet, in an obvious sop to his roots, base, or whatever else, there still remain a couple of issues which the President has arbitrarily elevated to the status of an ideological fetish; matters so sacred to some abstract principle of left-wing purity that no degree of surrender from their defence is permitted — even if every related issue is already compromised beyond recognition.

Guantanamo Bay seems to be one such fetish. Having aggressively campaigned in favor of its closure during the 2008 election, and then, upon his first day in office, signed an executive order demanding it be done, Obama has failed pathetically in all subsequent efforts to actually shut down the joint. As this long and fascinating essay in the Washington Post documents in lurid detail, the Administration's hated of Gitmo has never really coincided with a viable alternative, in large part because almost all alternatives are equally unpleasant. Yet even as the place's permanence begins to look more and more unavoidable, the fight against Gitmo continues, under ever-more convoluted and abstract justifications, leading to ever more ad-hoc and strange schemes of imprisonment and prosecution.

To summarize the issue broadly, during the course of the eight-year Bush administration, around 800 overseas combatants were rounded up by US forces and shipped to Guantanamo Bay, an anachronistic territory of Cuba still under US jurisdiction. The men were all said to "enemy combatants" of the War on Terror, which is to say Al-Qaeda terrorists, Taliban fighters, or other, more amorphous "supporters" of their causes or campaigns. The vast majority were released before Obama took office, usually to their home countries, but a core group of around 170 remain in the center to this day.

Originally, the Obama plan was to try these remaining people in US courts, but the plan hit several snags. For starters, the President's own Justice Department has estimated that less than a quarter of the remaining Gitmo detainees were captured with enough evidence to actually try them with anything, by US legal standards. Yet no other countries seem to want them, and allowing them to immigrate to the United States (which has, in fact, been attempted as a possible solution in some cases) seems far too politically toxic. So for now, they're simply indefinite wards of the state, who need to be kept somewhere, if not Gitmo, then some other forever-prison elsewhere.

For those detainees with stronger cases against them, the notion of transferring detainees to the US mainland for trial has proven extremely radioactive, with Congress repeatedly passing harsh laws to prevent the idea from moving forward. Though these laws are quite plausibly unconstitutional, the Obama administration has so far not shown much interest in contesting them.

In 2011, pinched by Congress — which largely favors the Gitmo status quo — and the Supreme Court — who has ruled detainees have a right to some kind of trial — Obama relunctantly agreed to resume Bush-era military tribunals at Gimto, a system of "war courts" that exist outside the formal American judicial regime. Understandably, this was viewed as a major compromise of the President's first-day promise to close the place down entirely, which has, in turn, led to a ramping up of other anti-Gitmo initiatives elsewhere, in order to assemble some sort of "we're for it yet against it" salve for the Democrats' liberal base.

Since the War on Terror is still ongoing, the most practical anti-Gitmo Obama initiative has been to strenuously avoid sending new people to the prison camp. An alleged Somali terrorist who's been in the news recently was imprisoned for several months on a US navy warship rather than Gitmo, for instance, in a decision that's been getting a lot of flack from Republicans. Senator Lindsey Graham, who at one time favored closing Gitmo, has characterized the Administration's new detention approach as "basically making decisions around not having to use Gitmo, rather than what’s best for the country." To this, one could add that the Obama administration seems more interested in not using Gitmo than not indefinitely detaining people in a rights-free, military-run, legal no-man's-land, which is very much how a number of civil libertarians, including the ACLU, have characterized the Somali guy's floating detention center.

Likewise, we can't say that the Obama administration has ever shown much respect for the legal rights of the dozens of terror suspects it's killed via drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan. Indeed, the drone strikes have faced rising human rights criticism for precisely this reason: from the perspective of the government, such attacks may simply represent a darkly easier, preemptive solution to the dilemma of prisoners of war.

Overall, it's hard to find a common ideological thread running through the Obama approach to the War on Terror. Clearly Gitmo represents something bad, but that something may not be much more than the physical place itself. Any method of getting people out of there — or not in there in the first place — seems to be equally justifiable, be it a civilian trial, military tribunal, indefinite imprisonment somewhere else, or even death on the battlefield. All this just so the President can run for a second term claiming to still be "with" progressives on the evil of Guantanamo Bay, though I doubt progressives will be that easily hoodwinked.

[Zipperfish]

George Bush must laughing his butt off at this one.

If indeed Guantanamo consisted solely of "Al-Qaeda terrorists, Taliban fighters, or other, more amorphous supporters causes" I could more clearly accept the Americans' position.

But JJ's article forgets to mention the others in Guantanamo--you know, the ones who just happened to be in the wrong place in the wrong time, or maybe failed to pay due respect to some American soldier happening by. But they got sent there anyways, possibly for life, and a lot of them were tortured too.

I wouldn't think you'd have to be "progressive" to take a stand against arbitrary torture and detention.

Funny cartoon though! Love the Predator Drone bit!

[martin14]

What is this one about.. the Messiah signed a paper closing it 18 months ago.


Oh, wait...


I think if I was a terrorist scumbag, I'd prefer being in Gitmo rather than
floating around in the bowels of a Navy ship.

Here's hoping the plumbing stack runs right by his cot.

[Psudo]

I think the hardest part about determining the right thing to do about the remaining Gitmo detainees is that we know squat about who they are. If the 170 that are left fit Zipperfish's description -- "the ones who just happened to be in the wrong place in the wrong time, or maybe failed to pay due respect to some American soldier happening by" -- then his analysis is right-on. If one presumes that such innocent bystanders were filtered out before reaching Gitmo or were among the 630 released, then by process of elimination the remaining 170 must be the worst of the worst. It is impossible to design an acceptable plan of action that gives these two mutually exclusive world views equal respect.

Do you know the difference between jail and prison? Jail is where people are held until their trial ends or bail is paid, whereas prison is where they serve their sentences. People spend many years in jail, typically not knowing when their trial is going to start or hearing the date moved back and back and back seemingly perpetually into the future. And these are people who haven't seen trial, who may well have been innocent bystanders, now forced to bunk next to killers and rapists. Gitmo is not technically a jail, but the backlog in the jails is the same problem applied to 10,000 times the population, mostly US citizens, except without the national security justification. I'm thinking the Gitmo outrage is magnified by anti-war sentiment beyond what the actual reality in Cuba validates.

[Zipperfish]

Psudo wrote:

I think the hardest part about determining the right thing to do about the remaining Gitmo detainees is that we know squat about who they are. If the 170 that are left fit Zipperfish's description -- "the ones who just happened to be in the wrong place in the wrong time, or maybe failed to pay due respect to some American soldier happening by" -- then his analysis is right-on. If one presumes that such innocent bystanders were filtered out before reaching Gitmo or were among the 630 released, then by process of elimination the remaining 170 must be the worst of the worst. It is impossible to design an acceptable plan of action that gives these two mutually exclusive world views equal respect.

Do you know the difference between jail and prison? Which one is Gitmo? Jail is where people are held until their trial ends or bail is paid, whereas prison is where they serve their sentences. People spend many years in jail, typically not knowing when their trial is going to start or hearing the date moved back and back and back seemingly perpetually into the future. And these are people who haven't seen trial, who may well have been innocent bystanders, now forced to bunk next to killers and rapists. Gitmo is not technically a jail, but the backlog in the jails is the same problem applied to 10,000 times the population, mostly US citizens, except without the national security justification. I'm thinking the Gitmo outrage is magnified by anti-war sentiment beyond what the actual reality in Cuba validates.

I'm not sure there's no path forward. I think Obama took the first step when he essentially declared the status quo unacceptable.

Currently, to my knowledge, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of independent objective evidence available to differentiate between those in Guantanamo Bay by accident and those that are actually high-level terrorists. That would be a good first step. The fact that the US used torture means the confessions aren't really worth much, since people tend to confess to anything when being tortured. So confessions should not be considered in the evidence, in my opinion.

Napoleon Bonaparte wrote:

It has always been recognized that this way of interrogating men, by putting them to torture, produces nothing worthwhile.

But even I--who opposed this debacle from the start--recognize that in wartime expecting full trails with civil court processes and burdens of evidence is just not practical.

I'd be fine with military trials with some civilian oversight at this point--with confessions not being considered evidence for reasons cited earlier.

AS far as the outrage factor--well I guess that you could just as easily argue conversely that the fact that little has been done about it is magnified by pro-war sentiment.

[Psudo]

Zipperfish wrote:

there doesn't seem to be much in the way of independent objective evidence available to differentiate between those in Guantanamo Bay by accident and those that are actually high-level terrorists.

I can't imagine why any evidence distinguishing between them would be made public. The more important these figures are to terrorist activities, the more likelihood that evidence would be tangled up with strategic military secrets.

Zipperfish wrote:

The fact that the US used torture means the confessions aren't really worth much, since people tend to confess to anything when being tortured.

What fact? Even the US interrogations of any of the 170 devolved into torture (which I challenge you to prove), the narrative I've heard is that they interrogate for actionable intelligence, not confessions. You seek confessions in preparation for a trial, not for perpetual detainment. It doesn't fit.

I agree with you that statements coerced by torture should not be admissible in court. I'm sure the courts, both civilian and military, agree.

Zipperfish wrote:

AS far as the outrage factor--well I guess that you could just as easily argue conversely that the fact that little has been done about it is magnified by pro-war sentiment.

That doesn't explain the similarity between the Gitmo situation and the civilian jail backlock. Pro-war sentiment surely didn't cause the latter.

[Psudo]

This is a little out of date (it says 248 remaining detainees instead of 170), but here's a summary of who is left:

source wrote:

81 detainees traveled to Afghanistan for jihad, 130 stayed in Al Qaeda, Taliban, or other guest- or safehouses, 169 detainees took military or terrorist training in Afghanistan, 84 actually fought for the Taliban, many of them on the front lines against the NorthernAlliance, 88 were at Tora Bora, 71 detainees' names or aliases were found on computers, hard drives, physical lists of Al Qaeda operatives, or other material seized in raids on Al Qaeda safehouses and facilities. 64 detainees were captured under circumstances-military surrenders, live combat actions, traveling in a large pack of Mujahideen, or in the company of senior Al Qaeda figures, for example-that strongly suggest belligerency and 28 detainees served on Osama Bin Laden's security detail.

Maybe some Syrian national who happened coincidentally to share the name of a known terrorist was visiting the Afghanistan front line for the scenery when he was captured. But that's not the most plausible explanation for the same result.

[martin14]

All fine upstanding citizens I'm sure.

[Zipperfish]

Psudo wrote:

I can't imagine why any evidence distinguishing between them would be made public. The more important these figures are to terrorist activities, the more likelihood that evidence would be tangled up with strategic military secrets.

That was part of my reasoning for accepting that civil trials would not be a practical recourse. But shrouded military and intelligence figures saying "Trust us" is simply not good enough either.

Quote:

What fact? Even the US interrogations of any of the 170 devolved into torture (which I challenge you to prove), the narrative I've heard is that they interrogate for actionable intelligence, not confessions. You seek confessions in preparation for a trial, not for perpetual detainment. It doesn't fit.

We seem agreed on the notion that confessions shown to be elicited under torture should be inadmissable.

As to the question of torture at Abu Ghriab--I don't think I could prove it. But, from my standpoint, I've seen from the video at Abu Ghraib, and I see no reason to believe that that kind of behaviour was not widespread. Also, the lead interrogator for Canadian Omar Khadr was convicted of torturing a cab driver to death.

Quote:

That doesn't explain the similarity between the Gitmo situation and the civilian jail backlock. Pro-war sentiment surely didn't cause the latter.

Oh--I see your point, now. It's a valid one. From my point of view, one is a domestoic issue and the other is a foreign policy one. I'd rather that the US didn't grant itself the right to arbitrarily and indefinitely detain people from other countries, as someone from another country myself, and as an avid proponent of individual freedoms and limiting government powers.

I'm not sure what your backlog is like there, but in Canada it's pretty bad too. We can't seem to get people to court in a reasonable amount of time. The biggest mass murderers in Canadian history--the ones who blew up Air India Flight 182 and killing 329 people in 1985--have never been brought to justice, in no small part (in my opinion) because the investigation and prosecution took over 20 years.

[andyt]

Zipperfish wrote:

I'm not sure what your backlog is like there, but in Canada it's pretty bad too. We can't seem to get people to court in a reasonable amount of time. The biggest mass murderers in Canadian history--the ones who blew up Air India Flight 182 and killing 329 people in 1985--have never been brought to justice, in no small part (in my opinion) because the investigation and prosecution took over 20 years.

We're way worse for getting people to trial, and the length of time a trial takes than the US.

Don't agree with the last sentence. That had noting to do with court delays. The investigation wasn't taken all that serious because it was seen as "them" being killed instead of "us". Incredible bungles by CSIS (remember when the spies following Rayat thought he was firing weapons instead of testing explosives because they didn't bother to keep him in sight?) and conflict between them and RCMP. Also they couldn't keep their prime witness protected so she recanted on the stand.

[Psudo]

Zipperfish wrote:

But shrouded military and intelligence figures saying "Trust us" is simply not good enough either.

Who is "us" exactly? And who is being asked to trust them? If they are accountable to literally no one, that is clearly unacceptable. But there is 1) a chain of command inherent to the military, 2) the press and a set of human rights NGOs desperately pleading for whistleblowers, and 3) a voting public influenced by #2. I don't know whether there has been enough accountability, but is not truthful to say there is no accountability at all.

Zipperfish wrote:

As to the question of torture at Abu Ghriab--

I said at Gitmo, not Abu Ghraib. That torture exists in the world does not prove that it is happening at Gitmo or has happened to the 170 who are still detained there. Abu Ghraib still does not explain the why Gitmo is so unique a target of criticism unless it is an admission that Gitmo's critics are confusing the two.

I don't think there is a question of torture at Abu Ghraib. It is a certainty, over which Americans were publicly convicted in an American court. We know it happened and that it was wrong. It is also a different issue than the 170 currently at Gitmo. If anything, Gitmo is preferable because it's more rigid control structure better enables the policing of the jailers by their superiors; thus, the abuses of Abu Ghraib are more effectively prevented.

Zipperfish wrote:

I'd rather that the US didn't grant itself the right to arbitrarily and indefinitely detain people from other countries, as someone from another country myself, and as an avid proponent of individual freedoms and limiting government powers.

I agree with your statement, and disagree that it applies to Gitmo. These people were not arbitrarily detained, they were detained due to evidence that suggested active participation in combat attacks on Americans. I obviously don't support arbitrary and indefinite detainment of anyone at random, but I certainly support targeted detainment of people who are seemingly strategically attacking US soldiers and sovereignty on the field of battle at wartime. I cannot overstate how much that distinction matters.

Their long detainment without a trial seems strongly paralleled by the long detainment of the great many jailed domestic civilians. Gitmo detainees and the jailed are both moving through their respective system, and both far too slowly. There are various differences: the Gitmo system moves more slowly, the civilian system affects a much larger pool of people, etc. But the problem is fundamentally the same. In both cases, I don't see how being detained inherently amounts to a denial of the right to due process.

[Zipperfish]

Psudo wrote:

Who is "us" exactly? And who is being asked to trust them? If they are accountable to literally no one, that is clearly unacceptable. But there is 1) a chain of command inherent to the military, 2) the press and a set of human rights NGOs desperately pleading for whistleblowers, and 3) a voting public influenced by #2. I don't know whether there has been enough accountability, but is not truthful to say there is no accountability at all.

Agreed. I'm not saying there is no accountability at all. But clearly past events (Abu Ghraib, rendition to torture, rogue mercenaries operating in Iraq) have demonstrated to me at least that more accountability and oversight is required. Maybe it is there now, under Obama. Or not. I don't know.

Psudu wrote:

I said at Gitmo, not Abu Ghraib. That torture exists in the world does not prove that it is happening at Gitmo or has happened to the 170 who are still detained there. Abu Ghraib still does not explain the why Gitmo is so unique a target of criticism unless it is an admission that Gitmo's critics are confusing the two.

I don't think there is a question of torture at Abu Ghraib. It is a certainty, over which Americans were publicly convicted in an American court. We know it happened and that it was wrong. It is also a different issue than the 170 currently at Gitmo. If anything, Gitmo is preferable because it's more rigid control structure better enables the policing of the jailers by their superiors; thus, the abuses of Abu Ghraib are more effectively prevented.

This is the damage that Abu Ghraib (and the waterboarding, and the renditions, and the Blackwater rogue mercenaries) has done--it damaged US credibility on a pretty profound level globally with respect to human rights. So while these examples don't prove anything with respect to Guantanamo Bay, they contribute to an unsavory pattern of behaviour, and make suspicion of arbitrary detainment and torture reasonable, in my opinion.

Quote:

I agree with your statement, and disagree that it applies to Gitmo. These people were not arbitrarily detained, they were detained due to evidence that suggested active participation in combat attacks on Americans.

Perhaps here is the crux of the disagreement. Police officers are highly trained and experienced and have a clear distinction in their minds of what constitutes a valid reason for arrest and incarceration. Soldiers do not. Is it reasonable to simply detain anyone found in the area of a rocket attack or "arbitrary." Afghan taxi driver Dilawar was detained for questioning, but when, four days later, he was presented for interrogation, he was already more dead than alive, having been hung in shackles for most of it. He ended up being tortured to death by the Americans, who then tried to cover it up. Even his interrogators admitted later he was probably just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And no one denies that the "rules of engagement" were not clear, so that certainly doesn't help prevent arbitrary detainment.

Quote:

I obviously don't support arbitrary and indefinite detainment of anyone at random, but I certainly support targeted detainment of people who are seemingly strategically attacking US soldiers and sovereignty on the field of battle at wartime. I cannot overstate how much that distinction matters.

And I wholeheartedly agree. So again the crux of the issue comes down to what is arbitrary and what is reasonable. Based on recent history, I don't think the system in place at the time Guantanamo was populated could differentiate.

Quote:

Their long detainment without a trial seems strongly paralleled by the long detainment of the great many jailed domestic civilians. Gitmo detainees and the jailed are both moving through their respective system, and both far too slowly. There are various differences: the Gitmo system moves more slowly, the civilian system affects a much larger pool of people, etc. But the problem is fundamentally the same. In both cases, I don't see how being detained inherently amounts to a denial of the right to due process.

Justice delayed is justice denied.

It is good to see though, that apparently some effort has been made to release those that probably had little if anything to do with attacks on Americans.

[Psudo]

I have to admit, rogue mercenaries worry me.

Zipperfish wrote:

I don't think the system in place at the time Guantanamo was populated could differentiate.

Even if that's so, the years since and the 600+ released detainees (roughly 75% of them) should have improved the situation.

America has screwed up plenty of things that could have and should have been done better. That fact doesn't support any particular policy regarding Gitmo, nor do the specifics of other cases demonstrate anything about these particular detainees. It bothers me that you want the detainees judged on a case-by-case basis, but consider all American prisons guilty of the sins of Abu Ghraib. What reasoning justifies selective generalizations?

Zipperfish wrote:

Justice delayed is justice denied.

Instantaneous justice is logistically infeasible.

[Zipperfish]

Psudo wrote:

America has screwed up plenty of things that could have and should have been done better. That fact doesn't support any particular policy regarding Gitmo, nor do the specifics of other cases demonstrate anything about these particular detainees. It bothers me that you want the detainees judged on a case-by-case basis, but consider all American prisons guilty of the sins of Abu Ghraib. What reasoning justifies selective generalizations?

The detainees should be judged on a case-by-case basis simply because they are human beings, and with being human comes certain rights. And one of those rights is that someone can't just come along and lock you up for the rest of your life without recourse to defend yourself. Hopefully, as you allude to, they've already somewhat gone through this exercise and sent those home where there was nothing on them.

As for my generalization of all American detainment facilities, perhaps that's not 100% fair. It's hard to remove certain pictures from your head that have been etched there. I also have a reasonable belief that the standard of care--or lack thereof--came from far more senior levels that that of Lieutenant Colonel Steven L. Jordan, who was the highest ranking person charged with a crime. I certainly hope that they were not all like that.

[BartSimpson]

Myself, I find it amusing that Obama not only kept Gitmo, he's kept the US in Afghanistan and Iraq and now he's dragging us into war in Libya, too.

Amazing, the best operative the Republicans have in gettng back the White House is its current occupant.