Close Guantano...take no prisoners!
Posted by: David deForrest at September 6, 2006 02:37 PM
I don't understand why he's caving in now. This story seems to have left the front pages long ago.
Posted by: Art Patscheck at September 6, 2006 02:51 PM
Insisting that we give our enemies the same or close to the same legal rights we grant ourselves to ensure that justice is reached is a result of AQ propaganda?
Posted by: Tom Shipley at September 6, 2006 03:00 PM
I always suspected Bush was a democrat
Posted by: aric at September 6, 2006 03:30 PM
Yes, Tom, because it requires us to value an enemy that violates every law of warfare known as much as we value American citizens.
Despite the fact that nobody seems to acknowledge or mention it anymore, the Geneva Conventions are *supposed* to be applied only to a) signatories of the Conventions or b) opposing forces who themselves obey the Geneva Conventions. Al Qaeda qualifies on neither count.
It's also supposed to be -- again, according to the Geneva Conventions -- that unlawful combatants in a war zone have no rights except a hearing by military tribunal, and then whatever disposition that tribunal sees fit... which is, oddly enough, exactly what the Bush Administration originally had planned for them, before people like you put up an incredible whining fit to give terrorists civil rights that they weren't actually supposed to have.
But, y'know, Al Qaeda's propaganda claimed they were supposed to get them... and so did an incredible amount of liberal and media figures, including you.
Now, having answered /that/, for the sake of Matt's disappointment, I'll link him to a happy article on Wizbang that shows why this particular move of President Bush's weren't so unwise after all. Go ahead and zip on over, it's actually quite heartening.
http://wizbangblog.com/2006/09/06/live-blogging-president-bushs-speech.php
Posted by: Chuckg at September 6, 2006 03:32 PM
Mild correction to above -- 'the Geneva Conventions are *supposed* to be applied only to' should have read 'the Geneva Conventions are *required* to be applied only to'.
The US can, of course, choose to be more lenient than the minimum. And has done so in every war we've fought for the past 60 years. (Historical note -- the last enemy we fought that actually *did* obey the Geneva Conventions as regards American prisoners was, would you believe, Nazi Germany.) The rest? We chose to give at least some Geneva Conventions rights to prisoners *even when we didn't have to*. This is called, yes, 'mercy'.
But here's the thing about mercy. It's not an entitlement. *Especially* not to people who routinely treat the prisoners /they/ take from /us/ in the most horrific, barbaric fashions imaginable.
Have you ever wondered why people who are trying to kick your ass in a war would bother to obey rules and treaties about being nice to you in the first place? Answer -- mutual deterrence. The primary enforcement mechanism of the Geneva Conventions has *always* been that if /you/ didn't obey them, your /opponent/ didn't have to obey them either. You treated his people with basic human rights so that he would do the same for yours.
Al Qaeda is, of course, never going to do anything to American prisoners they take except beat them, rape them, torture them, and saw their heads off, and laugh about it.
Therefore, and entirely by the Geneva Conventions, /any/ leniency we show their prisoners beyond the bare minimum of a tribunal hearing (followed immediately by an execution) is precisely that -- leniency. Optional. Not required. Purely a gesture of benevolence on our part.
This is why some of us start rolling our eyes whenever some of you start talking like these guys deserve Miranda hearings and jury trials, or whatever.
Posted by: Chuckg at September 6, 2006 03:43 PM
And as long as I'm feeling on a roll, I might as well try to pre-empt one of the more common possible counter-arguments to what I just said, specifically the one about 'us sinking to their moral level' or whatnot.
Nuts.
The "moral level" of Al Qaeda is the one where you deliberately massacre innocent people for shits and giggles -- seeing as that is exactly what they do for a living. We cannot sink to this moral level without doing the same thing.
And, y'know, nothing we can do to Al Qaeda members we have in captivity can *be* that same thing, *because they are not innocent people*. (That was the purpose of the military tribunal specified in the GC, after all -- to establish the guilt or innocence of the alleged illegal combatant you've swept up before you take him outside and shoot him in the face.)
In the real world, there are other places to be besides the two extremes of 'perfect saint' and 'pure evil, aka Osama bin Laden'. Keeping Al Qaeda prisoners awake until they crack, or face-slapping them with wet towels, or etc., falls short of 'perfect saint', yes. OTOH, it ain't remotely near as far down as 'sawing an innocent reporter's head off', or 'deliberately massacreing thousands of innocent people'.
So, that whole 'sinking to their moral level' nonsense... stuff it. Us going Jack Bauer on their asses is in no way on the same moral level as Al Qaeda. It's not even in the same time zone.
The key difference being, natch, the difference between innocent victims and guilty SOBs as regards target selection.
Posted by: Chuckg at September 6, 2006 03:51 PM
To political junkies, Bush coming clean on the secret prisons is either a defeat for Bush(progressive view) or a sellout(neocon view). The more important question is how it sells to the voting public. I suspect that it will be viewed favorably by the majority, who are security-minded.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon at September 6, 2006 04:15 PM
I'll need some more time to think about this - but, for now, I'm going to trust President Bush...he's done the right thing since day one, and I presume that is what he's doing here...it could be, of course, to let the terrorists know who we hold, and as preparation for the tribunals we will have in the by and by.
Posted by: Mark Noonan at September 6, 2006 04:28 PM
Chuck, it's not about sinking to the moral level of AQ, it's about not abandoning our morals in the fight against AQ.
Posted by: Tom Shipley at September 6, 2006 04:43 PM
Leave it to a conservative to describe transferring prisoners to a prison where they won't be tortured and murdered and rendered to another country to do same...
as disappointing.
Posted by: axis at September 6, 2006 04:55 PM
Leave it to a liberal to describe someone that murders innocent Americans through terror without wearing a uniform or belonging to any army to be allowed to have 3 square meals, television and a back rub every day while he waits for a liberal judge to let him off if he promises not to do it again.
Posted by: Warriornation at September 6, 2006 05:03 PM
"Chuck, it's not about sinking to the moral level of AQ, it's about not abandoning our morals in the fight against AQ."
And isn't *this* just a mouthful of nothing.
As ever, Tom wants to take a position without actually having to admit that he's taken it. That way, he still gets to claim it, but doesn't have to defend the logical implications of it.
I give this rhetorical tactic all the respect and consideration it deserves, which is none.
Applying the letter of the Geneva Conventions as they are originally written, as opposed to going well above and beyond them to grant terrorists tons of legal and civil rights that they're not actually entitled to have, is now defined as 'abandoning our morals' in the liberal lexicon.
You love them far more than you love us, and try to hide that fact by pretending to love American ideals. News flash -- you don't.
Posted by: Chuckg at September 6, 2006 05:05 PM
Who is it we are fighting here, the terrorists or the Democrats?
It seems that when something goes wrong we blame the Dems for it.
We republicans control the WH and both sides of congress. If something goes wrong it is OUR fault and we should be man/woman enough to admit it, not wimp out by blaming the Dems.
Posted by: ClearwaterConservative at September 6, 2006 05:08 PM
You know one of the guys over at Polipundit thinks this is a big victory for Bush and the Country.
He is not someone who lauds every move that George make's either. He thinks that Bush is doing this now because (a) we have wrung everything we can out of these guys and (b) given that these guys are true bastards Congress will allow Bush to set tribunal rules that every true conservative can live with. The second point is a fact we have to live with the Supreme Court's ruling on detainees.
Posted by: Tim Sarsfield at September 6, 2006 05:09 PM
Tom, you might genuinely mean well or you might just be a MoveOn/Code Pink/International ANSWER moonbat troll, I don't know.
But if you're the former, as opposed to the latter, what I'm about to say might just reach you. I hope.
It is abandoning our morals *to* treat AQ terrorists with the same leniency that we treat US citizens arrested in the US. It is *upholding* our morals to *not* treat them.
To say that guilt should be treated equivalent to innocence (or presumed innocence), or to say that captured terrorists should be treated in equivalent manner to captured honorable soldiers, is to erase the distinctions between guilty and innocent, or the distinction between murderer and honorable combatant.
And that is, by definition, abandoning morality. When you try to eliminate the distinctions between the moral and the barbaric, then you are abandoning morality.
That's what treating AQ with kid gloves does. It is placing them on the same moral level as we place ourselves.
Which is dead wrong.
Posted by: Chuckg at September 6, 2006 05:18 PM
In the Global War on Terror/Islam, the Geneva Conventions protect our Islamic enemy, but they do not protect us in the West.
Posted by: Freedom1 at September 6, 2006 05:37 PM
Posted by: Warriornation at September 6, 2006 05:40 PM
Posted by: Warriornation at September 6, 2006 06:07 PM
Gee, Mark. Bush can do no wrong. Ever.
At least you're consistent, and consistently wrong. Just like Bush.
Wade
Posted by: Wade at September 6, 2006 06:09 PM
Thanks, Warriornation. That's good to know.
Posted by: Freedom1 at September 6, 2006 06:30 PM
Close Guantano...take no prisoners!
My sentiments exactly--shoot 'em on the battlefield and we won't have bear the expense of housing these animals until they're rescued by the ACLU.
Tom, why are you sinking to the moral level of bin Laden?
BTW, Clearwaterconservative is a spoof...
Posted by: keefer at September 6, 2006 07:09 PM
Duh, guys!!! Think he might be doing it because the REPUBLICAN DOMINATED Supreme Court told him in June that he had to.
Posted by: kiamichi at September 6, 2006 07:12 PM
Insisting that we give our enemies the same or close to the same legal rights we grant ourselves to ensure that justice is reached is a result of AQ propaganda?
No, actually it's a result of kooks on the left, the biased media, and an activist court.
Mark, I'm also reserving judgement, but I'm biting my lip.
Tom, why do you sympathize with terrorists and biased media?
Posted by: keefer at September 6, 2006 08:02 PM
Close Guantano...take no prisoners!
I don't understand why he's caving in now. This story seems to have left the front pages long ago.
Insisting that we give our enemies the same or close to the same legal rights we grant ourselves to ensure that justice is reached is a result of AQ propaganda?
I always suspected Bush was a democrat
Yes, Tom, because it requires us to value an enemy that violates every law of warfare known as much as we value American citizens.
Despite the fact that nobody seems to acknowledge or mention it anymore, the Geneva Conventions are *supposed* to be applied only to a) signatories of the Conventions or b) opposing forces who themselves obey the Geneva Conventions. Al Qaeda qualifies on neither count.
It's also supposed to be -- again, according to the Geneva Conventions -- that unlawful combatants in a war zone have no rights except a hearing by military tribunal, and then whatever disposition that tribunal sees fit... which is, oddly enough, exactly what the Bush Administration originally had planned for them, before people like you put up an incredible whining fit to give terrorists civil rights that they weren't actually supposed to have.
But, y'know, Al Qaeda's propaganda claimed they were supposed to get them... and so did an incredible amount of liberal and media figures, including you.
Now, having answered /that/, for the sake of Matt's disappointment, I'll link him to a happy article on Wizbang that shows why this particular move of President Bush's weren't so unwise after all. Go ahead and zip on over, it's actually quite heartening.
http://wizbangblog.com/2006/09/06/live-blogging-president-bushs-speech.php
Mild correction to above -- 'the Geneva Conventions are *supposed* to be applied only to' should have read 'the Geneva Conventions are *required* to be applied only to'.
The US can, of course, choose to be more lenient than the minimum. And has done so in every war we've fought for the past 60 years. (Historical note -- the last enemy we fought that actually *did* obey the Geneva Conventions as regards American prisoners was, would you believe, Nazi Germany.) The rest? We chose to give at least some Geneva Conventions rights to prisoners *even when we didn't have to*. This is called, yes, 'mercy'.
But here's the thing about mercy. It's not an entitlement. *Especially* not to people who routinely treat the prisoners /they/ take from /us/ in the most horrific, barbaric fashions imaginable.
Have you ever wondered why people who are trying to kick your ass in a war would bother to obey rules and treaties about being nice to you in the first place? Answer -- mutual deterrence. The primary enforcement mechanism of the Geneva Conventions has *always* been that if /you/ didn't obey them, your /opponent/ didn't have to obey them either. You treated his people with basic human rights so that he would do the same for yours.
Al Qaeda is, of course, never going to do anything to American prisoners they take except beat them, rape them, torture them, and saw their heads off, and laugh about it.
Therefore, and entirely by the Geneva Conventions, /any/ leniency we show their prisoners beyond the bare minimum of a tribunal hearing (followed immediately by an execution) is precisely that -- leniency. Optional. Not required. Purely a gesture of benevolence on our part.
This is why some of us start rolling our eyes whenever some of you start talking like these guys deserve Miranda hearings and jury trials, or whatever.
And as long as I'm feeling on a roll, I might as well try to pre-empt one of the more common possible counter-arguments to what I just said, specifically the one about 'us sinking to their moral level' or whatnot.
Nuts.
The "moral level" of Al Qaeda is the one where you deliberately massacre innocent people for shits and giggles -- seeing as that is exactly what they do for a living. We cannot sink to this moral level without doing the same thing.
And, y'know, nothing we can do to Al Qaeda members we have in captivity can *be* that same thing, *because they are not innocent people*. (That was the purpose of the military tribunal specified in the GC, after all -- to establish the guilt or innocence of the alleged illegal combatant you've swept up before you take him outside and shoot him in the face.)
In the real world, there are other places to be besides the two extremes of 'perfect saint' and 'pure evil, aka Osama bin Laden'. Keeping Al Qaeda prisoners awake until they crack, or face-slapping them with wet towels, or etc., falls short of 'perfect saint', yes. OTOH, it ain't remotely near as far down as 'sawing an innocent reporter's head off', or 'deliberately massacreing thousands of innocent people'.
So, that whole 'sinking to their moral level' nonsense... stuff it. Us going Jack Bauer on their asses is in no way on the same moral level as Al Qaeda. It's not even in the same time zone.
The key difference being, natch, the difference between innocent victims and guilty SOBs as regards target selection.
To political junkies, Bush coming clean on the secret prisons is either a defeat for Bush(progressive view) or a sellout(neocon view). The more important question is how it sells to the voting public. I suspect that it will be viewed favorably by the majority, who are security-minded.
I'll need some more time to think about this - but, for now, I'm going to trust President Bush...he's done the right thing since day one, and I presume that is what he's doing here...it could be, of course, to let the terrorists know who we hold, and as preparation for the tribunals we will have in the by and by.
Chuck, it's not about sinking to the moral level of AQ, it's about not abandoning our morals in the fight against AQ.
Leave it to a conservative to describe transferring prisoners to a prison where they won't be tortured and murdered and rendered to another country to do same...
as disappointing.
Leave it to a liberal to describe someone that murders innocent Americans through terror without wearing a uniform or belonging to any army to be allowed to have 3 square meals, television and a back rub every day while he waits for a liberal judge to let him off if he promises not to do it again.
"Chuck, it's not about sinking to the moral level of AQ, it's about not abandoning our morals in the fight against AQ."
And isn't *this* just a mouthful of nothing.
As ever, Tom wants to take a position without actually having to admit that he's taken it. That way, he still gets to claim it, but doesn't have to defend the logical implications of it.
I give this rhetorical tactic all the respect and consideration it deserves, which is none.
Applying the letter of the Geneva Conventions as they are originally written, as opposed to going well above and beyond them to grant terrorists tons of legal and civil rights that they're not actually entitled to have, is now defined as 'abandoning our morals' in the liberal lexicon.
You love them far more than you love us, and try to hide that fact by pretending to love American ideals. News flash -- you don't.
Who is it we are fighting here, the terrorists or the Democrats?
It seems that when something goes wrong we blame the Dems for it.
We republicans control the WH and both sides of congress. If something goes wrong it is OUR fault and we should be man/woman enough to admit it, not wimp out by blaming the Dems.
You know one of the guys over at Polipundit thinks this is a big victory for Bush and the Country.
He is not someone who lauds every move that George make's either. He thinks that Bush is doing this now because (a) we have wrung everything we can out of these guys and (b) given that these guys are true bastards Congress will allow Bush to set tribunal rules that every true conservative can live with. The second point is a fact we have to live with the Supreme Court's ruling on detainees.
Tom, you might genuinely mean well or you might just be a MoveOn/Code Pink/International ANSWER moonbat troll, I don't know.
But if you're the former, as opposed to the latter, what I'm about to say might just reach you. I hope.
It is abandoning our morals *to* treat AQ terrorists with the same leniency that we treat US citizens arrested in the US. It is *upholding* our morals to *not* treat them.
To say that guilt should be treated equivalent to innocence (or presumed innocence), or to say that captured terrorists should be treated in equivalent manner to captured honorable soldiers, is to erase the distinctions between guilty and innocent, or the distinction between murderer and honorable combatant.
And that is, by definition, abandoning morality. When you try to eliminate the distinctions between the moral and the barbaric, then you are abandoning morality.
That's what treating AQ with kid gloves does. It is placing them on the same moral level as we place ourselves.
Which is dead wrong.
In the Global War on Terror/Islam, the Geneva Conventions protect our Islamic enemy, but they do not protect us in the West.
Setting the record straight, they will NOT be given POW status per the White House
Setting the record straight, they will NOT be given POW status per the White House
Gee, Mark. Bush can do no wrong. Ever.
At least you're consistent, and consistently wrong. Just like Bush.
Wade
Thanks, Warriornation. That's good to know.
Close Guantano...take no prisoners!
My sentiments exactly--shoot 'em on the battlefield and we won't have bear the expense of housing these animals until they're rescued by the ACLU.
Tom, why are you sinking to the moral level of bin Laden?
BTW, Clearwaterconservative is a spoof...
Duh, guys!!! Think he might be doing it because the REPUBLICAN DOMINATED Supreme Court told him in June that he had to.
Insisting that we give our enemies the same or close to the same legal rights we grant ourselves to ensure that justice is reached is a result of AQ propaganda?
No, actually it's a result of kooks on the left, the biased media, and an activist court.
Mark, I'm also reserving judgement, but I'm biting my lip.
Tom, why do you sympathize with terrorists and biased media?