No, Guantánamo Bay will not go away

This story has been dragging on for years but it will not go away. It's not just a concern of "the left."

Here's an opinion piece from The Economist. (Those hippies!)

Reactions?

Guantanamo is an imperial dungeon. That it became a prison form Moslems was a Republican gesture. That it survived Obama's first four years can be explained by the fact that it is an imperial dungeon.

By the way, the outrage of such as The Economist is more than ten years too late.

The people imprisoned in Gitmo can't be released and can't be tried. So, they remain, imprisoned in Limbo, where they will eventually die.

THE ECONOMIST? Are you serious? You must be, or you wouldn't have made that post. The idea that that bourgeois rag would give a porker's podex about justice is about as logical as asking the local kiddie-porn producer about child welfare. Meanwhile, Bruce is correct in his sad prophecy, and Rick is right about imperial attitudes, images, and institutions. For decades it's been as entrenched as price-fixing and the intinmate family handgun as fundamentals of American life.... THE ECONOMIST?! I shall retire to Bedlam. No, I shall go back outside under God's good sun. Better air there than on LT almost always. Even so, peace to you, my brothers, -- Goddard

Republican NIMBYs keep Gitmo open for business.

>4 HarryMacDonald:

You seem to have had an irony impasse of the fundamentalist variety.

In all seriousness I wish you a speedy recovery.

>5 theoria:

Not only Republican NIMBYs but an overwhelming portion of Democrats, too. The political class has failed on this issue. It's a bipartisan fuck-up.

>2 RickHarsch:

ten years too late?

Err...did you read the piece? It explicitly alludes to the magazine's position for the last decade.

The main reason I trotted out the Economist as opposed to a more leftist publication closer to my own personal orientation was to illustrate how accessible an anti-Guantánamo position is (or can be) to people of all persuasions.

Sadly, reflexive reactions about the other side seems to have trumped an engagement with the issue.

This problem is much bigger than a "Republican gesture." Opposition to Gitmo requires more than the scoring of points by needy solipsistic wankers.

no i did not read it. good for them if they have been opposed for the last decade.

Opposition scores no points for anyone as far as I can see, though a few dedicated lawyers have helped a few prisoners, which I suppose is scoring some important points. But need also be the call for accountability for war crimes going back to Kissinger, those left from the Reagan years and so on up to the present. Effective opposition would require an absolute opposition to such things as the suspension of Habeus Corpus and the labeling of enemy combatants as such. It would require accountability for rendition back into the Clinton years, and of course for torture.

Obama promised to close it, then got to the White House and was given access to intelligence briefings. He realized that closing Guantanomo is a preposterous idea. Democrats love love love preposterous ideas, of course, but here's the problem: The house that Obama, his wife, and his two daughters currently live in is Target Number One.

Given that kind of incentive, even a Democrat can acknowledge reality.

#3: The people imprisoned in Gitmo can't be released and can't be tried.

Untrue. Half of the remaining detainees have been cleared for release for years now. The barriers for following through are more political in nature than otherwise. And though it is claimed that as much as a quarter of those already released have gone on to participate in terrorist activities, I find this unimpressive compared to the ten new terrorists created for every terrorist killed in the war or on terror. The American legal system is supposed let people off the hook when state fucks up even if the detainee is as guilty as hell. This is meant to deter future misconduct by government agents. But just mention the "T" word and Americans are as eager to make an exception to due process as a urine-soaked Democrat addicted to gun-crime news.

>10 Carnophile:
Gee, you seem to know a lot about the content of intelligence briefings as well as Obama's inner thoughts. Anything you care to share with us? I've never met a telepathic mole. Cool!

9> 'needy solipsistic wankers'...Does that mean you don't love me?

>12 krolik:

I know what's in those intelligence briefings. So do you.

so tell us for example what they say about Shaker Aamer.

15> Excellent example. Unfortunately too many people in the US lack the empathy to ponder 11 years detention without trial.

Equally important, he embodies personally the series of war crimes committed by the US. If he is allowed to return to England it will be difficult to keep this misguided ally of the US from allowing him to attract enough attention to prevent a diplomatic crisis. Or so I believe the US thinks. So they will continue to hope he dies and it all goes away.

That we break bread with diplomats from a country who have one of our citizens on hunger strike in prison after eleven years without evidence or trial makes me ashamed. the food should be like dust in our throats.

I don't know your personal circumstances, but I dropped the 'we' from US policies decades ago. Nothing the US does shames me.

>13 RickHarsch:

Sorry--that remark was unnecessarily testy.

In fact, I just lurv everybody on LT.

"Cleared for release" is an empty phrase. No bureaucracy, at any time, has ever wanted to admit that someone in that structure made a mistake. Which is exactly what releasing a Gitmo detainee does. So, they can't be released on the basis that it would make important people look bad. And an actual trial would be worse, since too much would be exposed about the details of their incarceration and reasons we seized them.

#10
So releasing a group of illegally detained prisoners with no resources, few friends, and no power would somehow increase the threat to the First Family and the U.S.? Sorry, can't see it.

What is in the intelligence briefings? That thin, dehumanized, long term prisoners who have no real way of even comprehending where they are and were bought by the US off warlords intend to unite on the 10th anniversary of the closure of Guantanamo and blow the lid off the white house.

I think Obama would like to release "them" one by one, silently, secretly, standing at the door motioning "Quiet! Wait! Wait! Now! Next!"...

>15 SimonW11:
Yeah, one guy there isn't terrorist, so none of them are. Good one.

>20 BruceCoulson:
prisoners with no resources, few friends, and no power would somehow increase the threat to the First Family and the U.S.? Sorry, can't see it.

Those people with "no resources," "few friends," and "no power" destroyed the World Trade Center and made a rather large hole in the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, and killed like 3,000 people.

#23

That's a big jump. If the U.S. could clearly establsih a link between the 166 remaining detainees at Gitmo and the WTC attack, don't you think they would have already scheduled trials a few years ago?

Not to mention that some of the detainees were juveniles at the time of 09.11.11.

But then, they've been accused of being terrorists by...well...some people, and even though the government has admitted that it lacks sufficient information to press charges...they're still locked up.

Not all muslims are members of Al-Quaeda. Not even muslims who have been accused of being members.

>23 Carnophile: Obviously you don't know much about the prisoners who have been, and those who still are, kept in Guantanamo.

Carnophile, if you don't believe in the principles of justice in the U.S. you should come right out with your arguments against them.

#23: Yeah, one guy there isn't terrorist, so none of them are. Good one.

That's pretty flippant on the eternal incarceration of innocent people.

Those people with "no resources," "few friends," and "no power" destroyed the World Trade Center and made a rather large hole in the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, and killed like 3,000 people.

What people? Random incarceration makes you less safe, because people on the outside tend to get a little annoyed when their innocent kinsfolk get imprisoned without trial. Even if nobody cares about them, imprisoning 166 random people out a few hundred million isn't going to imprison enough of your enemies to make a difference.

Morally and realistically, Guantanamo is not a good thing.

So you think the intelligence briefing says "innocent guy keep him locked up" and you think Obama is doing this to make himself less of a target?

No, I think that like most career politicians and bureaucrats, President Obama is willing to sacrifice other people in order to look good and keep his job.

After all, if even one Gitmo detainee is released and then becomes involved in an act of terrorism...it won't matter that all of the rest tried to put their horrific experience behind them. The person(s) who made the decision to release that one guy who became a terrorist will be pilloried.

Now if the argument is 'since this could happen, we need to ignore the rule of law and just keep ourselves safe from any threat to the populace (and my standing in the community)'... Then you're saying that the rule of law only applies when its safe and convenient.

Okay, I give up. Before getting to the White House, Obama was dead set against Guantanomo. Plus, his base hates it. According to his own previous beliefs and his political calculus, he has every reason to close it. After he got the the White House, something changed his mind, making him break a campaign promise and do something that enraged his own base. No reason, I guess. He just changed his mind for... variety.

#29: All I get from that is attitude; there's so much snark there that I don't know what's serious or not.

27, 28. sorry I was addressing Carnophile.

Oh dear. I thought I would find a rational debate on a complex topic.

Guess "pro and con" aint what I'm looking for.

#29: After he got the the White House, something changed his mind

No, that's just perfectly normal political cowardice and incompetence. It's not like he read some top secret report that the detainees were mentally reprogrammed manchurian candidates who just can't help it if their subconscious programming switches on.

>23 Carnophile:
The overwhelming majority of prisoners who were sent to Guantánamo have been released or cleared for release. A connection with 9/11 is spurious in their case. This has been widely reported by media of various ideological stripes. Those connected with 9/11 can conceivably be incarcerated elsewhere, just as convicted terrorists in other cases already have been.

>29 Carnophile:
I am disappointed that Obama has not done more, but your depiction here omits many widely reported facts. Obama tried early on to close it, but Congress blocked funding. (It was a largely bipartisan blocking, I'm not just blaming Republicans...there are opportunists and cowards in all camps.) Plans were afoot to send the prisoners to Kansas, and then to Illinois, but ran into local political snags. Subsequent funding provisions signed into law by Obama (attached to larger bills) continued to foul the situation.

Should Obama have tried harder? Absolutely.

Can I disingenuously claim that later unspecified intelligence reports changed his mind? Absolutely not.

You point out that he broke a campaign promise.

He broke (gasp...golly!) a lot of campaign promises, not just this one, in the ongoing messy calculations of trying to get a portion of his agenda through. I wish he'd put a higher priority on Guantánamo, but he didn't.

In June 2006, George W. Bush announced that he wanted to close Guantánamo. This was while he was still in office and presumably read intelligence reports. But he lacked the will to follow through and pay the political price. He kicked the can down the road. Which then Obama continued to do.

In addition to a lack of political guts among Americans, many legal issue snarl the situation. Here's one proposal of a sort of pirouette to get out of the mess.

The overwhelming majority of prisoners who were sent to Guantánamo have been released or cleared for release.

I know. Now who do you think is left? The guys who aren't assessed as dangerous, or the guys who are? The decision of whom to release is not random. It's a function of how dangerous they're believed to be.

A connection with 9/11 is spurious in their case.

In 23 I didn't mean to suggest that the specific people in Gitmo now actually executed 9/11. (Maybe they did, but I wouldn't know.) But some of them are al qaeda members. No one denies this that I know of. And that helpless rabble who couldn't hurt a fly did in fact, pull off 9/11. This is in reference to an argument, made by someone above, that no one in Guantanamo could be dangerous if released.

>rest of 34

Bush, circa 2006/2007, said he wanted to send them back to their home countries. He didn’t mean “freed,” just in prison in their home countries:

The Bush administration wants to close Guantanamo Bay and move its terror suspects to prisons elsewhere...

"The president has said he would like nothing better than at some point to shut down Guantanamo Bay, but there are a number of steps that need to be taken between here and that stated objective and they are tough issues," (State Dept. spokesman) McCormack said. "There are people down at Guantanamo Bay who are very, very dangerous and you can't just let them walk free."

The same is true of Obama’s first Executive Order on the subject. It says to shut down Gitmo within a year, and as to the prisoners, evaluate them and if they're dangerous, move them somewhere else.

So I suppose your statement that Obama tried to close it is literally true.

But when people advocate closing Gitmo, I assume they mean something other than "move them to a different detention facility." But if that is all they mean, er...okay.

Yeah, one guy there isn't terrorist, so none of them are. Good one.

Ummm, given the numbers, a false positive is probably much more likely than a false negative, Bayes-boy.

>35 Carnophile:, 36

Thanks for responding to my reply. I actually agree with a fair amount of this, though some of it perplexes me for seeming to fly in the face of what you suggested earlier. And then then there's stuff like

This is in reference to an argument, made by someone above

Uh, OK. Don't knock yourself out.

Maybe your post >29 Carnophile: summed it up better: "I give up."

http://www.tomdispatch.com/

Although an article on whistle-blowers, it opens with some relevant information on Gitmo, including the President's statement that around 50 detainees cannot be tried, and cannot be released.

So, indefinite detention of anyone we (the U.S.) deems potentially dangerous. If we became the U.S.S.R. solely to defeat them, what was the point of the conflict in the first place?

Obama found it politically impossible to close Guantanamo. I believe he would if he could but he can't. Some prisoners would need be moved to US soil and that would cause a firestorm of protest, a considerable shoring up of the rightest of the right wing and likely a Republican prez in 2017 with a Repub congress.

Obama's got enough trouble now with the Banghazi affair, the ongoing sequester, the gun control failure and the idea that his second term is going the way of most seconds, into a practical "limbo."

(With Gorbachev's aid Reagan actually "saved" a second term going bad and even made his second his "best" but George W eh just sank deeper and deeper in the morass. And Clinton -- he put on a "reality show" for his second act. Personally I don't look forward to another GOPper prez but Harsch has said that he/she/it MIGHT be more "liberal" than Obama. If either of us had any money I might make a real pot o' gold on that...)

>37 Jesse_wiedinmyer:
A small chance of Washington being nuked isn't acceptable, probability-boy.

>38 krolik:
"This is in reference to an argument, made by someone above"

Uh, OK. Don't knock yourself out.

It was post 20. Will that satisfy Your Majesty?

A small chance of Washington being nuked isn't acceptable, probability-boy

Bullshit. There's already a pretty good chance of it. We just use our own weapons as a deterrent.

Kind of interesting that you'd be arguing as vociferously for this position as you are, given your position on civil liberties.

#41: A small chance of Washington being nuked isn't acceptable, probability-boy.

And there's no evidence that Guantanamo is changing the probability of Washington being nuked, at least not in the right direction. So whether or not it's acceptable has little to do with Guantanamo.

>42 Carnophile:

Thanks for the clarification.

>43 Jesse_wiedinmyer: "A small chance of Washington being nuked isn't acceptable, probability-boy"

Bullshit. There's already a pretty good chance of it.

So let's make it larger!

(Foregoing is not an endorsement of your view that the chance is large. I mean, you can get any probability you want by adjusting the time horizon. You're a Palahniuk, fan, right? "On a long enough time scale, everyone's survival rate is zero.")

We just use our own weapons as a deterrent.

That's not as effective against decentralized terror networks as it was against, say the USSR in the Cold War.

But the most unfortunate thing about post 43 is these two sentences taken together:

There's already a pretty good chance of it. We just use our own weapons as a deterrent.

So we're deterring an attack, but there's a pretty good chance of an attack?

You need to make up your mind.

>43 Jesse_wiedinmyer: civil liberties.

I've never approved of the attempt of the last decade or so to do away with the concept of prisoners of war. I have never taken the view that there is no such thing as war and that everything should be treated as a domestic police matter. If some people had their way, the Allies wouldn't have been allowed to shoot Nazi soldiers, I guess. We'd have to arrest them and try to convict them in civilian court or something. Let me run my flag up the mast here, in case there's any doubt: I have nothing but contempt for such idiotic and suicidal notions.

#47: If they were prisoners of war, we would need to scrap all this tribunal crap. Prisoners of war are held until the end of the war in relative comfort, and then they go home. You don't hold POWs indefinitely. You're trying to have your cake and eat it too.

Who says the war is over? Where the hell did that come from?

Right, 49, the whole point of having a war on an abstraction rather than a nation is that the end cannot be clearly noted and all wartime violations of basic human treatment may continue in perpetuity.

How rude of the terrorists not to consult us about whether their method of warfare is politically convenient!

It's not about convenience, it's about a response proportionate to the threat. And the threat to the average person is a lot greater from the cars in their neighborhood than terrorism from Al Queda or any other source. It's not worth abandoning our principles over.

So we're deterring an attack, but there's a pretty good chance of an attack?

No. In your initial post in the exchange, you noted that a small chance of a nuke in DC was unacceptable. We've quite simply lived with that small chance for years now.

Funny, that. We've not been able to win the war on drugs. We've not been able to stanch the flow of immigrants across our borders. Men and materiel make it into the nation on a regular basis. And a lone gunmen can cause untold terror at VA Tech or pretty much anywhere else they choose. And yet, the terrorists can't seem to get their shit together.

>52 jjwilson61:

We shouldn’t fight terrorism because... car crashes!
WTF?

The idea that any probability of a nuclear attack is unacceptable is asinine.

Your attack on the Capitol functions as a nice bogeyman, but it functions as little else.

And your car crash analogy actually is closer to your own position.

>53 Jesse_wiedinmyer:

"So we're deterring an attack, but there's a pretty good chance of an attack?"

No.

Um, sorry but "Yes"... according to you yourself:

"There's already a pretty good chance of it (being nuked)." (43)

Funny, that. We've not been able to win the war on drugs. (Etc.) ... And yet, the terrorists can't seem to get their shit together.

Partly because we're doing things that certain people object to.

This whole argument is like saying, "Murder is rare, so we don't actually need laws against it! Let's repeal them!"

Do you really not see the problem with this?

The idea that any probability of a nuclear attack is unacceptable is asinine.

Try to stay with me, Weidinmyer. There are things that we can do to make it smaller.

Your attack on the Capitol functions as a nice bogeyman, but it functions as little else.

Christ in heaven! You yourself have said that "there's a pretty good chance of it"! Now it's a "bogeyman"?

----------------------------------------

Could you clarify the notion that there's a "pretty good chance" of a nuclear strike on DC, but also that we deter it? I still don't know what you meant to say there.

And your car crash analogy actually is closer to your own position.

The car crash thing is from jjwilson61 at post 52. It's not mine.

I am, however, going to do a 180 on that. I mean, think about how overpoweringly persuasive that point is. A la mode:

1. People should shut up about Guantanamo. After all, Muslims/Afghans/whoever have a higher probability of dying of cancer than of being in Gitmo.

2. And what's all this BS about funding for AIDS research? Why should we do that, when people have a higher probability of dying in a car crash than of dying of AIDS?

3. And let's just shut up about Matthew Shepard. I mean, don't the people who go into hysterics over that know that gay guys have a higher chance of dying in a car crash than...

Etc.

I may decide to be an insufferable bastard about this. It's so damn fun.

Posfilaes here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/153181#4053888 :
"Over the same 40 years, cars killed at least 50,000 in Pennsylvania. As Americans we're wracking up 30 to 40 thousand (car deaths) a year, 85 people a day in 2011."

Meanwhile, per the New York Times as of February 2012,
“The Department of Defense has identified 4,477 American service members who have died since the start of the Iraq war...”

And Iraq Coalition Casualty Count says it’s 4,486 as of (today?)

Yet "liberals" continue to yelp about the Iraq war! Don't they have any sense of perspective!?!

LLOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!

I may decide to be an insufferable bastard about this

You have a choice in the matter? Though I would never describe you as a bastard.

And we invaded Iraq for what reason?

I may decide to be an insufferable bastard about this

You have a choice in the matter?

Hell, yeah!

And we invaded Iraq for what reason?

Who cares? It's a drop in the bucket compared to car crashes. Don't get so worked up about it!

Only if you're just counting the American lives.

I guess that's like your stance on civil liberties, though. Yours are the only ones that matter.

Who cares?

And given the number of half-assed excuses we were handed about the invasion, that did seem to be the prevailing attitude.

Only if you're just counting the American lives

Count people from any country you like. But understand that I'm going to then compare deaths in that country from other causes such as car crashes, etc., etc., etc., in official leftist-approved manner.

I warned you I might be a bastard about this. Tell your left-wing friends not to introduce moronic arguments into these little discussions if they don't want this to happen in the future.

Oddly enough, you seem to be the only one impressed with yourself at the moment.

>68 Jesse_wiedinmyer: I'm not the one two who started playing "let's make an irrelevant comparison."

(Two because both Pros and JJ have done this. What is it about lefties and irrelevant comparisons to car crashes?)

Are you still bitter about the Obama election thing? Christ, brother. Let it go. Take a couple deep breaths. Exhale. Release your hate.

Pardon for citing Wikipedia; I'm in a hurry:

In 2010, there were 14,078 firearm-related homicide deaths in the United States.

But we have more than 30 thousand deaths a year from car crashes, and yet liberals keep complaining about gun homicide!!!

Damn, is it sinful to have this much fun?

And yet, we regulate cars. Hell, we even make people take tests before they can drive them.

Purchase insurance.

We decide whether certain cars are street legal and even allowed to be driven.

58> This whole argument is like saying, "Murder is rare, so we don't actually need laws against it! Let's repeal them!"

Do you really not see the problem with this?

No, it's like saying Murder is rare, so let's not abandon our civil liberties to combat them. Doesn't that sound reasonable?

Don't piss on his parade, JJ. He's having fun.

So what happened in the brief period that I was gone that led to LawEcon picking up Carny's profile?

>74 Jesse_wiedinmyer:, 76
If you’re suggesting that guns should be more regulated than they currently are, I’ll have to correct you: We shouldn’t bother taking any action on guns, because there are scads more deaths from automobiles.

>77 jjwilson61:
No, wrong. If we had already given up civil liberties for apolitical domestic murder and then murder became rare, that would be the appropriate analogy.

Anyway, why do you care? The number of people in Gitmo is tiny compared to the number of people who die in car crashes. This is the appropriate way to frame the issue; I know this because a guy by the name of jjwilson61 told me so.

The problem with your rampage, Carnophile, is that you are actually putting a very serious problem into perspective. Any society that can accept 10,000 plus homicides a year is deranged. Considering that, when that same society accepts 30,000 plus deaths on the highway as well it is clear that it is all the more deranged.
The highway deaths are a result of a laughable public transport system that is the result of a consortium of interested parties--big steel, oil, rubber mainly--who systematically removed the United States from the elite group of countries with efficient, affordable public transport.
On top of that horror, there is the obvious insanity of the NRA and its influence.
On top of that horror, there are the millions killed in Vietnam, and the tens to hundreds of thousands killed elsewhere since.