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Comment by jimbokun | Hacker News Reader

"Then we have the whole point about the people at Guantanamo being combatants that didn't follow the war of laws."

The problem is we know now many of the people at Guantanamo do not fit that description. And we don't know how many do and how many don't, because there is no legal process to make the determination.

After WWII, at least there was some kind of war crimes tribunal before executing people for war crimes. But Guantanamo is some kind of horrific, Kafka-esque limbo, where people can be sent for being in the wrong place at the wrong time or accused by someone just wanting to collect a bounty, where people can be held forever and tortured on a whim, with no prospect for any kind of closure, ever.

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>> But Guantanamo is some kind of horrific, Kafka-esque limbo

You ignored the main point on what you comment on. To quote myself: afaik, you can keep enemy combatants in prison until after the war

>> The problem is we know now many of the people at Guantanamo do not fit that description.

Of course, most everyone claim to be innocent everywhere. Is there a legal process on a battle field when POWs are taken? (Rhetorical question.)

(I might note that I can't see how Guantanamo is much worse than the rest of the horrible US prison system.)

Here is the US law about unlawful combatants, etc. It seems the US is bound to the Geneva Convention also for them, according to their Supreme court.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Commissions_Act_of_20...

Please discuss it with the law professors in the Supreme Court, they claim that the US handling also of unlawful combatants must follow the Geneva Conventions.

> You ignored the main point on what you comment on. To quote myself: afaik, you can keep enemy combatants in prison until after the war

We have detained people that we know are not and were not enemy combatants. Your assertion that we can detain enemy combatants is not without merit. The foundation of that claim is unsound, though, because we know we are detaining people who are not enemy combatants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Guantanamo_Bay_detaine...

... which were released when determined not to be enemy combatants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_longer_enemy_combatant

(If you want to accuse someone of breaking war laws, go to ICC in Hague...)

I think you're trolling me by now. You have no foot to stand on. (I'm not arguing that the US handling of POWs can't be criticized. Of course. All states can be criticized. But their Supreme Court system do seems to work.)

I'm not comfortable with asserting that the people sitting in Gitmo are all combatants since we know that we've gotten that determination wrong multiple times and we're not giving them trials. The blind assertion that they are enemy combatants rings hollow.

Even if we are legally right to run Gitmo the way we do, I think it is still morally wrong. You can call that trolling if you want, but locking people up indefinitely with no proof of criminal or even combat activity and no path to resolution is immoral.

Condemn Guantanamo from a moral viewpoint if you want.

(Note that all POW camps will certainly have innocents, so the same moral apply to the whole Geneva Convention.)

But stop arguing against legal facts when you don't have a clue... Don't trust the media to inform you.

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(I'm not doing the moral argument, but: Do note that if the Geneva conventions was too mild, there will be fewer POWs taken... instead lots of more people will die before capture. E.g. Iraq handles captured terrorists by execution a lot, because they know people will get back out and kill again, by bribing themselves out of prisons etc.)

If you go to the great*5 grandparent of this post, you asked for the statement "I find Guantanamo morally indefensible" to be defended.

You were the one, in that very post, who started confusing morality with law, leading to the jumble of responses since.

1. That Guantanamo discussion was a continuation of the content came right before.

2. I started to argue that everything was legal re Guantanamo, as a reply to the moral claim.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12736070

Others started to claim weird illegal content in US law, until me and 'ptaipale' dug up the relevant Geneva conventions and decisions by the US Supreme Court based on them.

(But sure, a relevant answer to me might have been "I don't care about the law or if my way gets more people killed or not -- this is my personal moral and I'm ready to let lots of others suffer and die for it.")

> 1. That Guantanamo discussion was a continuation of the content came right before.

Yes, and what came before was a discussion of the morality of drone strikes. There was never a discussion of the legality of anything except maybe Trump's claimed sexual conquests.

> 2. I started to argue that everything was legal re Guantanamo, as a reply to the moral claim.

So paddyoloughlin is 100% right and "You were the one, in that very post, who started confusing morality with law, leading to the jumble of responses since."

Discussing a person is what follows after you're shown to be wrong. :-)

Never mind. I have stopped discussing with people that dismiss Wikipedia pages with good sources -- when they have neither references nor understanding of a subject.

> Condemn Guantanamo from a moral viewpoint if you want.

That's what I did from the very beginning. And repeatedly throughout this discussion.

> (Note that all POW camps will certainly have innocents, so the same moral apply to the whole Geneva Convention.)

No, my moral problem is that there's no clear path to resolution for Guantanamo detainees, not just that some are innocent. I feel like I made that clear in my first response to you about Guantanamo. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12736359

> But stop arguing against legal facts when you don't have a clue... Don't trust the media to inform you.

"Don't have a clue" is rather unfair since I provided citations into the text of the Geneva conventions to support my understanding. You on the other hand have been flip-flopping between different interpretations, claiming first the relevance of article 118 and later stating that only article 3 protections are provided. I don't think you're as well informed as you'd like to be perceived.

I also don't think "the media" has any relevance here.

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