Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

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1. Many of them were in fact armed combatants. A significant problem in securing the release of GTMO detainees is that they were handled so clumsily that it was difficult to sort out which detainees were victims of circumstance and which were violent. Several people released from GTMO have later been killed or captured in armed conflict with NATO forces.

2. By "allied" he meant "NATO". There are plenty of "black" people in NATO.

3. Afghanistan was in fact a war zone long before 2001. At its most orderly, under the brutal control of the Taliban, it was a loosely organized state embroiled in a civil war destined to produce a breakaway non-Pashto state. Also: the word "disappeared" means something specific, and you dilute that meaning by using it here. The "disappeared" of Central and South America are so named because they're never heard from again; they're often murdered by death squads.

4. Nothing in the Geneva Conventions speaks to the definition of "kidnapping".

"Many of them were in fact armed combatants"

The US government has a tremendous credibility problem.

Its representatives make many claims, trying to spin the narrative in their favor. Some people seem to buy much of this narrative. They apparently believe the stories that governments, spy agencies, police, torturers, and PR hacks spin.

It is impossible to know whether such a position of credulity is genuine or merely apologetic. But it should be noted that many others in the world don't believe the spin. They've witnessed the government, spy agencies, police, torturers, and PR hacks caught in too many self-serving lies.

Some people apparently choose to believe alleged testimony given by helpless people who've been tortured in a prison they may never leave, or testimony given by secret sources before a kangaroo court, or the testimony of spies who are essentially professional liars. These people have zero credibility for the rest of us. Yet their narrative is swallowed by others and then presented as uncontrovertable fact: "Many of them were in fact armed combatants" Oh yeah? Says who? Says who who has a shred of credibilty? Prove it. Prove it without resorting to a witch trial before a rubber-stamping kangaroo court that brings shame to the United States and the world.

"Several people released from GTMO have later been killed or captured in armed conflict with NATO forces."

I think few things would want to make me take up arms more against an invader than the false imprisonment of myself or my family at GTMO for said act.

> Several people released from GTMO have later been killed or captured in armed conflict with NATO forces.

So kidnapping people and torturing them makes you enemies? Who would have thought...

This glib sentiment ignores the reality that there are in fact thousands of armed militants in Afghanistan who will happily kill tens of innocent Afghanis on spec just for the prospect of killing a single NATO soldier, and that the vast majority of those militants have not been captured.

One needn't support GTMO, or even tolerate it, to acknowledge the fact that our adversaries in this conflict are both real and despicable.

They're not despicable. Just piteous, and angry, and at the guys who really screwed shit up for them - that's the US right now - used to be the USSR. The militants were borne out of these historic conflicts, and were largely armed by such. They will not go away through force. They cannot. It is ridiculous to think that one can resolve something through yet more of the very thing which instigated it. They can and will go away if their root cause, Imperialism, is no longer an issue. Currently, they seek to do this by force, and they're winning; the US I see today compared to that I knew and loved and lived in some 15 years ago bears precious little semblance. This could be resolved diplomatically, but only through tripartite talks between the Afghani government, the Taliban and the US.

Can a man who's warm understand one who's freezing?

Neither Russia nor the US forced militants to establish a despotic theocracy in Afghanistan dedicated to the facially ridiculous prospect of establishing an Islamic Caliphate that would run the middle east under medieval religious law, or to host a transnational irregular armed force dedicated to the delusional prospect of hastening that lost cause by targeting and murdering civilians abroad.

If you want to pursue a line of argument that leaves you sticking up for the Taliban, that's your prerogative, but I don't think doing so will strengthen any case you have to make about the US.

If you haven't seen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Nightmares, it's well worth a view.

The fact that the Taliban was a despicable force for evil doesn't moot the idea that politicians and demagogues in the US and Europe have exploited Islamaphobia, nor does it imply that the Taliban or Al Qaeda is a threat worthy of the degree of state machinery we've allocated to it.

None of these things are black and white.

Of course. One of the interesting aspects was the extent to which the west instigated and funded these organizations almost from inception.

1. Some, not many. The majority are noise. There is signal there, in terms of what The US are looking for most likely, but who knows in the abscence of any trial. Innocent until proven guilty. They weren't arrested. They weren't taken as POWs. Just abducted. Sorry, rendered.

2. I meant black and white from the polar point of view. Germany and Italy were allies.

3. Yup, but plenty of these guys ain't from the 'stans, and Afghanistan was self contained. The history of conflict in Afghanistan is long and bloody, and rarely bought about by Afghanis - usually empires looking for resources and an enviable bit of geography.

4. No, but it talks about the lawful taking and holding of POWs, which, operating outside of such, makes Guantanamo a criminal enterprise in international law, and it's actions therefore being nothing more than kidnapping.

QED.

Since we've apparently reached "QED", there's little point in continuing the discussion.

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