No One Reads Kafka At Gitmo
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Its a pity he's not Commander in Chief of the military. Then he could issue orders to soldiers in charge of a military facility. Perhaps whoever is the Commander in Chief should step forward and solve the problem.
I am well aware of the true arguments that he would be unable to defund or outright eliminate the facility, Congress would have to do that. It is WELL within his ability to, say, directly order all prisoners released, or order all troops to leave the facility and no troops to re-enter the facility.
Long before, and fully independent of, anything Congress did, President Obama made clear that he was going to preserve the indefinite detention system at Guantanamo even once he closed the camp. President Obama fully embraced indefinite detention — the defining injustice of Guantanamo — as his own policy.
...
hen the President finally unveiled his plan for “closing Guantanamo,” it became clear that it wasn’t a plan to “close” the camp as much as it was a plan simply to re-locate it — import it — onto American soil, at a newly purchased federal prison in Thompson, Illinois. William Lynn, Obama’s Deputy Defense Secretary, sent a letter to inquiring Senators that expressly stated that the Obama administration intended to continue indefinitely to imprison some of the detainees with no charges of any kind. The plan was classic Obama: a pretty, feel-good, empty symbolic gesture (get rid of the symbolic face of Bush War on Terror excesses) while preserving the core abuses (the powers of indefinite detention ), even strengthening and expanding those abuses by bringing them into the U.S. http://www.salon.com/2012/07/23/the_obama_gitmo_myth/
President Obama's stranger decisions can often be explained as an attempt to vote "present".
Seems to me he's in his final term - it's not like closing guantanamo bay would be the thing that stopped him getting re-elected.
More likely, in my opinion, is that after being elected he received secret information (maybe proving the detainees are guilty, maybe proving they've been subject to torture which they'd go to the press about, maybe both) and he decided he didn't want them released.
Released where? To Cuba? Into the sea?
If you want to release people, you need to send them someplace. Congress has banned the government from sending them to the US. You can't send them to other countries because those countries won't take them. So...where do they go?
or order all troops to leave the facility and no troops to re-enter the facility.
How do the prisoners eat after the US Navy leaves?
Most of the men abducted to Guantanamo have been released. All of those went somewhere. Most just went home, although some went to more colorful locales like Palau and Albania, particularly if they had been abducted while abroad so their native land had some excuse not to accept their return. This isn't surprising, since the vast majority of these men were not "combatants" and had little connection to AQ or any other terrorist organization. The "recidivism" of released abductees has been calculated at 4%, which is such a mind-blowingly low number that it speaks more to the indiscriminate nature of the abductions rather than the rehabilitational effectiveness of Guantanamo.
Besides, what's your brilliant solution? Maintain this obscenity until the last abductee dies of old age in about 60 years? Thanks for reminding us of the typical practicality of status quo Beltway-insider conventional wisdom.
Yes, they were either tried or sent back to their home countries. The ones that are left are the ones that no state is willing to host a trial for (not trying Guantanamo detainees in Alexandria became a political issue in Virginia state politics recently), or whose home countries don't want them back. What do you do with them?
Of course, that's not going to happen....
That's not a good solution. But it seems like the best feasible solution. I'd love to be proven wrong. Can you do that? Or are you going to make a big public display of your moral purity by talking down on pragmatism?
Aren't you the ass who came up with "green lanternism"? I actually googled it: the first usage was Brad DeLong pulling heroic pundit duty on the Fed Chair campaign of Larry Summers. Just as I said: status quo Beltway-insider conventional wisdom. Do I have a sixth sense about this shit or something?
Now you want "to be proven [sic] wrong"? Please. If anyone has a burden of proof, it's whoever who describes Guantanamo as "pragmatic". Good grief. If the commander-in-chief wanted prisoners in any USA military facility in the world transferred to any other USA military facility in the world, he could send an email and have wheels up within an hour. Of course, keeping a campaign promise might have consequences for him. He might have to send a Joint Chief to testify to Congress or something. I'm not sure how he'd recover from that harrowing ordeal, but I still think he should keep his promise.
I don't think anyone wants that, but I do think some people haven't thought through the consequences of their policies.
Aren't you the ass who came up with "green lanternism"?
I didn't invent it but I did mention it. Here's a more original description: http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/845
Just as I said: status quo Beltway-insider conventional wisdom.
This is so weird. The invocation of green lanterism was coined to make fun of Beltway insiders and their bizarre fixation on using magical thinking to solve all problems.
he could send an email and have wheels up within an hour.
Except for when Congress passed a law making that illegal. Hey, are military officers required to obey illegal orders?
The problems are created when some defense contractor's lobbyist floats some vile proposal and then makes it worth a few Pentagon staffers' time to implement it. The magical thinking is saved for the talking-head shows, when enough of the public notices the travesty. Then an ex-general or columnist or whoever must be sent around to argue the dubious proposition that stopping indefensible conduct is much more difficult than starting it. As if that were even an argument. When I fuck up, I experience the consequences. Why is that impossible for people in the federal government?
Hey, are military officers required to obey illegal orders?
Now I know you're trolling me. Anyway, Obama signed that law in 2011.
>Now I know you're trolling me.
Come on, seriously? There's no need for that.
>Anyway, Obama signed that law in 2011.
... and in 2010, 2012, and 2013. It's been part of the National Defense Authorization Act every year Mr. Obama has been in office. The last two years he's stumped around the time the bill was moving through the house, trying to use the Bully Pulpit to remove the prohibition of funds being used to relocate the prisoners. So far, he has been unsuccessful.
Sure, it might cost him some political capital to do the right thing. That merely illustrates that to Obama, keeping his campaign promise is not worth spending some political capital. That's a far cry from this "impossible" bullshit I've been reading.
If your father/mother/son/daughter was kidnapped when you were 5, and you didn't know where they were for years and then found out he is in Gitmo, pretty sure you'd like to see them back at your house?
Why "the country/town/house" they were kidnapped from isn't even a choice on your list?
The US government has ruled that many Gitmo detainees are no threat and have been trying to repatriate them but their home countries (which are not always the countries they were taken from) resist. That is stupid and wrong, just like taking them in the first place. But you can't just wish that inconvenient fact away.
I get that this is a nightmarish horrific injustice. But that shouldn't allow us to lose all rationality and start living in a fantasy world. Ordering the US Navy to abandon the facility won't help Gitmo detainees: they're run out of food and water and they'll still be thousands of miles from their families with no way to get home.
Then house them at Guantanamo in homes with telephones and the internet, instead of like people who have been accused and convicted of a crime. If we don't want them, why do we hold them incommunicado in a prison?
Or is that irrational fantasy world logic?
Because the government is stupid and evil and because treating the detainees fairly is politically impossible. Everytime an idiot congressman visits Gitmo and sees humane treatment, he can pitch a fit about how the administration is soft on terror. That helps him politically because most voters hear Gitmo and think 'Osama's best buddies'. That political constraint puts a ceiling on how well the Gitmo detainees can be treated.
This is obviously horribly immoral. That being said, I don't know how to fix that problem.
The real problem here is that most Americans, especially most red-state Americans, believe that Gitmo detainees are dangerous monsters rather than just a bunch of guest workers who were in the wrong place at the wrong time plus a few low-ranking fighters. If you fixed this problem, Gitmo would cease to be an issue because there'd be no political benefit to opposing humane treatment or settlement in the US.
Wouldn't it be much more cost-effective to provide some relocation assistance?
Sure. Where would you relocate them to? I mean, the government has been trying but most countries are not interested in taking these people, even though most of them have done precisely nothing wrong.
without exploring other options
I'd love better options. Can you suggest any?
Seriously, all the options I see suck and are unjust. If you have any suggestions I really, honestly, would love to hear them. But I haven't seen any yet.
You must live on a coast, if not actually inside the Beltway. I live in a Red State, and no one here gives a shit about terrorism or any other militarist bugaboo anymore (this includes my Fox-News-on-ten-hours-a-day grandparents). There was a poll about bombing Syria; you might have seen it? All the "outrage" we see when completely closing Guantanamo is discussed is fake anyway: shills who have a commercial interest in increasing fear in a USA that is not only safer than it's ever been, but is in the running for the safest nation in recorded history. They need to update the script, though. The defense industry has gone to that same well too many times: nobody believes the bullshit anymore. Perhaps for their purposes it's enough if politicians believe that voters believe the bullshit.
If so, then the question is: where? You can't take them into the US because Congress has made that illegal. You can't take them into other countries because those countries won't let you. So where do they go?
It is hardly less legal than the spying program or plenty of other things the president has done.
It is the very least the US government can do as a token of reparation for the huge injustice that was/is Guantanamo.
I seem to recall there was a similar issue with Iraqi refugees during the last war. To get that to work you would have to expect far too many people to fall politically on their swords, and then the refugees have an almost impossible time actually assimilating because doubtless they'll be put onto some sort of watchlist as if they were a felon or pedophile, and employers would refuse to hire them, and no one would rent to them, and credit would be impossible to get, etc.
Although I agree we should at least be trying. We seem to have given up as a nation on even accepting the possibility of a productive solution that doesn't just involve having them all die then pretending like it never happened.
Now all the prisoners are in Cuban and they can return them (which they will because it is a huge propaganda coup).
It seems like the most likely outcome is that the detainees end up as Cuban prisoners.
Castros government will treat them well because it is a huge propaganda victory for them.
I find this rather unlikely. The enemy of my enemy is my friend so anyone not willing to deal with the USA because we're, well, the USA, would bend over backwards to cooperate with Cuba.
Cuba has a moderately good international rep. They don't get involved in too much international empire building once the Soviets broke up, and they export good doctors to the 3rd world. And they're an enemy of the greatest current Imperial power. I think they'd do pretty well..
So Mr. Obama's hands are, in fact, tied, by law from "issu[ing] orders to soldiers in charge of a military facility."
This does not, of course, preclude him from using the so called "bully pulpit" to make a case to the American people. He also could take the more drastic measure of vetoing the NDAA, but he would then run the risk of leaving the military unfunded. The first option is plausible (and he has, on occasion, taken to discussing Guantanamo in his stump speeches around the time the NDAA is moving through the lower chamber), the second would be an incalculable political risk.
Tangentially related, the post-war German constitution was carefully crafted to avoid early elections---as a reaction to the frequent elections in the Weimar Republic.
This is what political scientists call "green lanternism". That's the phrase they use to make fun of people like you, i.e., people who insist that leaders can break institutional constraints by sheer force of will whenever they please. American government is complex and has a great many more veto points than peer governments. This complexity is annoying, so there's a natural tendency to just wish it all away and assert that the President can do whatever he wants.
(such as threatening to resign
Is this a joke? Do you not understand that Obama resigning is the best possible outcome for the majority of the House and almost a majority of the Senate? You can't credibly threaten someone by offering to do something they desperately want you to do. You understand that, right?
if congress won't bend on this or playing hardball in return on every other subject
The Senate has voted 98-0 against transferring Gitmo detainees to the US. I don't think they'd vote so strongly against Hitler. Congressmen have decided that having Gitmo detainees in the US is political suicide. Whether they're wrong about that is irrelevant.
There are options, Obama chose to pursue none of those.
Obama resigning about a particular subject would definitely have consequences that would help the opposition but it would also send an extremely strong message that this president will not be co-opted into doing the wrong thing. As it stands he's as guilty as the rest, 'my hands are tied' does not work any more here than 'dog ate my homework' worked in school.
The senate voted 98:0 against because they don't want to be part and parcel of the aftermath of giving these people the minimum level of rights that they should be afforded.
Guantanamo is simply a concentration camp and the US is running it pretending that because it is outside of its borders inmates have no rights. The rest of world is looking on and not doing much about it but you can be sure that this turns attitudes against the US the world over and that the long term costs of this will far outweigh the short term political fall-out of dealing with the problem.
Of course there are options. The President could simply have ordered the military to start executing members of opposition leaders' families until they complied. He's the commander in chief, right?
Simply having options is not enough. We need options that are legal and likely to work. You have not demonstrated the existence of any of those options. When you tried to come up with some, you failed badly.
So, what are the feasible legal options that the President has? Can you name any?
Obama resigning about a particular subject would definitely have consequences that would help the opposition
No, that's not the issue here. The problem is that you can't threaten someone by offering to do something they want. That's not an effective way to change their behavior. It has nothing to do with helping the opposition; at a much more basic level, your proposed solution doesn't work.
but it would also send an extremely strong message that this president will not be co-opted into doing the wrong thing.
Let's say Obama resigns. Congress throws a party and does nothing about Gitmo. How does that help anyone at Gitmo? Or is resigning just a perfect expression of moral superiority?
> The President could simply have ordered the military to start executing members of opposition leaders' families until they complied. He's the commander in chief, right?
I think I'm done here. Thanks for your effort.
Just to be clear though, you still haven't been able to explain even one legal effective option the President has for closing Gitmo.
The prison is illegal, or at the very least extra-legal. Obama promised to shut it down, and reneged on that promise. Please do continue to make excuses for him, but don't try to pretend Obama cares at all about his campaign promises, international law, or shutting down Guantanamo bay. He has shown no interest in any of those things.
I mean, I think Gitmo is monstrously unjust. But there are lots of injustices that are perfectly legal. I also think how the US treats its many many prisoners is monstrously unjust.
United Nations Convention Against Torture (torture itself, and rendition - refoulement)
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
Geneva convention
US Constitution - which is apparently now only applicable at the government's discretion
I'm afraid I don't subscribe to the sophistry which claims those detained are 'enemy combatants' to which no law applies simply because of a suspicion without charges or evidence, or that waterboarding is not torture. More important than the arguable illegality or (at best) extra-legality of the camp though, is the enduring damage it does to the reputation of the US throughout the world.
If it gets ignored, then we are all made aware of how tied his hands are.
Honestly, if Obama decided he could not or would not close the prison, I don't foresee the next president, regardless of party, doing so either. Not trying to find excuses for Obama not doing that, but from looking at presidents throughout history, they all seem to have a finite limit on how many battles they can choose to fight (and maybe get passed by a wishy-washy congress).
Issues like the National Healthcare Act just barely managed to get passed in Obama's first term when his party had control of congress still. Based on that and how long it took to get pushed through, something just as touchy as Gitmo would be just as tough and probably impossible with the extremely partisan state of congress right now.
The impotency of the US Government right now to accomplish even trivial things is also a mixed blessing. When one party controls everything, we get situations like the first decade of the 21st century where the majority party gets to basically rubber stamp every whim and desire. With two party deadlock, issues are not being solved, but the alternative of either party being in full control is not always desirable and becomes a "be careful what you wish for" scenario much of the time.
Though neither party is really that different from the other on most issues, when one has control of the presidency and the other does not, the opposing party will go out of their way to distinguish themselves for the sake of being contrary. A few months ago there was a discussion on NPR about the partisanship shown in congress being related to the gerrymandering done in redistricting last time. The lines being drawn up to make each district more polarized to one side or the other makes any representative that faces election every 2 years less likely to compromise (versus their counterparts in the senate every 6 years), for fear their constituents will end up nominating someone even more polarized than they are perceived to be.
I don't know if that is entirely true as gerrymandering is not new (or new to criticism), but it does explain some of the congressional silliness in the past 5-6 years as the house of representatives has been opposed to compromise more often than the senate. It would take more statistical research to decide if gerrymandering is causing congress to become gradually more polarized over time or if it varies with each time the congressional lines are being drawn up. Looking at the number of bipartisan bills proposed and passed over the last 100 years as well would be a starting point.
That a campaign promise of such magnitude is broken with a 'my hands are tied' is a clear indication that something is seriously borked.
Most of us have probably witnessed some developers (or have been that developer at one point) that thinks they can do anything and everything and then they start on the project and realize it's not as easy as they thought it would be and have to start (embarrassingly) wriggling out of some of those promises or end up working themselves to death. Some developers seem to also never get over this either from just being dishonest or simply having poor time management skills (resulting in angry clients and employers). Other times, there are developers that start out working for a company thinking they can change the entire culture and way of thinking, only to get burned out by the system.
Though at least in development one can always quit and find a better company or work for themselves. The alternative to contributing in a positive way to the political system in a government after leaving politics is less defined and more difficult. There's a lot of bad politicians and I am not one to commiserate with them for their shortcomings or lack of ethics (as it was their choice to run for office and should be held to a higher standard). I just imagine the political machine as being like any other established, complex system in life. In those sorts of systems, anyone with unrealistic expectations of fixing it quickly from the inside versus being a small part of a long-term change tends be in for a shock.
A former coworker has this funny sweat-shirt. It shows a jar of pills, with a sticker on it. The sticker features a skull and the legend "Electoral promises. Do not swallow".
Pretty much every politician in any country is a hypocrite as they bend with the current interests that keep them in (what shouldn't be) a lifetime job. That and their secondary obligation to generally switch views if the other party ends up agreeing with something mutual (more so if the opposing party controls the executive position in the country). There's a saying that one should be worried if all parties and outside interests agree on something, as it's likely to not be beneficial to anyone else or end up costing taxpayers a ton of money wasted on things that don't benefit them.
It would however be a disservice to point out the many flaws of Democrats in times of conflict and having control of the presidency without also mentioning that many Republicans have not all sudden decided renounce war and request the president "give peace a chance" in regards to Syria out of caring. At least a few of them were proponents of the conflicts carried out under Bush.
That Western liberal academia decided to give nobel prize to Obama just shows their real intellectual prowess. Maybe next time liberal art guys from the left will give him an Oscar prize. What for? Like with Nobel Prize! To encourage him!
CNN is so pathetic nowadays that I take russian kgb propaganda tube Russia Today over it any time.
I think it would be tremendously unfair to his voters if he compromised his ability to work on the issues they do care about (health care, the budget, etc), for an issue they don't care about.
Or alternatively the legislature would be even more locked up than it has been over the last few years at a time of severe economic hardship, none of Obama's other policies would have got anywhere, and Gitmo would still be open for business.
jacquesm, I want you to change your position. If you don't do that, I'm going to give you $100,000.
There, that should be effective. I'm sure you'll change your position monentarily.
I don't think this is nearly the threat you seem to think it is. It doesn't seem likely that the Republican House would worry too much about him resigning.
>>playing hardball in return on every other subject.
He's arguably already done this in letting Pelosi and Reid drive the Congressional Democrat agenda. Both are much more partisan hard-ballers than he is, and both have a lot of experience strong-arming the legislature (see: getting ObamaCare passed).
These are just observations of a politically disinterested observer, not endorsements of either side.
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I know I'm glad I personally don't have to (rationally) fear being disappeared or caught in a the blast of an hell-fire missile. At the same time, it's sad that people in the west, in general, seem to not really care about these abuses that happen on a physical level, and gets riled up just because privacy is invaded and we're all voting a new global Stasi into existence.
We seem to get the government we deserver, all around. Lets hope something good comes out of the global #occupy movement over the next decades.
If there are two smart people in the room, and eight stupid people, the stupid people are gonna get what they want. At least if they stay in the room. If they're smart and have money they'll leave the room and buy the whole building - controlling all rooms in the building. I'm talking about the banksters and the bankster's masters (and maybe their masters also, I'm unsure as to how many levels of control exist).
Us little people are all getting fucked, no matter the color nor the wealth. We're not as rich and powerful as the people who are doing the fucking anyways.
Giving up isn't going to help. Not giving up, might not work -- but it can't be much worse than the alternative.
And no, sitting at home, shaking ones head in disbelief over how "stupid" the majority are isn't "doing" something. I know I'm not the only one that can (should and must) do more -- because we're at the beginning of the end if not.
So, until we've all done all we can -- we get the government that we deserve.
That's simply not true. At least, not in the eyes of many.
Obama's hands are tied by his masters who haven't given him permission to close Gitmo.
I'm surprized people still think that the POTUS (or indeed any part of the government) has any real power in that country.
Second, even if what you say is true, U.S. (government) created them. They are responsible to take care of them, for better or worse. And by "taking care" I mean giving them freedom and citizenship, if they are unable to return them to their home countries (in most cases unlikely, as they have families there).
And one can't blame people for reacting in that manner to the drone attacks.
I just wanted to say that my fleeting thought was that this reads like one of those odd reports from wealthy fringe tourists who have paid the North Korean regime to witness a choreographed tour of their country-sized Potemkin village (something I find contemptible, but I'll put that aside). The amount of procedure invoked by the Gitmo staff and the strictness of the touring directly reminded me of reading an incredulous and boggled report from a visitor to Pyongyang.
If this read is even remotely valid, it's simultaneously alarming that we have something that elicits a similar emotional response in me and also reassuring that our worst is but a diminutive slice of an island in the Atlantic. However, the alarmist in me worries that our mainland is inching closer and closer to the unthinkable.
Poor Ayn Rand.
Actually, I wonder if they have The Fifth Head of Cerberus? That's just as much a trip as The Trial, and the last novella, "V.R.T.", would really speak to the abductees at Guantanamo. I'm not sure how much Wolfe has been translated to Pashto, however.
If you read the article, the Koran is one of the items pre-stocked in the empty cells alongside toiletries, waste paper bin and a prayer cap.