posted
When the Bush administration abandoned the Geneva Coventions as "quaint" (the Conventions were referred to that way by the new Attorney General, IIRC) and detained prisoners without trial or counsel in Git-mo, Iraq and Afghanistan, we sacrificed the moral high ground for the sake of expediency.
Yes, I know the logic about terrorists and insurgents not being considered POWs by the Conventions, instead being unlawful combatants. However, if you're to be declared an unlawful combatant, you still get a hearing according to the Conventions. AFAIK, no such hearings have ever een held--Amnesty Int'l has been pounding the administration about it for years.
In fact, I think I started or posted to a thread about this in 2003.
This has let tyrannies around the world excuse their dentention-without-trial and other human rights abuses because it has become US policy.
Even the much-ballyhooed military tribunals have failed to materialize.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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posted
I'm a little leery of blaming the U.S. for other nations' excesses. I mean, just because we're guilty of something doesn't excuse the fact that it's wrong, and it's not like they follow our lead except when it suits them. I don't think there's any question that they would be abusing people whether we did or not.
That doesn't change the sorry fact that it leaves us with little room to chastize other nations when they abuse others. The recent example in Cuba was humiliating.
Make no mistake, the U.S. has been torturing/pressuring people for informatino in various ways for a long time during 'war', either ourselves or through proxies. This is not a partisan issue. However, I don't believe the kinds of things detailed in the articles I linked are torture. (See the October 2003 issue of The Atlantic for a very informative article on the subject.) I think this is just plain, ol' guard/prisoner abuse. It's what happens without oversight. There's no excuse for it, but of course, who knows? The usual excuses are going to be used and things will go on as normal, with the citizenry meekly buying the 'it's for the war' excuses.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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Before I get started here, let me just say that I am not attempting to excuse human rights abuses. I believe that there have been horrible abuses committed in US detention camps, across the board. The following explanation is meant as rough survey of the principles that underlie incarceration and detention.
Sometimes in the law, people rely on "weighing" the possible harms (caused by dangerous people, or things, or situations) versus the damage done to the law (ie, compromising people's basic rights, invasions of privacy, or early intervention like with the inchoate crime of attempt or conspiracy) to decide what an appropriate course of action. Once you're in incarcerated, however, all of that weighing gets filtered through the eighth amendment's bar on cruel and unusual punishment. This means that once you're in prison, the bar is alot higher for showing that your rights have been violated.
The detainees at Guantanamo have been held as "enemy combatants." I am not sure where this term comes from, but I think the Bush administration has used it to mean that the detainees can be kept without contact with thier lawyers or families because they are dangerous to the US as a country. The secrecy used by the current administration in treating "enemy combatants" in places like Guantanamo essentially prevents the public, and defense attorneys from holding the practices used to interrogate the detainees up to the light. Another part of the puzzle is that when some one is not a US citizen, the circumstances of thier treatment will be determined by how they are defined under things like the Geneva Convention. Because the conventions are not statutes, per se, but broadly stated terms of understanding, it's my guess that they are subject to a great deal of "interpretation."
I think Dagonee may have some insight on the rationale behind detention pending investigation. As you may expect, the detention of US citizens for violations of criminal law is subject to the fourth, fifth, and sixth amendments.
Again, this is meant as an explanation, not as an excuse. I am personally horrified by these stories. When I hear about them, I want to start massive letter writing campaigns, but before I do, I would like to have a better understanding of what needs to be changed, so the letter writing is more persuasive.
posted
I didn't see you had posted to this thread or I would have replied sooner and thanked you for the legal overview, bunbun.
quote: Sometimes in the law, people rely on "weighing" the possible harms (caused by dangerous people, or things, or situations) versus the damage done to the law (ie, compromising people's basic rights, invasions of privacy, or early intervention like with the inchoate crime of attempt or conspiracy) to decide what an appropriate course of action. Once you're in incarcerated, however, all of that weighing gets filtered through the eighth amendment's bar on cruel and unusual punishment. This means that once you're in prison, the bar is alot higher for showing that your rights have been violated.
Which would make more sense if someone got a fair trial. To me, the worst part of the whole 'enemy combatant' process is that there's really no way to establish whether the people locked up should or shouldn't be there in the first place. As far as I can tell, the presumption is that if you're there, you're guilty.
We speak of what the U.S. can and can't do to 'enemy combatants', but given the number of instances where, when pressed for some proof of their guilt, people who were being held by us or by proxy by other governments were never charged, or were later let go after some long period of time as being, basically, innocent, it's terrible to think of the number of basically innocent people we have almost certainly brutalized.
Thanks for the link, too.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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