RE: Is this seriously worth it? Guantanmo inmate never charged with a crime, dies after 11 years in US custody
September 26, 2012 at 3:10 am
(September 25, 2012 at 2:15 am)CliveStaples Wrote: It seems like there might be a paradigm mismatch here. Aren't the detainees at Guantanamo being held as enemy combatants? Why would they be charged as anything? Aren't they essentially prisoners of war--even if some might not meet the criteria for Geneva protections?
I mean, if we were at war with Germany, and we had captured German soldiers, would we really have to choose between charging them with a crime and releasing them? Wouldn't we hold them until hostilities ceased?
Nyet, comrade.
Er, wait, that's Russian- oh whatever.
The answer is; no. You see, German soldiers were that; soldiers. The people in Guantanamo are not soldiers. They are not professionally trained, they have no oaths of allegiance to a national identity and nor do they even have a unified cause; there are a lot of competing factions, not just al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and they all hate each other for their own varying bigoted reasons, and often end up in conflict.
This IS where the problems arise, but see, the terrorists don't follow a flag or a government with geopolitical borders, they follow an IDEA, and ideas are bulletproof. If we hold these people until we win [whatever "winning" would mean here] then they would die of old age in that prison because we're warring with an idea.
So how do you destroy the idea? You kill its roots. How do you kill its roots? Well, first, I would start with NOT HOLDING FOREIGN NATIONALS INDEFINITELY IN A MILITARY PRISON AND SUBJECTING THEM TO INHUMAN TORTURE REGARDLESS OF THE SOLIDNESS OF THE ACCUSATIONS LEVELED AGAINST THEM.
The only reason we aren't trying them is because the military would have to bring evidence to bear and the military is the biggest keeper of secrets in the world. They refuse to release secrets that have ceased being dangerous in any way for half a century solely for the sake of keeping secrets. Secrets are power..POLITICAL power, mind you, not operational power. Not necessarily operational power, anyway. Some secrets are important, but they could EASILY bring to bear information in a court of law without it ever compromising any of their operations. The Pentagon is paranoid, often needlessly so; take it from someone whose oldest brother is a regular in the Pentagon when he isn't running SOCOM operations involving Army Rangers in Afghanistan and other hotspots in the world.
