> Until the end of 2017, Guantanamo detainees were allowed to take their art with them when they were released, or give it to their lawyers to take out.
> The artists could bring their work to meetings with their lawyers, who would submit it along with their meeting notes to a "privilege team", which assesses everything leaving Guantanamo for classified material or national security issues.
...
> Then in late 2017, under the Trump administration, it became clear that art was no longer being allowed out. Like lots of things in the world of Guantanamo, there was no official notification to the lawyers, no memo. Artwork was all of a sudden simply bounced back from the privilege team to the detainees.
...
> Keeping his art in Guantanamo would be "the same as keeping me here", Qasim said.
> "The art I made is me," he said. "If they keep my art here, my soul will stay here."
Sometimes it really does seem that "the cruelty is the point".
Cruelty is worldwide. See: Rwanda, Yemen, former Yugoslavia, Mexican cartels, ISIS, etc. for a small sample of non-US cruelty in the twenty-first century.
The US would not like to think of itself in that company. But it seems that quite a few Americans see ourselves as better only because of our identity as Americans and not because of any difference in behavior.
American exceptionalism goes both ways. Yes, people who see the US as uniquely moral and good are wrong. So are people who see the US as uniquely bad. It’s somewhat better than most countries in the world, and somewhat worse than some others, especially Western and Northern Europe, i.e. the most developed part of the world.
If it’s not fair to compare the US to Yemen, then it’s not fair to compare it to Norway either. It simply is what it is.
* The US is doing better than you might expect from an influential, powerful country, that could be abusing its power much more (but that's how empires fall, and the US has learned from the lessons of history)
* The US is doing worse than you might expect from a prosperous and stable country, one that doesn't need to be driven by desperation and genuine threats to survival
I wouldn't compare countries. But I can recognize what the OP said, that for many Americans the cruelty is the point, and I find that unpleasant all on its own. The comparison to the worst may not be apt, but I feel disgusted to be even inaptly associated with it.
> Sometimes it really does seem that "the cruelty is the point".
This extends very far beyond Guantanamo. I really wonder where all these sick fucks come from. I don't remember much of a psycho vibe from classmates or work colleagues. Yet the US makes them in sufficient quantity that they seem to pop up wherever authority is. Prisons, police, military, they all seem to have endless human garbage that enjoys being cruel if they can. How has this country produced these "people" and why do they achieve positions of power instead of failure?
It's important to acknowledge that there's a tendency to consider certain sets of people subhuman and deserving of anything bad thing that happens to them. Consider how America treats its poor and its sick.
> "Consider how America treats its poor and its sick."
No matter how valuable we were perceived to be or treated as (by some folk at least) prior to our illness (and subsequent "poor-ness"), or how valuable we're capable of being if only we could get one tiny shred of help or luck dealing with our medical needs, we're treated like worthless garbage and kicked to the curb to suffer miserably the moment we're no longer able to continue as a functional part of the money-producing machine for the rich and powerful. That's the truth of life on a planet where money is literally God to most people.
Haven't you encountered "The Banality of Evil," yet? It doesn't take "sick fucks" to operate a detainment facility and/or concentration camp. The staff at these institutions are simply operating in accordance with handed-down procedure designed in abstract by remote administrators.
I think a better book on this topic would be "Ordinary Men". It covers the "growth" of ordinary police reservists that had little to no Nazi tendencies to brutal mass murderers of Jewish men, women, children, elderly "just following orders". "The Banality of Evil" has legitimate criticisms directed at the book and most notably the narrative Eichmann sought to paint himself in (just an administrative employee), which contrasts with what his co-workers and superiors thought of him.
I have never felt more oppressed than when my wife was intentionally disallowed from re-entering the U.S. with me during COVID, since we happened to be out of the country when Trump levied his moronic bans against visa holders. It wasn't until Biden became president that she was able to return. If Trump had remained president, it's likely I would have had to leave the country to see her again. We were separated for 15 months, for literally no reason other than Trump's idiocy and a bureaucracy that has no thinking mind of its own. I felt helpless, and I think the scary thing was that I was helpless. No one cared, at all. There was not even a person you could speak to for help or guidance.
It boggles the mind how these prisoners and others can remain even remotely sane during their times in literal holes and figurative holes of bureaucracy while being mentally and physically assaulted and tortured.
While I do agree about the bureaucracy, I believe that these bureaucracies don't have to be this way. But what it requires is that the people in charge of the bureaucracies care about finding deficiencies and fixing them, assuming they aren't the ones directing the non-niceties in the first place.
In case of American law enforcement (of every level), it is not just that. It's permeated with that "sheep / wolf / sheepdog" mentality, thanks to Dave Grossman and his lectures. And once you've neatly subdivided people like that, it's only natural to dehumanize the "wolves" if you're the "sheepdog".
I'm against prisoners in non-wartime being held without allegations or trials... I mean, Khalid was held pre-9/11...
That said, I do not care about the art, or even speech, of prisoners--of which who are properly convicted, beyond speech with their attorneys and allowed contacts (whom must be able to communicate on behalf of them). The bothersome part of this is Guantanamo's non-wartime use in-and-of itself.
They haven't been. Legally speaking, the remaining detainees at Guantanamo are basically victims of indefinite government kidnapping, as the US government has specifically refused to actually put them on trial because there isn't enough admissible evidence to do so.
It's not like these people were found in a battlefield. Most of them were kidnapped from their homes in air raids. It's pretty hard to argue that they didn't have a legal right to trial.
A good number were proffered up for cash to the US on a bounty system and were little more than tourists from other parts of the world with few local friends or contacts and ideal patsies for whatever stories local warlords spun about them.
Sure they do. Folks who have families who live in war zones, for example, will almost certainly fit the definition. Also, I see you've never heard of Miles Routledge, in fact I think he's in Afghanistan right now on a shooting trip with the Taliban - and his next destination is the South Sudan. [1] I myself have been to more than a handful of spicy jurisdictions.
It's fine to say you wouldn't but let's not go projecting.
> Also, I see you've never heard of Miles Routledge, in fact I think he's in Afghanistan right now on a shooting trip with the Taliban
If "Miles Routledge" is on a "shooting trip with the Taliban", he deserves anything he gets.
And if you make a habit of visiting "spicy jurisdictions", you deserve anything you get.
I say this not out of animus for you or Routledge, but if you knowingly and intentionally engage in risky behavior, you don't get to whine when something goes wrong.
Edit: I smoke cigarettes, which I know to be risky behavior. If I get lung cancer, I won't be whining about it.
Similarly, if Routledge's Taliban buddies decide they don't like him any more, and take a notion to saw off his head on video (a rather more likely risk than him accidentally being sent to Gitmo, IMO), that's on him.
right, but the fact that you smoke cigarettes doesn't give the US the right to lock you up without charges. The problem isn't that these people got hurt, it's that they got illegally imprisoned for decades without charges or trials.
You've completely missed the point. We as a society believe people have a presupposition of innocence. The state must prove guilt. You don't get throw into jail to await trial forever if you happen to be wandering the wrong part of town - and you shouldn't if you're wandering the wrong part of the globe. This is literally the bare minimum standard to which we hold ourselves.
And for very good reason. The states power should always be checked, at home or abroad.
This is especially important as these days wars don't end.
so in civilized countries, we have these things called trials where evidence can be weighed rather than kicking people up without charges for a few decades and speculating.
It's wrong to assume that all of the several hundred prisoners from multiple countries were "unlawful combatants".
As stated, a large number were delivered to the US in exchange for bounty and were alleged to be working with terrorists, allegations that were taken at face value, not looked into for years, if ever, and often lacking evidence.
Attempting to slide out of this via a false binary (ie. either lawful or unlawful combantants) is simply sleazy.
> Unlawful combatants, by contrast, are not entitled to a trial, and can even be executed on the spot if it seems advisable
When you write these things, imagine how they work when your simply replace names of countries involved.
You are saying it's right and proper when a Russian soldier executes a Ukrainian civilian putting up resistance? Or a civilian that looks like the guy that was putting up resistance?
Either you are a combatant, or you are a criminal. If you are a combatant, Geneva convention applies. If you are a criminal, system of justice applies. There isn't some sort of third subhuman category you can just execute willy-nilly.
Civilians can and do take up arms to defend their homes. They do not have uniforms just for such an occasion and Geneva convention recongises that.
And how do we know that the people locked up in Gitmo were not wearing an armband or something similar?
Oh, right, the United States government told us. How convenient.
Truth is, in many cases, those people weren't combatants at all. But when you're denied due process because of the presumption of being an "illegal combatant", it's kinda hard to prove otherwise.
> And how do we know that the people locked up in Gitmo were not wearing an armband or something similar?
> Oh, right, the United States government told us. How convenient.
Yes, the United States government has kept them prisoner for 20 years, at great inconvenience and expense, because they just want to be meanies. You bet.
> But when you're denied due process because of the presumption of being an "illegal combatant", it's kinda hard to prove otherwise.
"Due process" is a feature of United States civilian law.
> Yes, the United States government has kept them prisoner for 20 years, at great inconvenience and expense, because they just want to be meanies. You bet.
> Yes, the United States government has kept them prisoner for 20 years, at great inconvenience and expense, because they just want to be meanies.
Well, no, they took them prisoner and held them there initially for a variety of bad reasons, and then they were kept there subsequently largely because of intrabranch squabbles, radicalization because of long unjust confinement, and foreign reluctance to help resolve the problem (in large part due to the preceding point) making it difficult to find a resolution to the problem created by the initial bad decisions.
(Anthropomorphizing the US government as if it were an individual with general consistence of interest is... not consistent with political reality, often, or on this point in particular.)
If there are, why is the government fighting tooth and nail to prevent anything pertaining to those cases from ending up in civil courts?
Your "prisoners aren't entitled to due process" point doesn't matter - even if true, if we are the good guys, we should embrace the process that conclusively establishes guilt or innocence for everyone to see, not lock people up in special you-have-no-rights prisons.
That's so weird then that the US was putting them up for trials. Not all of them, only some of them - and not on any particular schedule. In fact 10 of them are awaiting trial at this very moment.
> You can basically do anything you want with them
Unless "you" accidentally transport them to the United States like any other prisoner of the US government, in which case they are entitled to legal due process. It's a very principled system that we should all feel great about.
Perhaps I wasn't clear, I am saying that this is bothersome because he wasn't convicted. It's my first sentence. I just don't care about the art angle.
Seems he fell victim to that classic 'easy to make promises when you're running for office, difficult to follow through when you have access to state secrets you can't share with the public.'
More likely, "difficult when there are important people complicit in all this, but whom you must retain as your allies to exercise political power".
It's part of why the whole thing is rotten and can't be fixed from within the system by the system's own rules. Too many skeletons in too many closets.
There's no word in the english language for how tragic this is. As a sister comment mentioned, the cruelty is the point.
It's a long shot, but is there any material way of helping these artists be able to take their art with them again? Making noise at specific people? Organizations that specifically target these broken freedoms?
Artistic freedom in particular is a very near and dear subject to me, and would greatly appreciate pointers here if there's any existing work done here.
“Illegal combatants” was a term made up by the Bush administration so they could pretend they didn’t need to treat their POWs according to the Geneva convention. So we have a group of people who don’t get the protection of either the Geneva convention or the civilian courts. It’s a war crime is what it is.
How would you feel if your loved ones were kidnapped from their homes, brought to a foreign country, held for 20 years, but were never convicted of a crime? At this point it's pretty much the duty of the US government to give them lavish lives. This is inhumane treatment.
At this point, anyone still be held has been proven to be directly or indirectly guilty of being involved in cowardly terrorist attacks intended to kill innocent men, women, and children. If you do some research, the ones still there have been confirmed.
You’d think so, but no. Non-citizens in United States territories possess no civil rights. None at all. And definitely not a right to trial or to avoid false imprisonment.
> Non-citizens in United States territories possess no civil rights
You sure about that? I believe US territories are subject to the jurisdiction of the Constitution. Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is notably not a US territory.
> The preliminary answer came from a series of Supreme Court rulings, now known as the Insular Cases, which responded to the question of how American constitutional rights apply to those in United States territories. The Supreme Court held that full constitutional protection of rights does not automatically (or ex proprio vigore—i.e., of its own force) extend to all places under American control. This meant that inhabitants of unincorporated territories such as Puerto Rico—"even if they are U.S. citizens"—may lack some constitutional rights (e.g., the right to remain part of the United States in case of de-annexation)[2] because they were not part of the United States.
Murder and slavery are still violations of customary international law and treaty law. Both murder and slavery are specifically considered to be crimes against humanity and punishments for those offenses can be imposed by the UN, as was the case in the tribunals described below.
>At this point, anyone still be held has been proven to be directly or indirectly guilty
Proven you say? So much proof that they continue to be held without even having been charged (never mind tried and convicted on so much supposed clear evidence) for crimes years after their detention.
elementary school level basic rules of justice: If you have evidence, you use it to bring forth charges quickly, otherwise, shut up and release whoever you're holding. The U.S government certainly doesn't lack the resources to just proceed with a trial.
What evidence do you have that they will be able to live "lavish" lifestyles after their release? How do you feel that the US government has imprisoned people for 20 years without trial? How do you know they are guilty of anything without a trial which provides evidence to that claim?
Actually, it's only the convicted that get to live lavish lifestyles. Like Omar Khadr, who was actually convicted of a crime unlike everyone else in this article, but he eventually got released and $10M from the Canadian government.
It doesn't make sense that the only people who have been convicted of terrorism are the ones that are released the earliest.
His conviction doesn't hold up because it was on the basis of a confession after torture. Not to mention that the alleged "crime" (you don't murder soldiers in a combat zone, that's ridiculous) It's less than meaningless, because as it did happen, all sorts of rights of his were violated to get there, so he was due apologies and restitutions.
It seems like everyone was tortured at Guantanamo...why were so few convicted then? Also there is no dispute that Omar threw the grenade that killed soldiers.
> Also there is no dispute that Omar threw the grenade that killed soldiers
There isn't, but how is that murder? You said it yourself, soldiers, in a war zone, killing them is not murder. The US case is not only built on rotten foundations (torture), it doesn't even make sense.
> It seems like everyone was tortured at Guantanamo...why were so few convicted then
Because torture was less than useless in most cases, but gave "enough", apparently, for some convictions like Omar's to be pushed through on the vain hope that the torture won't come up and ruin the conviction. That didn't stop the sick fucks at the CIA from continuing the torture for quite some time. Everyone from them up to the White House inhabitants at the time deserves at the very least a trial and some jail time.
Omar was accused of war crimes, not merely murder. Specifically, he
was charged with murder and attempted murder in violation of the laws of war, conspiracy to
commit terrorism, providing material support for terrorism, and spying.
So torture is less than useless in most cases, but it also helped secure a conviction against Khadr. Which is it? Why didn't torture help secure a conviction against everyone else at Guantanamo?
I would feel a little better about this if, say, these people were convicted of crimes and the art was sold as restitution a la OJ Simpson. But how can you call these people perpetrators when they've been held without trial for decades? They've been convicted of nothing. We've locked people up for years because they wore a model of Casio watch that was popular with some members of Al Quaeda (before any Bayesians jump in, it's worth mentioning that the watch is also popular with people who aren't members of Al Quaeda, which makes those indefinite detentions even more egregious IMO)
By that point, Qasim had been in Guantanamo nearly half his life, aged 23 to 43. Like almost all the men sent there, he has never been charged with a crime.
Not even charged, not to mention convicted. Certainly no reason to believe he’s a terrorist that ruined someone’s lives. His was certainly ruined though. How much more should we ruin random lives for what I can only see as some sort of “revenge”?
For what it’s worth, artwork from Guantanamo is only valuable because of its terrible history as a torture site and imprisonment of innocent people - not because it’s known for holding guilty killer terrorists.
>For what it’s worth, artwork from Guantanamo is only valuable because of its terrible history as a torture site and imprisonment of innocent people - not because it’s known for holding guilty killer terrorists.
I have no doubt that Guantanamo Bay was used extensively for abuses of power, but the reality is that we (the public) will never be privy to much of the reasoning behind the capture and continued imprisonment of these folks.
that said, given the lack of due process towards their imprisonment and outcomes i'll likely never refer to them as guilty, but being left in the dark as towards the reasons why they're there prevents me from proclaiming their innocence, either.
I imagine that moral ambiguity may be induced on purpose in order to foster support or inaction towards it, but that's where i'm at personally for good or bad.
> I have no doubt that Guantanamo Bay was used extensively for abuses of power, but the reality is that we (the public) will never be privy to much of the reasoning behind the capture and continued imprisonment of these folks.
That's completely irrelevant. Military tribunals can be set up to adjudicate these cases. The problem isn't that, the problem is that they're - thanks to the power of imagination - not eligible for due process.
We can never know for sure, however there are a few reasons I pretty strongly bias towards these people being innocent (especially of anything where ‘reasonable’ outcome might be torture and 20 years of confinement).
My reasons are:
1. There’s evidence that the evidence used was exceptionally flaky - wearing a very common watch was considered evidence to imprison somebody
2. The political climate at the time was fervently “anti terrorist”, and there was plenty of incentive to “imprison first and ask questions later” - get any wins/info that you can at any cost.
3. When the political climate turned against Guantanamo, the government couldn’t even come up with a charge to justify it (to be fair there could be concerns about revealing sources, etc. but I would think a charge itself wouldn’t do so)
And in general, I’m a pretty firm believer in innocent until proven guilty. In this case we just took someone and held them and didn’t even make a proper accusation, and did so in a case where I see the government having strong incentives to do so regardless of guilt.
> the perperators will get to live lavish lives off the proceeds of their artwork once released
The US has released some people from Guantanamo, saying they picked up the wrong person. Of course such things happen when people are imprisoned without trial, which is against even US law. They have never been given a trial, nor are they considered POWs, and some have been released when the US realized they got the wrong person, yet you piously and sanctimoniously desire to punish them even beyond the illegal punishment they've been meted.
This would've been trashy in October of 2001 but is downright preposterous now.
There are good reasons why the legal system involves more process than just letting anyone who feels wronged do whatever they want to whoever they think might've been involved.
Shouldn't they be charged and convicted of a crime if any of this were true? It might actually be preferable. If you look at the scant few people who were in Guantanamo and were actually convicted of a crime, you'll see that they've been living free lives for 10 years already.
There are cases of completely innocent people ending up in Guantanamo purely by mistaken identity and being arbitrarily detained and tortured for years. Others are likely there only on account of faulty intelligence. As far as I recall, none (or only very few) of the detainees have actually been tried or convicted of anything...
There's a sad story of a guy who got released from Guantanamo. No one wanted to take him back, including the country he grew up in. I think he got sent to Serbia or Kosovo or something and he's not allowed to work, basically do anything. Anyone who associates with him gets harassed. Basically lives off a small stipend in a cramped studio and the police prevent him from doing much more than walking down the block to buy something to eat. Hopefully someone here can point out the video because I've forgotten his name.
How is it possible that a man spent 20 years imprisoned without being charged with a crime, any crime? How is it possible that the US government is now doing an "oopsie, my bad" and just releasing him?
Is he perhaps not the dangerous terrorist you think he is?
Its not hard to see why. The novelty of being "made in Guantanamo" could turn these into sought-after collector items that wealthy buyers, primarily in the middle east, would easily pay tens or hundreds of thousands for, if that isnt already the case. It doesnt seem fair to the victims of terrorism that the perpetrators/conspirators gets to make hundreds of thousands of $ while in custody and then live a lavish life once released.
Reminder that the remaining detainees in Guantánamo have never been convicted of a crime; the government explicitly refuses to put them on trial. This makes them political prisoners at best.
> A few weeks ago, Khalid Qasim got some news he'd been waiting 20 years for. He had been cleared for release from the prison at Guantanamo Bay.
> By that point, Qasim had been in Guantanamo nearly half his life, aged 23 to 43. Like almost all the men sent there, he has never been charged with a crime.
Most people at Guantanamo haven't been charged with anything, and about a quarter of the rest have been cleared of any wrongdoing. It's a travesty that the place continues to exist and has ever existed.
Your "primarily in the middle east" comment is also really confusing to me -- first, citation needed? Second, even if true, so what? Why should it be worse that wealthy buyers of these pieces would be "primarily in the middle east" than anywhere else?
Maybe unpopular opinion - the people held at Guantanamo are responsible for killing humans via cowardly terrorists attacks, either indirectly or directly. The “art” they make while being held is simply their coping mechanism. If they truly want to be released, then worrying about what happens to their art should be the least of their worries. Their art should be a trivial concern in the grand scheme of things when compared to their potential freedom. They weren’t concerned about the innocent lives of men, women, and children they killed or plotted to kill. Why should anyone be concerned about their art?
> the people held at Guantanamo are responsible for killing humans via cowardly terrorists attacks, either indirectly or directly.
The people held at Guantanamo Bay are not considered POWs by the US, nor have they been given a trial. They're held in violation of even US law. The US has let some go saying they picked up the wrong person. Who determined they are responsible for what you say they are responsible for? Even the US doesn't agree as they say they picked up some in error and let them go.
On top of this - for over half a century the country of Cuba has demanded the US withdraw its military base from Cuban territory. As US presidents piously intoned about Russian troops in Donetsk, that a sovereign nation wants US troops out of its territory is considered so unimportant it is practically unknown.
Westerners don't seem to realise how much damage shit like Guantanamo bay have done to the image of US and to the idea of International law.
It indicates that ther is no such thing as justice, only rule of the strong.
These failures to live up to the standards we set is the first thing out of the mouth of any 'patriotic' Russian when you point out the cruelty of war in Ukraine.
It is big reason why in countries like India do not trust Europe and the West, and did not go along with recent sanctions
Some people here are asking why should someone care about people who killed innocent men, women, and children. It's a question worth answering.
Since 2002, nearly 779 Muslim men and boys have been held at Guantanamo, nearly all of them without any charge or trial. Of those, 532 were released by the Bush administration itself, and 197 later by Obama [0]. Today the number of detainees is 39.
Almost all of them had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack.
You’re assuming everyone at Guantanamo has something to do with 9/11. There have been many planned attacks against the the US, UK, and other countries since 9/11. Like, the planned attacks against airplanes full of people in the UK. Lives were saved due to information obtained from detainees.
Even if every single person held hostage at Guantanamo was directly involved in a terrorist attack they should not be tortured and detained forever without a proper trial. Revenge achieves nothing but more suffering. What has been done can never be changed but we can ensure that no more innocent will be hurt by setting the bar high enough so that even people proven guilty are not treated like sub humans. How we treat the worst people in our society sets the bar for the innocents inadvertently caught in the cogs of the judicial system.
>It is better than 10 guilty persons escape than 1 innocent suffers
What if the escaped guilty persons cause more than one innocent to suffer? Seems like an obvious flaw in this aphorism. Maybe works for petty thievery, not so much crimes of great bodily harm.
> What if the escaped guilty persons cause more than one innocent to suffer? Seems like an obvious flaw in this aphorism.
It's a principle of justice that was arrived at through a lot of thought and experience. It of course takes into account that the guilty people that slip away due to this principle will cause harm of their own.
But a justice system without this principle, one that does not place a high bar for what makes one guilty, one that isn't very careful about labeling innocents guilty, will cause far more suffering. It makes systematic abuses of power more likely, and affects far more innocents ultimately. This only becomes more and more true as the power and reach of the state gets higher and higher compared to that of an individual who might be a potential criminal.
On the other hand, systems where the bar for guilt is too high err too much towards not punishing criminals. Eventually such systems are rejected by their subjects and collapse, either totally or into anarcho-tyranny. This is especially true of states with great power over the middle classes, but little power or willingness to exercise it over the worst criminal element. There's a balance to be found in the middle between standards of guilt that are too high or too low.
>Francis's term "anarcho-tyranny" refers to armed dictatorship without rule of law, or a Hegelian synthesis when the state tyrannically or oppressively regulates citizens' lives yet is unable or unwilling to enforce fundamental protective law.
Anarchy-tyranny in 1980s New York (see “Context and Background”) led to this famous act of vigilantism and subsequent acquittal via what was essentially jury nullification:
The state of law and order in Venezuela is thin evidence? How many countries’ justice systems would need to collapse to convince you of this concept’s validity?
The “anarcho-tyranny” idea is orthogonal to Francis’s other and later views, and has become a mainstay topic in mainstream conservatism. Here it used in a Newsweek article by Hispanic conservative writer Pedro Gonzalez:
The acts of 9/11 should have been considered a crime, and the remaining planners and perpetrators - and those planning and training for future actions - brought to the USA and tried.
That’s what a country the USA aspires to be in its best moments would’ve done. It would’ve been a shining example of what a liberal democracy could be.
Explain, for instance, where you would have the captured leaders of ISIS tried? In a US court? Where then when they are found guilty? Into a US prison? Returned to their country of origin? There is a reason that after all the talk that Obama did about closing Guantanamo, he didn't even try.
A bunch of them are literally on trial at Gitmo right now. [1]
It shows quite a lack of can-do attitude to think that in the last 20 years we couldn't have come up with something. We did come up with Nuremberg after all.
If only there was an international criminal court set up specifically for "trying individuals for genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and aggression" [2] in which folks could seek justice. Nah, that'd never work, which is why the US is helpfully not a signatory. Even though, and this is true, the US played a central role in its creation.
The issue isn't lack of venue clearly it's lack of due process.
If everyone is so sure this is where we're housing dangerous terrorists, why not charge them with a crime and allow them legal defense? If the evidence is so air-tight, so obvious we should deprive them of basic human rights, why not put them in prison instead of "detaining" them forever?
I think it's a two-fold problem. One is they may not be so guilty as they claim. The other is they may be so guilty as they claim, but the methods and torture they were put through are not things the government wants discovered by the public during trial.
I wouldn't call it a problem for anyone else but the government officials who should instead be in prison. Perhaps the problem is that these officials aren't in prison..? Seems more like the true problem.
Sadly putting them (the officials) in prison is probably not practical unless there is a revolution in the US. The best we can probably hope for is to give these officials a way to "save face" and shut the thing down while making it look like a victory for them.
The Punisher sounds like a realistic way to rectify these situations. Why do all the shooters go after schools and grocery stores instead of the people responsible for destroying our nation's moral integrity?
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 283 ms ] thread> The artists could bring their work to meetings with their lawyers, who would submit it along with their meeting notes to a "privilege team", which assesses everything leaving Guantanamo for classified material or national security issues.
...
> Then in late 2017, under the Trump administration, it became clear that art was no longer being allowed out. Like lots of things in the world of Guantanamo, there was no official notification to the lawyers, no memo. Artwork was all of a sudden simply bounced back from the privilege team to the detainees.
...
> Keeping his art in Guantanamo would be "the same as keeping me here", Qasim said.
> "The art I made is me," he said. "If they keep my art here, my soul will stay here."
Sometimes it really does seem that "the cruelty is the point".
Yes, this is very much as American as apple pie, as they would say.
Also, whether a country is a superpower has no obvious connection to whether it commits human rights violations.
If it’s not fair to compare the US to Yemen, then it’s not fair to compare it to Norway either. It simply is what it is.
* The US is doing better than you might expect from an influential, powerful country, that could be abusing its power much more (but that's how empires fall, and the US has learned from the lessons of history)
* The US is doing worse than you might expect from a prosperous and stable country, one that doesn't need to be driven by desperation and genuine threats to survival
Also, apples and oranges. Cartel violence is a failure of the state but at least not a systemic cruelty by the state itself.
This extends very far beyond Guantanamo. I really wonder where all these sick fucks come from. I don't remember much of a psycho vibe from classmates or work colleagues. Yet the US makes them in sufficient quantity that they seem to pop up wherever authority is. Prisons, police, military, they all seem to have endless human garbage that enjoys being cruel if they can. How has this country produced these "people" and why do they achieve positions of power instead of failure?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem#Banali...
No matter how valuable we were perceived to be or treated as (by some folk at least) prior to our illness (and subsequent "poor-ness"), or how valuable we're capable of being if only we could get one tiny shred of help or luck dealing with our medical needs, we're treated like worthless garbage and kicked to the curb to suffer miserably the moment we're no longer able to continue as a functional part of the money-producing machine for the rich and powerful. That's the truth of life on a planet where money is literally God to most people.
It boggles the mind how these prisoners and others can remain even remotely sane during their times in literal holes and figurative holes of bureaucracy while being mentally and physically assaulted and tortured.
While I do agree about the bureaucracy, I believe that these bureaucracies don't have to be this way. But what it requires is that the people in charge of the bureaucracies care about finding deficiencies and fixing them, assuming they aren't the ones directing the non-niceties in the first place.
I know the feeling, having been involved with the US immigration process since the start of covid & living here through the last couple Trump years.
That said, I do not care about the art, or even speech, of prisoners--of which who are properly convicted, beyond speech with their attorneys and allowed contacts (whom must be able to communicate on behalf of them). The bothersome part of this is Guantanamo's non-wartime use in-and-of itself.
They haven't been. Legally speaking, the remaining detainees at Guantanamo are basically victims of indefinite government kidnapping, as the US government has specifically refused to actually put them on trial because there isn't enough admissible evidence to do so.
Remember: military bases are US soil and subject to the Constitution. Except for when they’re not.
Unlawful combatants, by contrast, are not entitled to a trial, and can even be executed on the spot if it seems advisable.
Being a lawful combatant requires, among other things, that the combatant wear a uniform or other insignia recognizable at a distance.
No uniform -> no POW rights has been the rule for a very, very long time.
It's fine to say you wouldn't but let's not go projecting.
[1] https://nypost.com/2021/08/18/uk-student-miles-routledge-fli...
If "Miles Routledge" is on a "shooting trip with the Taliban", he deserves anything he gets.
And if you make a habit of visiting "spicy jurisdictions", you deserve anything you get.
I say this not out of animus for you or Routledge, but if you knowingly and intentionally engage in risky behavior, you don't get to whine when something goes wrong.
Edit: I smoke cigarettes, which I know to be risky behavior. If I get lung cancer, I won't be whining about it.
Similarly, if Routledge's Taliban buddies decide they don't like him any more, and take a notion to saw off his head on video (a rather more likely risk than him accidentally being sent to Gitmo, IMO), that's on him.
Being buddies with the Taliban exposes you to the risk of them sawing off your head, or being taken prisoner as an unlawful combatant.
And no, imprisoning unlawful combatants indefinitely is not "illegal", neither under United States law nor under the international laws of war.
If you claim otherwise, I'm going to have to ask for a citation.
And it gets a downmod, rather than a citation. Hint: that means you lose.
And for very good reason. The states power should always be checked, at home or abroad.
This is especially important as these days wars don't end.
So far what I've got is a broader perspective so thank you.
Unlawful combatants are not entitled to a trial.
It is a grievous error to assume that civilian law applies in a military context.
As stated, a large number were delivered to the US in exchange for bounty and were alleged to be working with terrorists, allegations that were taken at face value, not looked into for years, if ever, and often lacking evidence.
Attempting to slide out of this via a false binary (ie. either lawful or unlawful combantants) is simply sleazy.
When you write these things, imagine how they work when your simply replace names of countries involved.
You are saying it's right and proper when a Russian soldier executes a Ukrainian civilian putting up resistance? Or a civilian that looks like the guy that was putting up resistance?
Either you are a combatant, or you are a criminal. If you are a combatant, Geneva convention applies. If you are a criminal, system of justice applies. There isn't some sort of third subhuman category you can just execute willy-nilly.
Civilians can and do take up arms to defend their homes. They do not have uniforms just for such an occasion and Geneva convention recongises that.
Only if you are wearing a uniform and otherwise abiding by the laws of war.
Look it up.
Edit: Read it yourself.
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/Article.xs...
Note that even resistance forces are required to wear insignia.
It doesn't have to be a fancy uniform, even an armband of a specific color will work.
What you cannot do is engage in hostilities while hiding among the civilian population.
Oh, right, the United States government told us. How convenient.
Truth is, in many cases, those people weren't combatants at all. But when you're denied due process because of the presumption of being an "illegal combatant", it's kinda hard to prove otherwise.
> Oh, right, the United States government told us. How convenient.
Yes, the United States government has kept them prisoner for 20 years, at great inconvenience and expense, because they just want to be meanies. You bet.
> But when you're denied due process because of the presumption of being an "illegal combatant", it's kinda hard to prove otherwise.
"Due process" is a feature of United States civilian law.
Not international martial law.
So there are no political prisoners in China?
Well, no, they took them prisoner and held them there initially for a variety of bad reasons, and then they were kept there subsequently largely because of intrabranch squabbles, radicalization because of long unjust confinement, and foreign reluctance to help resolve the problem (in large part due to the preceding point) making it difficult to find a resolution to the problem created by the initial bad decisions.
(Anthropomorphizing the US government as if it were an individual with general consistence of interest is... not consistent with political reality, often, or on this point in particular.)
Sorry, you are not arguing this point in good faith.
Your "prisoners aren't entitled to due process" point doesn't matter - even if true, if we are the good guys, we should embrace the process that conclusively establishes guilt or innocence for everyone to see, not lock people up in special you-have-no-rights prisons.
You can't have it both ways.
Unlawful combatants are not entitled to a trial. That doesn't mean you can't give them one if you feel like it.
You can basically do anything you want with them, including giving them a trial or even simply shooting them on the spot.
Unless "you" accidentally transport them to the United States like any other prisoner of the US government, in which case they are entitled to legal due process. It's a very principled system that we should all feel great about.
I just don't care about the art angle.
It's part of why the whole thing is rotten and can't be fixed from within the system by the system's own rules. Too many skeletons in too many closets.
The truth is probably closer to "there were a lot of people who sabotaged the attempt"; Republicans, Democrats in swing states, Pentagon officials. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/08/01/why-obama-has-...
It's a long shot, but is there any material way of helping these artists be able to take their art with them again? Making noise at specific people? Organizations that specifically target these broken freedoms?
Artistic freedom in particular is a very near and dear subject to me, and would greatly appreciate pointers here if there's any existing work done here.
How can his guilt be confirmed if he was never even charged?
You sure about that? I believe US territories are subject to the jurisdiction of the Constitution. Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is notably not a US territory.
I am sorry, but what kind of substance abuse and education is this?!
Are you allowed to grab your AR15 and shoot foreign tourists? Can you keep them as slaves?
Have you thought about the implications of what you've written for even two seconds?
Nobody would ever travel or do business in a country where they have no rights, you'd have as many foreign PHD students as Somalia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insular_Cases
> The preliminary answer came from a series of Supreme Court rulings, now known as the Insular Cases, which responded to the question of how American constitutional rights apply to those in United States territories. The Supreme Court held that full constitutional protection of rights does not automatically (or ex proprio vigore—i.e., of its own force) extend to all places under American control. This meant that inhabitants of unincorporated territories such as Puerto Rico—"even if they are U.S. citizens"—may lack some constitutional rights (e.g., the right to remain part of the United States in case of de-annexation)[2] because they were not part of the United States.
Never overturned.
https://mckinneylaw.iu.edu/iiclr/pdf/vol12p53.pdf
Proven you say? So much proof that they continue to be held without even having been charged (never mind tried and convicted on so much supposed clear evidence) for crimes years after their detention.
elementary school level basic rules of justice: If you have evidence, you use it to bring forth charges quickly, otherwise, shut up and release whoever you're holding. The U.S government certainly doesn't lack the resources to just proceed with a trial.
It doesn't make sense that the only people who have been convicted of terrorism are the ones that are released the earliest.
There isn't, but how is that murder? You said it yourself, soldiers, in a war zone, killing them is not murder. The US case is not only built on rotten foundations (torture), it doesn't even make sense.
> It seems like everyone was tortured at Guantanamo...why were so few convicted then
Because torture was less than useless in most cases, but gave "enough", apparently, for some convictions like Omar's to be pushed through on the vain hope that the torture won't come up and ruin the conviction. That didn't stop the sick fucks at the CIA from continuing the torture for quite some time. Everyone from them up to the White House inhabitants at the time deserves at the very least a trial and some jail time.
So torture is less than useless in most cases, but it also helped secure a conviction against Khadr. Which is it? Why didn't torture help secure a conviction against everyone else at Guantanamo?
I would feel a little better about this if, say, these people were convicted of crimes and the art was sold as restitution a la OJ Simpson. But how can you call these people perpetrators when they've been held without trial for decades? They've been convicted of nothing. We've locked people up for years because they wore a model of Casio watch that was popular with some members of Al Quaeda (before any Bayesians jump in, it's worth mentioning that the watch is also popular with people who aren't members of Al Quaeda, which makes those indefinite detentions even more egregious IMO)
By that point, Qasim had been in Guantanamo nearly half his life, aged 23 to 43. Like almost all the men sent there, he has never been charged with a crime.
Not even charged, not to mention convicted. Certainly no reason to believe he’s a terrorist that ruined someone’s lives. His was certainly ruined though. How much more should we ruin random lives for what I can only see as some sort of “revenge”?
For what it’s worth, artwork from Guantanamo is only valuable because of its terrible history as a torture site and imprisonment of innocent people - not because it’s known for holding guilty killer terrorists.
I have no doubt that Guantanamo Bay was used extensively for abuses of power, but the reality is that we (the public) will never be privy to much of the reasoning behind the capture and continued imprisonment of these folks.
that said, given the lack of due process towards their imprisonment and outcomes i'll likely never refer to them as guilty, but being left in the dark as towards the reasons why they're there prevents me from proclaiming their innocence, either.
I imagine that moral ambiguity may be induced on purpose in order to foster support or inaction towards it, but that's where i'm at personally for good or bad.
That's completely irrelevant. Military tribunals can be set up to adjudicate these cases. The problem isn't that, the problem is that they're - thanks to the power of imagination - not eligible for due process.
My reasons are:
1. There’s evidence that the evidence used was exceptionally flaky - wearing a very common watch was considered evidence to imprison somebody
2. The political climate at the time was fervently “anti terrorist”, and there was plenty of incentive to “imprison first and ask questions later” - get any wins/info that you can at any cost.
3. When the political climate turned against Guantanamo, the government couldn’t even come up with a charge to justify it (to be fair there could be concerns about revealing sources, etc. but I would think a charge itself wouldn’t do so)
And in general, I’m a pretty firm believer in innocent until proven guilty. In this case we just took someone and held them and didn’t even make a proper accusation, and did so in a case where I see the government having strong incentives to do so regardless of guilt.
The US has released some people from Guantanamo, saying they picked up the wrong person. Of course such things happen when people are imprisoned without trial, which is against even US law. They have never been given a trial, nor are they considered POWs, and some have been released when the US realized they got the wrong person, yet you piously and sanctimoniously desire to punish them even beyond the illegal punishment they've been meted.
There are good reasons why the legal system involves more process than just letting anyone who feels wronged do whatever they want to whoever they think might've been involved.
Edit: found it, here's the story https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61609417
Is he perhaps not the dangerous terrorist you think he is?
> By that point, Qasim had been in Guantanamo nearly half his life, aged 23 to 43. Like almost all the men sent there, he has never been charged with a crime.
Most people at Guantanamo haven't been charged with anything, and about a quarter of the rest have been cleared of any wrongdoing. It's a travesty that the place continues to exist and has ever existed.
Your "primarily in the middle east" comment is also really confusing to me -- first, citation needed? Second, even if true, so what? Why should it be worse that wealthy buyers of these pieces would be "primarily in the middle east" than anywhere else?
Citation?
The people held at Guantanamo Bay are not considered POWs by the US, nor have they been given a trial. They're held in violation of even US law. The US has let some go saying they picked up the wrong person. Who determined they are responsible for what you say they are responsible for? Even the US doesn't agree as they say they picked up some in error and let them go.
On top of this - for over half a century the country of Cuba has demanded the US withdraw its military base from Cuban territory. As US presidents piously intoned about Russian troops in Donetsk, that a sovereign nation wants US troops out of its territory is considered so unimportant it is practically unknown.
It indicates that ther is no such thing as justice, only rule of the strong.
These failures to live up to the standards we set is the first thing out of the mouth of any 'patriotic' Russian when you point out the cruelty of war in Ukraine.
It is big reason why in countries like India do not trust Europe and the West, and did not go along with recent sanctions
Surely if there’s compelling evidence that this is true, we can put it in front of a judge and jury and have them sentenced properly.
Since 2002, nearly 779 Muslim men and boys have been held at Guantanamo, nearly all of them without any charge or trial. Of those, 532 were released by the Bush administration itself, and 197 later by Obama [0]. Today the number of detainees is 39.
Almost all of them had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack.
0. https://www.aclu.org/issues/national-security/detention/guan...
Even if every single person held hostage at Guantanamo was directly involved in a terrorist attack they should not be tortured and detained forever without a proper trial. Revenge achieves nothing but more suffering. What has been done can never be changed but we can ensure that no more innocent will be hurt by setting the bar high enough so that even people proven guilty are not treated like sub humans. How we treat the worst people in our society sets the bar for the innocents inadvertently caught in the cogs of the judicial system.
It is better that 10 guilty persons escape than 1 innocent suffers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio
What if the escaped guilty persons cause more than one innocent to suffer? Seems like an obvious flaw in this aphorism. Maybe works for petty thievery, not so much crimes of great bodily harm.
It's a principle of justice that was arrived at through a lot of thought and experience. It of course takes into account that the guilty people that slip away due to this principle will cause harm of their own.
But a justice system without this principle, one that does not place a high bar for what makes one guilty, one that isn't very careful about labeling innocents guilty, will cause far more suffering. It makes systematic abuses of power more likely, and affects far more innocents ultimately. This only becomes more and more true as the power and reach of the state gets higher and higher compared to that of an individual who might be a potential criminal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_T._Francis#Thought_and_...
>Francis's term "anarcho-tyranny" refers to armed dictatorship without rule of law, or a Hegelian synthesis when the state tyrannically or oppressively regulates citizens' lives yet is unable or unwilling to enforce fundamental protective law.
Are there any actual examples of this happening? The link doesn't cite any.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_New_York_City_Subway_shoo...
Recalling a DA is firm rejection of his vision for a more-permissive justice system:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chesa-boudin-san-francisco-da-r...
In terms of total collapse, see Venezuela (“Public Opinion” subsection highlights ineffective courts and weak rulings):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Venezuela
The “anarcho-tyranny” idea is orthogonal to Francis’s other and later views, and has become a mainstay topic in mainstream conservatism. Here it used in a Newsweek article by Hispanic conservative writer Pedro Gonzalez:
https://www.newsweek.com/president-bidens-anarcho-tyranny-op...
It’s evidence of something, but not a too-high bar of criminal conviction.
> has become a mainstay topic in mainstream conservatism
This says bad things about modern mainstream conservatism, not good things about Francis.
That’s what a country the USA aspires to be in its best moments would’ve done. It would’ve been a shining example of what a liberal democracy could be.
It shows quite a lack of can-do attitude to think that in the last 20 years we couldn't have come up with something. We did come up with Nuremberg after all.
If only there was an international criminal court set up specifically for "trying individuals for genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and aggression" [2] in which folks could seek justice. Nah, that'd never work, which is why the US is helpfully not a signatory. Even though, and this is true, the US played a central role in its creation.
The issue isn't lack of venue clearly it's lack of due process.
[1] https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/08/19/the-inter...
[2] https://www.icc-cpi.int/
"Don't throw out the rulebook in a fit of passion. You'll regret it. We did" - Dan Fried
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DMhb1FWHso