Congrats America. We officially torture randoms (some Afghans were given up to the equivalent of a year's salary to turn folks in; quite a nice way of getting rid of some SOB and getting paid). We also violate our laws and constitution, then sit around and circle jerk over whether dunking someone's head under water a couple hundred times until he's just this side of drowning is torture or not. Then, because it's definitely not torture, the cia deletes the videos. Oh, and apparently we now do indefinite detention as well, without legal representation except in front of a kangaroo court, maybe, eventually. Finally, now that we definitely know some people were innocent... we leave them to rot in a cell in Guantanamo.
In fairness, his justice department made a serious effort to transfer some gitmo people to the US justice system, but there was an opportunist shitstorm over it, and close to no principled liberals/libertarians who stood up and called out the shitstormers.
Screw the judicial system, in one act of exercising his power as commander and chief he could order all these military personel to release those prisoners and go home. This is what any sane man who actually cared about human rights would do.
This will of course never been done. Not by this president, nor by any future ones.
He has sent a bunch of them home. The number is down significantly from when he took office, and most of the remaining prisoners have no country willing to offer them asylum. I have a big problem with gitmo but the Obama admin did try to push on it for quite a while before apparently concluding they'd dumped enough time and capital into it.
> Obama admin did try to push on it for quite a while before apparently concluding they'd dumped enough time and capital into it.
I voted for Obama, but sadly on this issue, he has been mostly a disappointment, to put it mildly. The great Glen Greenwald over at Salon.com recently wrote: "Obama -- for reasons having nothing to do with Congress -- worked from the start to preserve the crux of the Bush/Cheney detention regime. Even with these new added levels of detention review (all inside the Executive Branch), this new Executive Order is little more than a by-product of that core commitment, and those blaming it on Congress either have little idea what they're talking about or are simply fabricating excuses in order to justify yet another instance where Obama dutifully "bolsters" the Bush War on Terror template."[1]
This latest Wikileaks revelation is shameful, and for awhile I bought into the idea that Congress prevented Obama from closing Gitmo. I am no longer convinced.
Ok, well, I hear you but there's actually more to the job of President than this one issue.. his justice dept got way out in front on it, gave it an honest shot, fought in court, got hammered in public and got no support and he's got a country to run at the end of the day. Unemployment, 3 wars, etc.
Organize some protests and get some visibility if you feel that strongly about it.. being sanctimonious about human rights on a blog impresses nobody.
I wanted to take some time to give a more carefully thought-out reply to this, because your accusation (implied in "being sanctimonious") is totally fair, and one that I level at others sometimes.
I don't think it's wrong to express strong disapproval of political issues even if I'm not currently politically involved, because the fact is, I spent most of my twenties thinking about how to effect (big) change in the world, and the answer I came up with was that, first, I had to become wealthy. I concluded that the political process itself was badly broken, that there were serious social issues stretching back many decades, and that while working as a teacher or a politician might have some impact, it would ultimately almost certainly be less effective than accumulating a huge amount of resources and then putting those resources into play in ways that I think would be beneficial to the world. That doesn't mean that I don't spend any time at all on other endeavors -- one of the first things I hope to do after opening up a local shop is host mechatronics classes for kids, because I think it's important for technologists and others to teach their craft to the young. However, politics in general -- whether at the local, state, or national level -- requires disproportionate amounts of attention, with few benefits. It is a huge distraction from my primary goals, so I'm not inclined to get involved with it. Not completely disinclined though: I did apply and interview for a local planning commission position, I have attended city council meetings in two local towns, I have been the tech guy for a California wanna-be governor's campaign a couple of years ago.
But in the end, spending much effort on organizing rallies or protesting with signs, for me, is self-defeating ... at least to some extent.
I also don't think that the President is above reproach just because the job is difficult. I have a tremendous amount of respect for just how difficult the job is; it's obvious to anyone that watches how quickly various Presidents age while in office. It is a physically debilitating position to have. That said, the President is (supposed to be) elected to deal with issues like this. I do not think that "they gave it an honest shot" is a reasonable way to accept failure on certain issues. I also think that, as a candidate who ran on platform issues like transparency in government and workers' rights, the President has disenchanted many of his most ardent supporters, which is really a rather big problem because many of these people became politically active for the first time in nearly a decade in order to get him into office. His supporters did not want to elect a "lesser evil", they wanted to elect change. To what degree any change has occurred is a matter of perspective, but I think it's hard to argue that it has fallen far short of expectations and promises.
So, yes, I speak out on political issues that I think are important. I hold the President of the United States -- whoever he is -- to a very high standard, because I believe that it is necessary for the health of our country to do so. However, I don't do any of that to impress anyone, because impressing people won't help change anything.
I do it because people having more conversations like this one is, I think, the first step towards fixing some of the social and political problems in our country.
Thanks for the thought-out response. I'd only counter that a president alone can't change everything when we have a congress, lobbying and media environment like we have now. "Trying to change things" vs "Trying to make sure they don't change" is a bigger difference than simply "lesser evil", even if the daily frustrations sometimes get to you.
If the police search your house in violation of your rights, it doesn't matter if they find the bong you made of Elvis's skull that you stole, and use to smoke the hundreds of pot plants you are growing. They can't fucking use it.
This detainment is illegal, it doesn't matter what the hell they did. Release them, and try again legally this time.
What I am asserting is that any president who cared about human rights would disregard these bullshit laws. Just because you can convince congress to pass anything you wish by allowing them to throw their pet projects into the mix, doesn't mean human rights are not being violated.
What I am asserting is that any president who cared about human rights would disregard these bullshit laws.
...virtually guaranteeing impeachment, and/or setting a precedent for a successor to disregard, say, human rights laws. Think of it like legacy code; it may be badly written, obsolete, and a waste of resources to remain compatible with it, but you may not have have any other choice. Historical figures often appear to have acted more boldly and decisively than those in politics today, because historical review necessarily involves simplification and a focus on outcomes. When you dig deeper, though, the process of change was often equally messy and haphazard.
If a president can order armed troops into a warzone without a declaration of war by congress, he sure as shit can order troops out of an illegal prison in Cuba.
I suppose that is another way he could end this horrorshow right now in one day, though you end up with the absurd situation where you are pardoning people who haven't been charged with anything. ;)
Failing that, we could live up to our so-called standards and laws and live with the consequences of torturing him, ie that all evidence tainted by torture is now inadmissible.
"Fair trials to those we have an open and shut case against! Continued detention and possible military trials for anyone else" doesn't sound like a slogan I can get behind.
This is why we're increasingly going for option three: summary execution on foreign soil on sight via military robot spyplane.
Not that I have a problem with that, really. The real problem is that our legal categories haven't caught up with reality. Regular criminals we catch, try and imprison. But soldiers of an enemy nation we shoot on sight... unless they surrender, in which case we're obliged to keep 'em as POWs until hostilities end and then return them to the other country. Unless they're not legit combatants (e.g. they're spies or saboteurs or otherwise not dressed in proper military uniforms) in which case we can declare 'em illegal combatants and shoot them.
That's the way it used to be, but now that we live in a world where non-state organizations make war against states (well, war against everything) there's a need for some new legal classification. If you're a real honest-to-Allah member of Al Qaeda then I don't think that the civilian "release 'em until they actually kill someone then try 'em for murder" is a good strategy. On the other hand "kill 'em as soon as they pop their head up" has too high a risk of false positives.
If you're a real honest-to-Allah member of Al Qaeda, I think that the civilian "release 'em until they actually kill someone then try 'em for murder" is a good strategy. Specifically, I think it's a better strategy than the "occupy their countries and capture or kill them" strategy. I think it's on the order of thousands of times better, judging by the dollar costs and human costs of our actions in the Middle East.
"If you're a real honest-to-Allah member of Al Qaeda then I don't think that the civilian "release 'em until they actually kill someone then try 'em for murder" is a good strategy."
That's a very big if.
Why should anyone trust the US government to decide who is and who isn't a member of Al Qaeda?
The US government repeatedly proven themselves to be liars (or at least incompetents) on precisely this subject (not to mention many, many others).
"If you're a real honest-to-Allah member of Al Qaeda"
what process do you suggest for proving that?
Without a court trial, how can your membership in Al Qaeda reasonably be established?
Also, membership of what other clubs or groups also allows the government to imprison you indefinitely without trial and torture you? who decides that?
I regret not being able to comment much on this issue, but it seems to me that the Obama Administration's continued secrecy on this matter was a necessary enabler for those opposed to the use of the US court system.
And congrats to the runner-up, UK, for forcefully deporting the Chagossians from their homeland in the 1970s and continuing to prevent them from returning. Long live democracy!
Good job.