The USA Soils Itself

[bachus]

This American Life : Habeas Schmabeas

[elektro80]

Well, this is an interesting angle on the "problem".

There are several issues here I guess.

1. First of all, has there ever been true freedom, equality and all that jazz for the citizens of the USA?

2. Consider the Spanish War. And has there really been change since? Isn´t there some sort of "ruling class" that has its own agenda. Isn´t there still a serious empire building project going on?

3. Authoritarian states have also been heavy into all sorts of precog crime fighting.

[deknow]

one of the problems with discussing the prisoners in guantanamo, is that those that are there would (under almost all circumstances in the past) have been killed on the battlefield (as non-uniform wearing suspected combatants) rather than taken into custody. i'm not sure how to address this appropriatley (not simply killing people, not putting them back in the position to do harm, finding out if they really are a threat and releasing as many as possible as soon as possible), but a solution won't come until we can come up with a way we are willing to fight an enemy that doesn't wear bright red coats....this has to be deeper than a simple "free the prisoners".
deknow

[elektro80]

[elektro80]

[mosc]

I'll try to catch this program.

I'm quite sure Atilla The Hun would have done a much better job at fighting this so-called war on terrorism. When I worked for IBM, one of the most popular books there was called something like "The Leadership Principles of Atilla The Hun".

At any rate, I would like to Constitutional rights restored, and I'd like to see fellow citizens outraged by their erosion. At least Bachus is similarly concerned.

[deknow]

...it's not that i'm not concerned (i am, especially about prisoners that appear to have been "turned in" by their own enemies), and it's not that i think this can be solved with a game of tennis.

from the "left", we have:
it's unacceptable to imprison these people without charges
it's unacceptable to kill them on the spot

from the "right" we have"
it's unacceptable to simply return people who might be dangerous into a situation where they could cause harm

so to me, the question is not simply "do we release those folks in guantanomo"? but "how do we deal with this class of "suspect"? i'm not sure what the answer should be...or even if there is a good one, but this is the thing of importance here.

i also tend to agree that atilla would have done a much better job at waging war, but i'm not sure that's what we want to be good at. is anyone going to argue that atilla would not have killed these folks (caught on the battlefield, turned in as "enemies")?

waging a war is easy, you kill people and blow things up. when this is done effectively, it's considered an unfair massacare (hiroshima, nagasaki, hitler's mass murders), when it's done half assed and without the conviction to "kill people and blow things up", it becomes a quagmire (vietnam, israel/palistine conflict). the art is in not waging war...that is the hard part. in order to succeed, you have to answer the hard questions, not demand the easy solutions (simply freeing the prisoners).

deknow

[elektro80]

Just for the record, I don´t think Vietnam qualifies as a half assed job, and the israel/palistine conflict is really not a traditional war and and there is still nothing halfassed about the occupation of Palestine.

Another matter is of course that the colonisation of Palestine really belongs to another age. This is a late 19th century idea, and a bright one as that.

Someone usually have to pay for such bright ideas and noone ever wins.

[bachus]

[elektro80]

The war on terrorism as well as the Guantanamo Bay project are both not quite of the Bjørn Borg material, as tennis matches come. There are very few wars that are winnable the way WW1 and WW2 were. In these cases we were looking at destroying the opponent and the opponents were clearly defined. In the case of WW2 it was about taking out "evil" empires and some still think of this war as a good war.

It can be argued that Bin Laden`s anti-imperialistic project ( and I am not sure this is a proper term for it ) can not effectively be opposed using traditional means.

Bachus does of course not just think of the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay but also the rights and privileges of the citizens of the US.

[bachus]

[bachus]

[elektro80]

[deknow]

..i want to try and address everything.

1. stein, as far as "war" goes, those are half assed conflicts (i think). i'm also not saying it's a bad thing...i'm glad that israel doesn't seem to commit the "massacares" in refugee camps that they are often accused of (though they do make strikes, and kill innocent civilian children). much easier, cheaper, and more effective to just bomb the whole camp from the air. not doing this is "diplomacy", not "waging war" (again, at least it seems this way to me)....these seem to be mutually exclusive (full out war has no room for diplomacy, full diplomatic measures don't involve the military).

[bachus]

[deknow]

...i'm not sure exactly what you mean by "argument by false dichontomy". if you think i purposefuly changed the emphesis from habeas corpus to guantanamo in order to have better argument, you would be mistaken. based on the blurb you posted, the npr show seems to be about the prisoners at guantanamo, not habaus corpus.

deknow

[elektro80]

[deknow]

stein, i agree with all that.

deknow

[bachus]

[elektro80]

[elektro80]

[mosc]

[bachus]

[seraph]

[elektro80]