Even if you are correct that Al Qaeda is not allowed Geneva protection, or protection against torture - how is this relevant to innocent Iraqis being imprisoned and tortured? They are not members of the "enemy" - they are members of a supposedly now democratic and "free" Iraq. So how can they be allowed to be treated like this?
Would you mind showing some evidence of this from a reputable news site? Other than some criminal acts for which the guilty have already been punished, I don't know what you are talking about.
What evidence do you have of their presence in Iraq?
Here is a start. Or this. Try going to news.google.com and search on iraq + al qaeda, or al-Zarqawi. Its not hard to find.
So, why are ordinary Iraqis being imprisoned and tortured, even if they have nothing to do with Al Qaeda or terrorism?
By whom? I don't think the US is doing this. There was the rogue bunch of soldiers at Abu Gharaib, but most of them are already in jail for their crimes. Several months agao there were some Iraqi interior ministry units that were going rogue, but they are being reigned in following raids by the US and other Iraqi government agencies.
We also have a War on Drugs. Does that mean that drug users should be denied constitutional or international law rights?
The war on drugs, like the war on poverty, isn't a "real" war, a shooting war. Its metaphor.
Please explain this. If they are not enemies in a war, then they are civilians, and deserve civilian protections. If they are enemies in a war, then they should be treated as POWs. There is no third category recognized under US or international law.
Yes, there is, that is where the term "unlawful combatant" or enemy combatant comes in. You have to obey the law of war and the treaty to qualify for the special protections and privileges of the treaty. Al Qaeda and company regularly commit war crimes, and fail the tests in Convention III, article 4, paragraph 2:
(2) Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:[ (a) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates; (b) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance; (c) that of carrying arms openly; (d) that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.
Al Qaeda fails at least 3 of the 4 tests and therefore doesn't qualify for POW status under the Geneva Convention provisions. If you really did read them, you know that means they aren't entitled to prepare their own food, and get paid a wage, for example.
Paragraph 6 refers to a Levee en mass and doesn't apply.
Why is it silly?
To try and prove that there isn't a war because some prisoners do not qualify for the special protections of prisoner of war status under the Geneva Conventions is silly.
People trapped in extremely stressful situations are often too busy surviving to notice the toll the situation takes. It isn't until after the stress is removed or changed in some way that they feel its full effects, as in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or other stress injuries or ailments.
People with PTSD can improve in various respects, sometimes on their own, but treatment can be very helpful too.
There is still good you can do in the world, and good you can experience. I hope you find it. Good luck and God bless.
I think that you have the situation completely wrong, in multiple respects.
Contrary to your assertion that there are all sorts of new powers being invented or used, what you see is the use of wartime powers by the executive branch against an enemy which is outside the law.
The President as Commander in Chief has enormous powers in wartime, some of which haven't been used in the 50 years prior. The Congress has authorized the use of force against the perpetrators of 9/11. There is an organization which has declared itself to be at war with the US. The gloves are off, and Al Qaeda members will be captured or killed for as long as it takes, even if it is 50 years. (The Indian wars lasted about 40.)
By the same token, Al Qaeda has stated its intent to kill 4,000,000 Americans (1/2 women and children I believe) and make many more homeless. In violation of every precept of civilization they recognize no innocents in combat, but make war on the young, the old, the sick and infirm, ordinary people going about their business, just as if they were soldiers. If Americans don't have the will to stop them, there isn't any reason to believe they won't succeed in their goal.
The Geneva conventions are a mutual treaty among nations, but other groups can qualify for its protections and privileges if they comply with its provisions. Unfortunately Al Qaeda and company has placed themselves outside of it by ignoring it and regularly committing war crimes and therefore they are entitled to none of its protections. We are under no obligation to extend any more rights to them than we are required to legally, which is very little. It is entirely possible that we would be acting consistently with international law to execute them all as spies, but we aren't doing that. Instead we are holding them, and in some cases returning them to their nations of origin under custody. Other nations are not released from their treaty obligations toward us by our actions against Al Qaeda. If we go to war with them they are still bound by the treaty and international law. Al Qaeda and kin have long tortured and executed anyone who falls into their hands, including beheading. That probably won't change.
It is sad that innocent people get caught up in this, but it will happen, just as many innocent people are killed in war. There is no way to apply an antiseptic standard of faultless action in dealing with simple criminals, let alone a massive and yet subtle undertaking like the war against Al Qaeda. It isn't possible. It would also be completely wrong-headed to demand that we don't defend ourselves if we can't do it without any innocent people being detained, hurt or killed. The US has gone to great lengths to to minimize the death of innocents, but it will happen none the less. Blame Al Qaeda who shields themselves with innocent lives as often as they attack them.
As to the question of secrecy, that is the nature of this war. Secrecy protects the way we get information, and denies information to the enemy, such as who we have captured, how we found them, what they are telling us, how we are using it, what we are going to do next. Sometimes the very knowledge of the existence of a method tells the enemy all that they need to know to avoid our using it. There have been a number of occasions so far during this war when a journalist was more concerned with a scoop than he was with the US being able to count on a technique to find the enemy and so broadcast the information about its existence as use. As a result, Al Qaeda became aware of the technique and changed its behavior, and became harder to find and counter, but at least some journalist got a by-line out of it.
The conduct of this war won't be reduced to a simple set of open rules. That would be too limited and telegraph our actions. We shouldn't treat Al Qaeda fairly, only humanely if captured.
Ordinary criminals are different, should be, and are, treated in the usual way. There are indeed limits.
Most of the oversight in this war will be by the various branches of government playing their respective roles.
1. Al Qaeda is not from Iraq. In fact, Al Qaeda is probably a creation of the US, whose actual existence has been exaggerated.
Al Qaeda is a world-wide organization with a presence in Iraq. It trained tens of thousands of terrorists in camps in Afghanistan while it was ruled by the Taliban. Your information is faulty.
2. Normal Iraqi people are not members of Al Qaeda. But they are the people being detained.
Al Qaeda is operating in Iraq, along with various Islamic extremists, tribal militias, Iranian agents, and dead-enders from the Baathist regime. They hide among the population which is turning against them. Ordinary people are turning them in.
3. The idea of a "war" against such an amorphous and vague group is ridiculous.
War on Al Qaeda is about the same as war on pirates in centuries past, or various guerilla groups. Nothing silly about it at all.
They should be targets of law enforcement.
Al Qaeda and associates have become a large enough problem that they are no longer a simple law enforcement problem. It is now often falls in the paramilitary or military problem scale.
War is about nation-states and armies fighting one another. "War on Terror" is a misnomer.
There is an entire range of conflict that encompasses war. It isn't just nation state vs nation state.
War on Terror is shorthand, not misnomer.
4. If we are at war with Al Qaeda, then why doesn't the US treat them by Geneva conventions, and other standards for treating POWs? But the administration has denied that they are prisoners of war - they are "enemy combatants" - therefore, there must be no war, if they are not POWs.
In order to qualify for the protections of a Prisoner of War under the Geneva Conventions you must meet certain standards. Al Qaeda and company violate the standards and therefore don't qualify for the protections and priviledges.
...therefore, there must be no war, if they are not POWs
Faulty logic, and quite silly.
Might I suggest that you actually read the Geneva Conventions?
In WWII, there were some soldiers who could have been held up to 6 years. In Viet Nam, there were airmen held for at least 8 years. During those conflicts there were civilians held as well for various reasons and for various lengths of time. That is part of the nature of war. What makes things even nastier in the present conflict is that Al Qaeda and its associates aren't a country, don't fight by the rules, consistently lie, indiscriminately murder, expose all around them to danger, and leave their members little recourse if they are captured. Legally they aren't much different from spies.
Although it may make you uncomfortable, there is a difference between ordinary criminal law and the law of war. The standards and expectations are different, and for good reason.
The people being held under the law of war and as part of the conflict are clearly a separate class of people both practically and legally. If they start holding ordinary criminals, even murderers and rapists, as if they were terrorists, there will be a wide outcry.
If you have a way to see through the lies and deception of Al Qaeda members, to separate the involved from the uninvolved, the innocent from the guilty, without requiring evidence and legwork, I'm sure that the US military would gratefully receive it. By the way, the consequences if you are wrong isn't a stolen car, but people dying.
Keep an eye on that story. Although there have been genuine innocents who were held and released, as they would have been anyway, so far there has been something like a dozen or more "innocents" who were released and then recaptured or killed later in attacks against the US or allies. Part of Al Qaeda's basic training is to claim to be innocent and the victims of discrimination because they know how it plays in the West.
I've also wondered if being the victim of bullying affected the socio-political choices you make in the future.
It might, depending on many factors such as severity, duration, official reaction, and individual psychological make up. I expect that most people probably just get over it.
I'm not saying Republicans are bullies and Democrats are victims or anything, but there sure seem to be a lot of people who just don't "get" the need for judicial oversight, fair representation in court or congress, support for the poor, or the concept of a truly open marketplace.
Not unlike people who don't "get" that we have three co-equal, independent, branches of government which have their own set of unique powers set forth in the Constitution which aren't necessarily subject to control by the other branches, or that criminal law, civil law, and the law of war are different, or that knowledge and wisdom aren't the same thing.
To some other influential republicans, however, science is already too left, and therefore, not right.
More likely: There are more than enough left leaning scientists advocating politically correct theories poorly supported by science but which threaten disaster if we don't hew to the particular social, economic, technical, or political change they desire.
...And I believe that's exactly why no one has to fear a terrorist attack on the Super Bowl.... Terrorists have their target audiences. The Al Qaeda wants to impress people in the muslim countries, who think of "football" as the sport that's played by kicking a round ball with the feet. If 90% of the TV news anchors around the world have to explain what this "super bowl" thing is, and its true importance in the collective American mind, the intended message of the attack would be wasted.
You are focusing on the wrong metric. You seem to think that the sport will have something to do with it. You're wrong. What will matter will be the fact that there is an attack and a large body count. I doubt if even 5% of the Muslim world had heard of the World Trade Center in New York before it was hit, and yet that didn't seem to dampen the rejoicing after the 9/11 attacks. If the Islamists terrorists could attack the Super Bowl by flying a 707 into the stands and kill 20,000 outright, mortally wound 10,000, and maim or psychologically scar the rest, not to mention the nation, there would be joy in the hearts of Bin Laden's followers. They wouldn't care a wit about the sport*.
Al Qaeda has a stated goal of killing 4,000,000 Americans. Don't kid yourself, if they could find a way to attack and kill 60,000+ defenseless, tightly packed Americans, they would.
*Actually it is entirely possible that the fact that it would be an almost uniquely American ("barbarian/infidel") sport might even make it more enticing as a target.
Has nobody else noticed the obvious reason the National Guard are doing this?
Like the stated one?
Not only do they get their weekend hours out of the way, but they get free admission to the SuperBowl. Since last-minute tickets are costing over $1000, I am sure that they are bragging to their buddies what a boondoggle they have accomplished.
I'll bet they brag a lot more if they apprehend a jihadi with a bomb vest trying to get in the door to kill a couple of hundred people, or detect poison gas before it reaches lethal concentration (as Al Qaeda experimented with in Afghanistan, and had a bounty for in Iraq), or stop a truck bomb before it drives into the building.
I once got into a U.S. Open golf tournament by volunteering for "Emergency Services." After spending about 5 minutes setting up some tables, I wandered away and got a beer and watched the tournament like everyone else. And the badge looked cool.
And would you have helped, or even been useful, if there had been an emergency? I know the Guardsmen will help, be useful, organized, disciplined, and not drinking beer.
I suspect that most of them have a somewhat better idea of what would happen to about 60,000 people sitting defenseless, shoulder to shoulder, in an enclosed space if, say, a plane crashed inside, truck bomb blew up, or poison gas was released inside. Beer farts on a golf course isn't exactly the limit of the threat here.
I, for one... Welcome our new terrorist-smeller pursuivant overlords
And well you should. The terrorists have the will, and a plan to become our new overlords. If they succeed, you will be living in a genuine theocracy uniting church and state, governed by Sharia law, in all of its harshness, including threat of crucifixion, beheading, stoning, and amputation.
Our present "overlords" do well in defending us against the malice of the would-be Islamist terrorist overlords. The Islamist terrorists have a demonstrated interest in conducting infamous attacks aimed at mass murder, and a stated goal of killing four million Americans in pursuit of their nightmare state. The Superbowl is a natural target. The terrorists have the will to kill everyone at the Superbowl, but lack the opportunity due to the vigilance of our present "overlords",.... long may they "reign".
The only court that squarely has addressed the relative powers of Congress and the President in this field suggested that the balance tips decidedly in the President s favor. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review recently noted that all courts to have addressed the issue of the President's inherent authority have held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information. In re Sealed Case, 310 F.3d 717, 742 (Foreign Intel. Surv. Ct. of Rev. 2002). On the basis of that unbroken line of precedent, the court [took] for granted that the President does have that authority, and concluded that, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President s constitutional power. Id.14 Although the court did not provide extensive analysis, it is the only judicial statement on point, and it comes from the specialized appellate court created expressly to deal with foreign intelligence issues under FISA.
But the NSA activities are not simply exercises of the President s general foreign affairs powers. Rather, they are primarily an exercise of the President s authority as Commander in Chief during an armed conflict that Congress expressly has authorized the President to pursue. The NSA activities, moreover, have been undertaken specifically to prevent a renewed attack at the hands of an enemy that has already inflicted the single deadliest foreign attack in the Nation s history. The core of the Commander in Chief power is the authority to direct the Armed Forces in conducting a military campaign. Thus, the Supreme Court has made clear that the President alone is constitutionally invested with the entire charge of hostile operations. Hamilton v. Dillin, 88 U.S. (21 Wall.) 73, 87 (1874); The Federalist No. 74, at 500 (Alexander Hamilton). As commander-in-chief, [the President] is authorized to direct the movements of the naval and military forces placed by law at his command, and to employ them in the manner he may deem most effectual to harass and conquer and subdue the enemy.
And again...
The courts uniformly have approved this longstanding Executive Branch practice. Indeed, every federal appellate court to rule on the question has concluded that, even in peacetime, the President has inherent constitutional authority, consistent with the Fourth Amendment, to conduct searches for foreign intelligence purposes without securing a judicial warrant. See In re Sealed Case, 310 F.3d 717, 742 (Foreign Intel. Surv. Ct. of Rev. 2002) ( [A]ll the other courts to have decided the issue [have] held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information . . . . We take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President s constitutional power. ) (emphasis added); accord, e.g., United States v. Truong Dinh Hung, 629 F.2d 908 (4th Cir. 1980); United States v. Butenko, 494 F.2d 593 (3d Cir. 1974) (en banc); United States v. Brown, 484 F.2d 418 (5th Cir. 1973).
and more... (notice this is pre-war)...
As noted in Part I, on May 21, 1940, President Roosevelt authorized warrantless electronic surveillance of persons suspected of subversive activities, including spying, against the United States. In addition, on December 8, 1941, the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt
Provost Maher's false impression of the Academic Bill of Rights is the result of a nation-wide campaign against the Bill, which has been conducted by professor-unions, like the American Association of University Professors, who are intent on defending the status quo. This campaign has been exceptionally dishonest relying not on reasoned disagreement with the reforms the Bill is proposing, but on misrepresenting them as something they are not. For example: Contrary to what has been asserted to this committee by hostile witnesses, the Academic Bill of Rights would not impose legislative control of academic decisions; it would not give students equal rights with teachers; it would not ban controversy from the classroom and it would not force teachers to teach unscholarly, unscientific points of view like Holocaust denial or Intelligent Design. All these charges have been made against the Academic Bill of Rights before this committee. All of these claims are demonstrably false.
The Academic Bill of Rights can be simply summarized as an effort to restore the principles that the academic profession has traditionally honored but in all too many cases no longer observes -- as the testimonies by David French, Stephen Balch and Steven Zelnick have amply demonstrated. The Academic Bill of Rights is furthermore an attempt to express and codify as student rights what are already recognized as faculty responsibilities in regard to academic freedom.
Ever since I launched the campaign for an Academic Bill of Rights some eighteen months ago in October 2003, the most salient feature of the battle against it has been the dishonesty of its academic opponents. The opposition has gone so far as to compare my campaign for intellectual diversity on college campuses to Mao Zedong's purge of the Communist Party elite, during the "cultural revolution," surely an unintended reflection on the critics themselves. And this is only the beginning of the attacks.
William E. Scheuerman, chair of the AFT's higher education division, called the legislation "crazy," "Orwellian," and McCarthyite. Scheurman, president of United University Professions, which represents faculty members at the State University of New York, said that the legislation's provisions requiring equal representation of views on controversial issues would require courses on the Holocaust to change so that "on Monday we would hear that the Holocaust was bad, on Wednesday that it was good, and on Friday that it never happened." There is no such provision in the Academic Bill of Rights.
The fact is that I planned this campaign to repair a broken academic process as a non-partisan effort, and specifically to be viewpoint neutral. The very first principle of the Academic Bill of Rights, for example, forbids the firing of professors on the basis of their political views. In launching the campaign I hoped to restore the educational guidelines that had been in place when I was an undergraduate at Columbia University in the 1950s.
These guidelines had protected me as a student with leftwing views in the McCarthy era. My parents were both Communists, teachers who had lost their jobs during the loyalty investigations of that time. I was then a budding "New Leftist," and my views reflected my Marxist upbringing. Yet in all the years I was at Columbia, my professors never singled me out for my political leanings, but treated me instead like any other student. The papers I wrote were examined for the way I handled the evidence and constructed my arguments, never for the political conclusions or judgments I made.
Why is this radical? I think it's pretty obvious the Bush administration was utterly incompetent in not seeing this coming and preventing it.
You demonstrate why it is radical. Unlike you, he can't figure out it was, at worst, incompetence. He can't do it. He is so wired into moonbat conspiracy theories that he can't decide between the proposition that current administratino made a deliberate decision to allow thousands of Americans to be killed* and $100,000,000,000 of damage done to the economoy versus the normal bureaucratic foul-ups and self-imposed obstacles that occur in American society. If he was crazy, it would only be a small step to: I can't figure out if the mice ate my cheese, or if the boogieman ate it. But the thing is, he isn't crazy. It is his politics that put him in this position. He is a radical.
*The risk was, as I recall, up to 50,000 could have been killed, as that was the number of people that passed through the building in a day.
Indeed, I have to admit, I was born in the 1930s, so I was quite young when fascism became a serious matter. However, I do know many veterans who fought in World War II, and were well aware of the political landscape at that time.
One thing you'll notice when you talk to almost any of them is that they're scared today.They think back to what they fought against, and they see it present yet again. Except this time it is being done in their name, by their countries. The proof is all around.
I am willing to believe that you have spoken with WW2 veterans. I have a hard time believing that you have spoken with American WW2 veterans, unless they fought in the Spanish Civil War against Franco. That is, if I am reading between the lines correctly...
I very much doubt that there are many American veterans of WW2 that would entertain for a second the notion that the US is even vaguely heading toward fascism. They saw enough to know better.
Ward Churchill is NOT a nutjob professor. His writing and teaching is widely respected. You may not agree with his views, but that doesn't make him a nutjob. I'm willing to bet that you haven't read ONE of Churchill's many books.
A broken clock is right twice a day. Even if Ward Churchill has written something factual and useful in one instance, that doesn't make the rest of his work golden. Far from it:
We have concluded that the allegations of research misconduct, related to plagiarism, misuse of other's work and fabrication, have sufficient merit to warrant further inquiry. .... The Standing Committee also will be asked to inquire into whether Professor Churchill committed research misconduct by misrepresenting himself as an American Indian to gain credibility and authority for his work.
I would think that his public statements alone are enough to discredit him. Regarding the 9/11 suicide attacks on the United States, Ward Churchill wrote:
As to those in the World Trade Center: Well, really. Let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire--the 'mighty engine of profit' to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved--and they did so both willingly and knowingly. If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it."
And who is this "Eichmann" that Ward Churchill compares to the clerks and business men & women killed in the World Trade Center? Follow the link.
Those darn, scary signing statements.... used by Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and more...
So far as we have been able to determine, Presidential signing statements that purported to create legislative history for the use of the courts was uncommon -- if indeed it existed at all -- before the Reagan and Bush Presidencies. However, earlier Presidents did use signing statements to raise and address the legal or constitutional questions they believed were presented by the legislation they were signing. Examples of signing statements of this kind can be found as early as the Jackson and Tyler Administrations, and later Presidents, including Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Theodore Roosevelt, Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter, also engaged in the practice.
Today's Washington Post has one more item of interest, an article about Samuel Alito's role in sketching, in 1986, the Reagan administration's strategy of issuing presidential "interpretive signing statements" declaring the executive branch's understanding of the bills the president signed into law. If Congress's committee reports and published debates were going to be routinely used by courts in interpreting the meaning of statutes, Alito reasoned, then the president too should be able to influence such interpretation by formally stating his view of a law's relationship to the Constitution. This would be particularly important, of course, in cases where a law might impinge on the executive power under the Constitution as the president understood it.
....
The Post story notes that "courts have yet to give [presidential signing statements] much weight" since Alito proposed this strategy 20 years ago. That's too bad. Justice Scalia makes a compelling case that the "legislative record" behind a statute is worse than useless, arguing that it is only the statute itself that can recommend itself to a court's attention as a guide to its meaning. But if courts don't follow Scalia's view here -- and they generally don't -- then they should give as much weight to the executive's understanding as to the legislature's.
Let me begin by saying that lack of intellectual diversity is not a new problem, nor is it a matter of a few isolated incidents or abuses, as some of the witnesses would have you believe. As early as 1991, Yale President Benno Schmidt warned: "The most serious problems of freedom of expression in our society today exist on campuses. The assumption seems to be that the purpose of education is to induce correct opinion rather than to search for wisdom and liberate the mind." In his last report to the Board of Overseers, retiring Harvard President Derek Bok warned: "What universities can and must resist are deliberate, overt attempts to impose orthodoxy and suppress dissent...In recent years, the threat of orthodoxy has come primarily from within rather than outside the university."
Still, idealists like Douglas Kellner are hardly "radical" in any sense. At least, they're no Weathermen. These academics, having a nuanced view of history and a strong affinity with common people, come across to me as concerned individuals of a Liberal mindset - like me the computer geek. Like my mother the folk artist. Like anyone concerned with the direction of our society in the midst of power abuses, rising populism, an obfuscating media, and unjustified wars.
Hardly radical. No Weathermen. Nuanced view of history. Wow.... Well, you're probably right, he probably isn't engaged in urban guerilla warfare, planting bombs, and planning assassinations, so you're probably right that he is no Weatherman. But hardly "radical"? I have to wonder if you bothered to read any of the information on that page you link to, or on Douglas Kellner's website? Take for example, the information in: UK Indymedia Interview on From 9/11 to Terror War.
He has this to say in reference to the 9/11 attacks:
Kellner: In my book, I explore the case for conspiracy and conclude that either the Bush administration knew the attacks were coming and exploited them to push through their rightwing domestic and foreign policy or they were utterly incompetent, failing to see all of the obvious signs of the coming Al Qaeda attack. Whether there will ever be a thorough investigation that gets to the bottom of the 9/11 attacks, or whether like the Kennedy assassination, it continues to be a source of speculation and theorizing, remains to be seen.
So, he just can't find enough evidence to dissuade him that that the Bush administration knew about the attacks and let them go through so as to impose their right wing agenda, eh? Let 3,000 Americans be killed, do $100,000,000,000 in damage to the US economy to justify policy changes he could have made anyway, huh? Wow. That is mainstream thinking. Oh yes, nothing radical there.
And further down is this gem:
Kellner: A group in Belgium instituted war crimes proceedings against the Bush administration for their military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq but under intense pressure it was dropped. One of the crimes of Bush administration unilateralism is failure to participated in the International Criminal Court and other institutions that would make possible prosecution of war criminals such as are found in the Bush administration.
Breathtaking logic and fairness there. Or maybe that is nuance in action.
It is funny that you mention "treason", since on the page you link to, the only time I find the word treason is in a quote by Kellner, describing his views of someone else's actions.
.... They have taken the short road to authority by becoming like-minded sycophants of the Regimented Order. Instead of having a truly nuanced view of human affairs and the politics of power they have attitudes based largely on pure style founded in nothing. Toughness for its own sake. Their kind of strength requires someone else to be weak, and they've chosen professors as an easy target.
Tenured professors are such easy targets, after all, there is so much you can do to them, right? And what can they do in return from their position of weakness, grading you, running departments, the University, writing letters of recommendation, or answering background checks, and all that? I suppose they could also ridicule you, but, you should have a tough hide your first year away from home, finding friends, and trying to figure out how the world and life works, right? Students are so much more powerful than professors, that no doubt explains why most universities have rules against faculty sleeping with students, to prevent the students from exploiting their position of power over the faculty member. Right...
(I like to remind such people that Jesus Christ himself preached open rebellion against autho
Innocence isn't going to save you if you are currently viewed as the wrong type of person. Indeed, in such cases you no longer have a right to legal counsel, or to let other people know you have been detained. Or the right to a speedy trial.
When you write, "if you are currently viewed as the wrong type of person", don't you really mean "Islamist terrorist trying to shoot, bomb, poison, or suicide attack innocent people"? I'm pretty sure it is closer to that than to, "person who protests global warming", or "voted against tax cuts", or even "Democrat". You pretty much have to be trying to kill people by terrorism, or helping terrorists to try and kill people, not just writing harshly phrased letters to the editor. Most of polite society frowns on that. This isn't really something you would generally just accidentally cross the line over either, like speeding, drinking one too many beers, or even downloading an illegal (horror of horrors) song from napster.
It is easy to be frightened about things you don't understand, so here is some background.
Today's Washington Post has one more item of interest, an article about Samuel Alito's role in sketching, in 1986, the Reagan administration's strategy of issuing presidential "interpretive signing statements" declaring the executive branch's understanding of the bills the president signed into law. If Congress's committee reports and published debates were going to be routinely used by courts in interpreting the meaning of statutes, Alito reasoned, then the president too should be able to influence such interpretation by formally stating his view of a law's relationship to the Constitution. This would be particularly important, of course, in cases where a law might impinge on the executive power under the Constitution as the president understood it.
Alito's idea caught on in the Reagan years, and has remained very popular with presidents ever since, especially with the current President Bush.
I don't find that scary. I don't think you should either. Of, if you do, the actions of the congressional committees should scare you at least as much.
Slashdot Mirror
Even if you are correct that Al Qaeda is not allowed Geneva protection, or protection against torture - how is this relevant to innocent Iraqis being imprisoned and tortured? They are not members of the "enemy" - they are members of a supposedly now democratic and "free" Iraq. So how can they be allowed to be treated like this?
Would you mind showing some evidence of this from a reputable news site? Other than some criminal acts for which the guilty have already been punished, I don't know what you are talking about.
Here is a start. Or this. Try going to news.google.com and search on iraq + al qaeda, or al-Zarqawi. Its not hard to find.
So, why are ordinary Iraqis being imprisoned and tortured, even if they have nothing to do with Al Qaeda or terrorism?
By whom? I don't think the US is doing this. There was the rogue bunch of soldiers at Abu Gharaib, but most of them are already in jail for their crimes. Several months agao there were some Iraqi interior ministry units that were going rogue, but they are being reigned in following raids by the US and other Iraqi government agencies.
We also have a War on Drugs. Does that mean that drug users should be denied constitutional or international law rights?
The war on drugs, like the war on poverty, isn't a "real" war, a shooting war. Its metaphor.
Please explain this. If they are not enemies in a war, then they are civilians, and deserve civilian protections. If they are enemies in a war, then they should be treated as POWs. There is no third category recognized under US or international law.
Yes, there is, that is where the term "unlawful combatant" or enemy combatant comes in. You have to obey the law of war and the treaty to qualify for the special protections and privileges of the treaty. Al Qaeda and company regularly commit war crimes, and fail the tests in Convention III, article 4, paragraph 2:
Al Qaeda fails at least 3 of the 4 tests and therefore doesn't qualify for POW status under the Geneva Convention provisions. If you really did read them, you know that means they aren't entitled to prepare their own food, and get paid a wage, for example.
Paragraph 6 refers to a Levee en mass and doesn't apply.
Why is it silly?
To try and prove that there isn't a war because some prisoners do not qualify for the special protections of prisoner of war status under the Geneva Conventions is silly.
People trapped in extremely stressful situations are often too busy surviving to notice the toll the situation takes. It isn't until after the stress is removed or changed in some way that they feel its full effects, as in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or other stress injuries or ailments.
People with PTSD can improve in various respects, sometimes on their own, but treatment can be very helpful too.
There is still good you can do in the world, and good you can experience. I hope you find it. Good luck and God bless.
I think that you have the situation completely wrong, in multiple respects.
Contrary to your assertion that there are all sorts of new powers being invented or used, what you see is the use of wartime powers by the executive branch against an enemy which is outside the law.
The President as Commander in Chief has enormous powers in wartime, some of which haven't been used in the 50 years prior. The Congress has authorized the use of force against the perpetrators of 9/11. There is an organization which has declared itself to be at war with the US. The gloves are off, and Al Qaeda members will be captured or killed for as long as it takes, even if it is 50 years. (The Indian wars lasted about 40.)
By the same token, Al Qaeda has stated its intent to kill 4,000,000 Americans (1/2 women and children I believe) and make many more homeless. In violation of every precept of civilization they recognize no innocents in combat, but make war on the young, the old, the sick and infirm, ordinary people going about their business, just as if they were soldiers. If Americans don't have the will to stop them, there isn't any reason to believe they won't succeed in their goal.
The Geneva conventions are a mutual treaty among nations, but other groups can qualify for its protections and privileges if they comply with its provisions. Unfortunately Al Qaeda and company has placed themselves outside of it by ignoring it and regularly committing war crimes and therefore they are entitled to none of its protections. We are under no obligation to extend any more rights to them than we are required to legally, which is very little. It is entirely possible that we would be acting consistently with international law to execute them all as spies, but we aren't doing that. Instead we are holding them, and in some cases returning them to their nations of origin under custody. Other nations are not released from their treaty obligations toward us by our actions against Al Qaeda. If we go to war with them they are still bound by the treaty and international law. Al Qaeda and kin have long tortured and executed anyone who falls into their hands, including beheading. That probably won't change.
It is sad that innocent people get caught up in this, but it will happen, just as many innocent people are killed in war. There is no way to apply an antiseptic standard of faultless action in dealing with simple criminals, let alone a massive and yet subtle undertaking like the war against Al Qaeda. It isn't possible. It would also be completely wrong-headed to demand that we don't defend ourselves if we can't do it without any innocent people being detained, hurt or killed. The US has gone to great lengths to to minimize the death of innocents, but it will happen none the less. Blame Al Qaeda who shields themselves with innocent lives as often as they attack them.
As to the question of secrecy, that is the nature of this war. Secrecy protects the way we get information, and denies information to the enemy, such as who we have captured, how we found them, what they are telling us, how we are using it, what we are going to do next. Sometimes the very knowledge of the existence of a method tells the enemy all that they need to know to avoid our using it. There have been a number of occasions so far during this war when a journalist was more concerned with a scoop than he was with the US being able to count on a technique to find the enemy and so broadcast the information about its existence as use. As a result, Al Qaeda became aware of the technique and changed its behavior, and became harder to find and counter, but at least some journalist got a by-line out of it.
The conduct of this war won't be reduced to a simple set of open rules. That would be too limited and telegraph our actions. We shouldn't treat Al Qaeda fairly, only humanely if captured.
Ordinary criminals are different, should be, and are, treated in the usual way. There are indeed limits.
Most of the oversight in this war will be by the various branches of government playing their respective roles.
1. Al Qaeda is not from Iraq. In fact, Al Qaeda is probably a creation of the US, whose actual existence has been exaggerated.
...therefore, there must be no war, if they are not POWs
Al Qaeda is a world-wide organization with a presence in Iraq. It trained tens of thousands of terrorists in camps in Afghanistan while it was ruled by the Taliban. Your information is faulty.
2. Normal Iraqi people are not members of Al Qaeda. But they are the people being detained.
Al Qaeda is operating in Iraq, along with various Islamic extremists, tribal militias, Iranian agents, and dead-enders from the Baathist regime. They hide among the population which is turning against them. Ordinary people are turning them in.
3. The idea of a "war" against such an amorphous and vague group is ridiculous.
War on Al Qaeda is about the same as war on pirates in centuries past, or various guerilla groups. Nothing silly about it at all.
They should be targets of law enforcement.
Al Qaeda and associates have become a large enough problem that they are no longer a simple law enforcement problem. It is now often falls in the paramilitary or military problem scale.
War is about nation-states and armies fighting one another. "War on Terror" is a misnomer.
There is an entire range of conflict that encompasses war. It isn't just nation state vs nation state.
War on Terror is shorthand, not misnomer.
4. If we are at war with Al Qaeda, then why doesn't the US treat them by Geneva conventions, and other standards for treating POWs? But the administration has denied that they are prisoners of war - they are "enemy combatants" - therefore, there must be no war, if they are not POWs.
In order to qualify for the protections of a Prisoner of War under the Geneva Conventions you must meet certain standards. Al Qaeda and company violate the standards and therefore don't qualify for the protections and priviledges.
Faulty logic, and quite silly.
Might I suggest that you actually read the Geneva Conventions?
The US is at war with Al Qaeda.
Some of that war is currently being fought inside Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places.
I believe that Bush is comparable to Hitler,...
How's that for bizarre?
Right up there with substituting cottage cheese for concrete.
In WWII, there were some soldiers who could have been held up to 6 years. In Viet Nam, there were airmen held for at least 8 years. During those conflicts there were civilians held as well for various reasons and for various lengths of time. That is part of the nature of war. What makes things even nastier in the present conflict is that Al Qaeda and its associates aren't a country, don't fight by the rules, consistently lie, indiscriminately murder, expose all around them to danger, and leave their members little recourse if they are captured. Legally they aren't much different from spies.
Although it may make you uncomfortable, there is a difference between ordinary criminal law and the law of war. The standards and expectations are different, and for good reason.
The people being held under the law of war and as part of the conflict are clearly a separate class of people both practically and legally. If they start holding ordinary criminals, even murderers and rapists, as if they were terrorists, there will be a wide outcry.
If you have a way to see through the lies and deception of Al Qaeda members, to separate the involved from the uninvolved, the innocent from the guilty, without requiring evidence and legwork, I'm sure that the US military would gratefully receive it. By the way, the consequences if you are wrong isn't a stolen car, but people dying.
Keep an eye on that story. Although there have been genuine innocents who were held and released, as they would have been anyway, so far there has been something like a dozen or more "innocents" who were released and then recaptured or killed later in attacks against the US or allies. Part of Al Qaeda's basic training is to claim to be innocent and the victims of discrimination because they know how it plays in the West.
Look on the brightside. At least we know now what's driving the current administration.
Pity for the infected?
I've also wondered if being the victim of bullying affected the socio-political choices you make in the future.
It might, depending on many factors such as severity, duration, official reaction, and individual psychological make up. I expect that most people probably just get over it.
I'm not saying Republicans are bullies and Democrats are victims or anything, but there sure seem to be a lot of people who just don't "get" the need for judicial oversight, fair representation in court or congress, support for the poor, or the concept of a truly open marketplace.
Not unlike people who don't "get" that we have three co-equal, independent, branches of government which have their own set of unique powers set forth in the Constitution which aren't necessarily subject to control by the other branches, or that criminal law, civil law, and the law of war are different, or that knowledge and wisdom aren't the same thing.
To some other influential republicans, however, science is already too left, and therefore, not right.
More likely: There are more than enough left leaning scientists advocating politically correct theories poorly supported by science but which threaten disaster if we don't hew to the particular social, economic, technical, or political change they desire.
...And I believe that's exactly why no one has to fear a terrorist attack on the Super Bowl. ... Terrorists have their target audiences. The Al Qaeda wants to impress people in the muslim countries, who think of "football" as the sport that's played by kicking a round ball with the feet. If 90% of the TV news anchors around the world have to explain what this "super bowl" thing is, and its true importance in the collective American mind, the intended message of the attack would be wasted.
You are focusing on the wrong metric. You seem to think that the sport will have something to do with it. You're wrong. What will matter will be the fact that there is an attack and a large body count. I doubt if even 5% of the Muslim world had heard of the World Trade Center in New York before it was hit, and yet that didn't seem to dampen the rejoicing after the 9/11 attacks. If the Islamists terrorists could attack the Super Bowl by flying a 707 into the stands and kill 20,000 outright, mortally wound 10,000, and maim or psychologically scar the rest, not to mention the nation, there would be joy in the hearts of Bin Laden's followers. They wouldn't care a wit about the sport*.
Al Qaeda has a stated goal of killing 4,000,000 Americans. Don't kid yourself, if they could find a way to attack and kill 60,000+ defenseless, tightly packed Americans, they would.
*Actually it is entirely possible that the fact that it would be an almost uniquely American ("barbarian/infidel") sport might even make it more enticing as a target.
Has nobody else noticed the obvious reason the National Guard are doing this?
Like the stated one?
Not only do they get their weekend hours out of the way, but they get free admission to the SuperBowl. Since last-minute tickets are costing over $1000, I am sure that they are bragging to their buddies what a boondoggle they have accomplished.
I'll bet they brag a lot more if they apprehend a jihadi with a bomb vest trying to get in the door to kill a couple of hundred people, or detect poison gas before it reaches lethal concentration (as Al Qaeda experimented with in Afghanistan, and had a bounty for in Iraq), or stop a truck bomb before it drives into the building.
I once got into a U.S. Open golf tournament by volunteering for "Emergency Services." After spending about 5 minutes setting up some tables, I wandered away and got a beer and watched the tournament like everyone else. And the badge looked cool.
And would you have helped, or even been useful, if there had been an emergency? I know the Guardsmen will help, be useful, organized, disciplined, and not drinking beer.
I suspect that most of them have a somewhat better idea of what would happen to about 60,000 people sitting defenseless, shoulder to shoulder, in an enclosed space if, say, a plane crashed inside, truck bomb blew up, or poison gas was released inside. Beer farts on a golf course isn't exactly the limit of the threat here.
I, for one... Welcome our new terrorist-smeller pursuivant overlords
And well you should. The terrorists have the will, and a plan to become our new overlords. If they succeed, you will be living in a genuine theocracy uniting church and state, governed by Sharia law, in all of its harshness, including threat of crucifixion, beheading, stoning, and amputation.
Our present "overlords" do well in defending us against the malice of the would-be Islamist terrorist overlords. The Islamist terrorists have a demonstrated interest in conducting infamous attacks aimed at mass murder, and a stated goal of killing four million Americans in pursuit of their nightmare state. The Superbowl is a natural target. The terrorists have the will to kill everyone at the Superbowl, but lack the opportunity due to the vigilance of our present "overlords",.... long may they "reign".
And again...
and more... (notice this is pre-war)...
I'm afrid you've been taken in. Here is some enlightening commentary by Mr. Horowitz:
What I Told Pennsylvania's Academic Freedom Hearings
The Strange Dishonest Campaign Against Academic Freedom :
Why is this radical? I think it's pretty obvious the Bush administration was utterly incompetent in not seeing this coming and preventing it.
You demonstrate why it is radical. Unlike you, he can't figure out it was, at worst, incompetence. He can't do it. He is so wired into moonbat conspiracy theories that he can't decide between the proposition that current administratino made a deliberate decision to allow thousands of Americans to be killed* and $100,000,000,000 of damage done to the economoy versus the normal bureaucratic foul-ups and self-imposed obstacles that occur in American society. If he was crazy, it would only be a small step to: I can't figure out if the mice ate my cheese, or if the boogieman ate it. But the thing is, he isn't crazy. It is his politics that put him in this position. He is a radical.
*The risk was, as I recall, up to 50,000 could have been killed, as that was the number of people that passed through the building in a day.
Indeed, I have to admit, I was born in the 1930s, so I was quite young when fascism became a serious matter. However, I do know many veterans who fought in World War II, and were well aware of the political landscape at that time.
One thing you'll notice when you talk to almost any of them is that they're scared today.They think back to what they fought against, and they see it present yet again. Except this time it is being done in their name, by their countries. The proof is all around.
I am willing to believe that you have spoken with WW2 veterans. I have a hard time believing that you have spoken with American WW2 veterans, unless they fought in the Spanish Civil War against Franco. That is, if I am reading between the lines correctly...
I very much doubt that there are many American veterans of WW2 that would entertain for a second the notion that the US is even vaguely heading toward fascism. They saw enough to know better.
A broken clock is right twice a day. Even if Ward Churchill has written something factual and useful in one instance, that doesn't make the rest of his work golden. Far from it:
I would think that his public statements alone are enough to discredit him. Regarding the 9/11 suicide attacks on the United States, Ward Churchill wrote:
And who is this "Eichmann" that Ward Churchill compares to the clerks and business men & women killed in the World Trade Center? Follow the link.
More
That is just the start of a sorry story. Maybe you need to do some additional homework yourself.
Those darn, scary signing statements.... used by Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and more...
As to their current use
So you think students (especially conservative student?) shouldn't have the right of freedom of conscience?
Hmmm, state funded, run, and controlled institutions controlling our thoughts? Punishing wrong thought?
Interesting....
Are you in a tenure track position?:
Hardly radical. No Weathermen. Nuanced view of history. Wow.... Well, you're probably right, he probably isn't engaged in urban guerilla warfare, planting bombs, and planning assassinations, so you're probably right that he is no Weatherman. But hardly "radical"? I have to wonder if you bothered to read any of the information on that page you link to, or on Douglas Kellner's website? Take for example, the information in: UK Indymedia Interview on From 9/11 to Terror War.
He has this to say in reference to the 9/11 attacks:
So, he just can't find enough evidence to dissuade him that that the Bush administration knew about the attacks and let them go through so as to impose their right wing agenda, eh? Let 3,000 Americans be killed, do $100,000,000,000 in damage to the US economy to justify policy changes he could have made anyway, huh? Wow. That is mainstream thinking. Oh yes, nothing radical there.
And further down is this gem:
Breathtaking logic and fairness there. Or maybe that is nuance in action.
.... They have taken the short road to authority by becoming like-minded sycophants of the Regimented Order. Instead of having a truly nuanced view of human affairs and the politics of power they have attitudes based largely on pure style founded in nothing. Toughness for its own sake. Their kind of strength requires someone else to be weak, and they've chosen professors as an easy target.
It is funny that you mention "treason", since on the page you link to, the only time I find the word treason is in a quote by Kellner, describing his views of someone else's actions.
Tenured professors are such easy targets, after all, there is so much you can do to them, right? And what can they do in return from their position of weakness, grading you, running departments, the University, writing letters of recommendation, or answering background checks, and all that? I suppose they could also ridicule you, but, you should have a tough hide your first year away from home, finding friends, and trying to figure out how the world and life works, right? Students are so much more powerful than professors, that no doubt explains why most universities have rules against faculty sleeping with students, to prevent the students from exploiting their position of power over the faculty member. Right...
(I like to remind such people that Jesus Christ himself preached open rebellion against autho
Innocence isn't going to save you if you are currently viewed as the wrong type of person. Indeed, in such cases you no longer have a right to legal counsel, or to let other people know you have been detained. Or the right to a speedy trial.
When you write, "if you are currently viewed as the wrong type of person", don't you really mean "Islamist terrorist trying to shoot, bomb, poison, or suicide attack innocent people"? I'm pretty sure it is closer to that than to, "person who protests global warming", or "voted against tax cuts", or even "Democrat". You pretty much have to be trying to kill people by terrorism, or helping terrorists to try and kill people, not just writing harshly phrased letters to the editor. Most of polite society frowns on that. This isn't really something you would generally just accidentally cross the line over either, like speeding, drinking one too many beers, or even downloading an illegal (horror of horrors) song from napster.
I don't find that scary. I don't think you should either. Of, if you do, the actions of the congressional committees should scare you at least as much.