Bowe Bergdahl: Deserter, Traitor, or Just a Pawn?

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
201

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]angry chicken wrote:
Holding people indefinitely with out trial is bullshit. I don’t care what they did. TRY THEM. CONVICT THEM. EXECUTE THEM. That’s how it works. If they are innocent, set them free. If their crime doesn’t rise the level of execution, give them a prison term, let them serve it and release them. These are basic principles of JUSTICE. Holding someone indefinitely without trial is UNJUST. Even back in the fucking middle ages, a man got to stand before the lord of the castle and speak his piece before he got his head chopped off.

[/quote]

You clearly don’t know much about the Middle Ages. And the concept of holding unlawful combatants without trial is enshrined in the Geneva convention.

[quote]

I don’t really care how some lawyer “classified” these individuals as “combatants” or whatever. They are people being held FOR YEARS with no trial and no release date… Based on “classified intelligence”. Intelligence gathered by a country that has “classified” programs to spy on it’s allies, citizens and enemies alike. It’s a slippery slope. Next thing you know, they’ll be executing AMERICAN CITIZENS with out a trial.

Oh, wait…

We have a constitution based on principles. Those principles are important. But those principles have been watered down and eroded by lawmakers who find those principles “inconvenient”. And many conservatives are worried about two men fucking each other? How about worrying about the constitution first (you know, the thing that guarantees our Life, LIBERTY, and pursuit of happiness?)[/quote]

The constitution applies to US citizens not foreign unlawful combatants.[/quote]

I clearly know enough about the middle ages to point out that we “should” have evolved beyond them… I don’t care if a bunch of people “enshrined” it in the Geneva convention. Or if another bunch of people classified another bunch of people as “foreign unlawful combatants”. My point is that it is UNJUST to hold people without trial. The fact that doing so is “enshrined” in the GC means nothing other than those that wrote it don’t have the moral backbone to stand up for what is right.

All of your arguments center around the fact of what is “legal” or “not legal” and not on what is just or unjust. You march lock-step with the oppressor. Now I’m the first to point out (and have been attacked by you for doing so) that often times “might makes right”. But what is THIS if not a perfect example of that? Just because it is “legal” under “international law” doesn’t mean that AMERICA shouldn’t hold a higher standard!

202

[quote]SexMachine wrote:
Oh I see. America is no better than the Imperial Japanese or the Nazis in WWII. Okay, bye now.[/quote]

Nice, two strawmen on one page! LOVE your debate style, bro. Okay, bye now.

EDIT: two pages in a row. I’m sure if every one posted a strawman pic everytime you use that tired, lazy tactic, you’d have quite the collection.

Here’s an invitation: stop going for the low hanging fruit and attacking single sentences, and actually address MY POINT with an intelligent argument. Assuming you are capable of making one.

203

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]pittbulll wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]Mufasa wrote:
“…I think he (Obama)…thought there would be a shitstorm that we didn’t do enough to get him back…”

Thought?

LOLZ.

Oh…there would have been one, guaranteed…

Mufasa
[/quote]

A nonsense Dem talking point. It’s like saying there would’ve been a shit storm if Obama hadn’t introduced Obamacare. The reason for the transfer should be obvious to anyone.

Obama’s state of the union address January 2014:

“With the Afghan war ending, this needs to be the year Congress lifts the remaining restrictions on detainee transfers and we close the prison at Guantanamo Bay…”

The primary motivation was not to distract from the VA scandal. It’s Obama’s objective to close Gitmo and unilaterally disengage from Afghanistan in the pathetically naive belief that to do so will endear Islamists to America and end hostilities.[/quote]

I like Bill Maher’s tag , “Black Tracking” it is where the Republicans don’t like something the “BLACK” man did , that was originally , their idea
[/quote]

So it’s down to racism as opposed to partisanism? BTW, I hate the Republican establishment and would never and have never supported the release of dangerous terrorists whoever does it. I’m on record for criticising Netanyahu for releasing terrorists.
[/quote]

I personally believe a lot of the criticism of Obama is the fact he is black also i see it as standard operating procedure of the Republicans .

I don’t know if you can remember but Clinton was flying Cocaine into Little Rock and killed several rival factions , Clinton had Vince Foster killed for boinking Hillary , Bill fathered a son with a black prostitute

They were never ending and ruthless . Stand operating procedure is all it is

204

My point isn’t that it’s codified in international law. My point is that it has been accepted as justified by the civilised world for over seventy years. In times of war you can’t always rely upon proving beyond reasonable doubt that your enemy is guilty of a crime. That’s common sense and it was realised by the human rights advocates who supported The Hague and Geneva conventions. And prosecuting someone for something they did outside of territory owned or controlled by the US is fraught with difficulties. Federal law was not designed for extraterritorial prosecutions and if foreign unlawful combatants captured overseas had to be tried in criminal courts most of them would go free.

205

[quote]angry chicken wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:
Oh I see. America is no better than the Imperial Japanese or the Nazis in WWII. Okay, bye now.[/quote]

Nice, two strawmen on one page! LOVE your debate style, bro. Okay, bye now.

EDIT: two pages in a row. I’m sure if every one posted a strawman pic everytime you use that tired, lazy tactic, you’d have quite the collection.

Here’s an invitation: stop going for the low hanging fruit and attacking single sentences, and actually address MY POINT with an intelligent argument. Assuming you are capable of making one.[/quote]

It’s not a straw man. You clearly stated that the United States is no better than any other empire. That’s a ridiculous assertion and I treated it as such.

206

[quote]pittbulll wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]pittbulll wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]Mufasa wrote:
“…I think he (Obama)…thought there would be a shitstorm that we didn’t do enough to get him back…”

Thought?

LOLZ.

Oh…there would have been one, guaranteed…

Mufasa
[/quote]

A nonsense Dem talking point. It’s like saying there would’ve been a shit storm if Obama hadn’t introduced Obamacare. The reason for the transfer should be obvious to anyone.

Obama’s state of the union address January 2014:

“With the Afghan war ending, this needs to be the year Congress lifts the remaining restrictions on detainee transfers and we close the prison at Guantanamo Bay…”

The primary motivation was not to distract from the VA scandal. It’s Obama’s objective to close Gitmo and unilaterally disengage from Afghanistan in the pathetically naive belief that to do so will endear Islamists to America and end hostilities.[/quote]

I like Bill Maher’s tag , “Black Tracking” it is where the Republicans don’t like something the “BLACK” man did , that was originally , their idea
[/quote]

So it’s down to racism as opposed to partisanism? BTW, I hate the Republican establishment and would never and have never supported the release of dangerous terrorists whoever does it. I’m on record for criticising Netanyahu for releasing terrorists.
[/quote]

I personally believe a lot of the criticism of Obama is the fact he is black also i see it as standard operating procedure of the Republicans .

I don’t know if you can remember but Clinton was flying Cocaine into Little Rock and killed several rival factions , Clinton had Vince Foster killed for boinking Hillary , Bill fathered a son with a black prostitute

They were never ending and ruthless . Stand operating procedure is all it is
[/quote]

The Clinton body count was made in response to the Dem’s Bush body count which claimed amongst other things that the Bush family had JFK assassinated.

207

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]angry chicken wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:
Oh I see. America is no better than the Imperial Japanese or the Nazis in WWII. Okay, bye now.[/quote]

Nice, two strawmen on one page! LOVE your debate style, bro. Okay, bye now.

EDIT: two pages in a row. I’m sure if every one posted a strawman pic everytime you use that tired, lazy tactic, you’d have quite the collection.

Here’s an invitation: stop going for the low hanging fruit and attacking single sentences, and actually address MY POINT with an intelligent argument. Assuming you are capable of making one.[/quote]

It’s not a straw man. You clearly stated that the United States is no better than any other empire. That’s a ridiculous assertion and I treated it as such.[/quote]

In that it COMPROMISED THE PRINCIPLES THAT IT WAS FOUNDED UPON… Next we’ll be arguing about grammar.

208

[quote]SexMachine wrote:
My point isn’t that it’s codified in international law. My point is that it has been accepted as justified by the civilised world for over seventy years. In times of war you can’t always rely upon proving beyond reasonable doubt that your enemy is guilty of a crime. That’s common sense and it was realised by the human rights advocates who supported The Hague and Geneva conventions. And prosecuting someone for something they did outside of territory owned or controlled by the US is fraught with difficulties. Federal law was not designed for extraterritorial prosecutions and if foreign unlawful combatants captured overseas had to be tried in criminal courts most of them would go free.[/quote]

These laws were written at a time before satellites, before drones, before wiretapping a pulling cell phone conversations out of the air (before cell phones) etc…

I think it’s safe to say that in the YEARS we’ve held these people, without trial, that we KNOW what they did. I mean, these are WORST of the WORST, right? They are not “typical soldiers/combatants”, right? We DO have evidence against them, right? We don’t have THOUSANDS of them, do we? So it isn’t a logistical issue, or an issue about not having information - we HAVE all of that. So what’s the excuse not to try them? If they’ve been out of the game for so many years, why would releasing them (if they’ve been found innocent) be such a big deal? Because they “hate” America? Newsflash: MOST people these days hate America. Because they could “inspire” other radicals to “do us harm”? HOLDING them with out trial is inspiring other radicals to do us harm! Because they are “masterminds” of super Jihadi networks? They’ve been replaced by better masterminds that we haven’t caught…

What is the advantage to holding them that outweighs our PRINCIPLES as a nation? We hold ourselves to be BETTER than the rest. Sometimes principles come with a cost. We release people clearly guilty of serious crimes every day based on technicalities. Because of PRINCIPLES… Principles are important and compromising them weakens us. Even if it appears to “protect us”, it is just another symptom of our knee jerk reaction to terrorism.

Maybe if we didn’t have so much “collateral damage” people from other countries wouldn’t hate us so much and wouldn’t want to blow us up (after we blew them up).

Many of the people held are members of the Taliban. We are not at war with the Taliban. We are not at war with Muslims or people that sympathize with Anti-Western thought - they can think what they like, who are we to police it? We are at war with Al-Qaeda and it’s offspring. We are at war with people who don’t stop at THOUGHT, but take TERRORIST ACTION against OUR citizens. If they are not guilty of that, why are we holding them? If they ARE guilty of that, it should be a simple matter of proving it. If we only SUSPECT them of being guilty of that, then we don’t have any real evidence and don’t really have the grounds to hold them indefinitely, now do we?

Justice isn’t perfect. Do we run the risk of letting someone go who may eventually hurt us? Sure we do. Just like we run that risk of letting criminals go when they’ve done their time, or when the prosecution fails to rise to the occasion. Are some of them innocent? YES. Do some of them go on to commit more crime? YES. But that’s JUSTICE… What we are doing by holding these people without trial is UNJUST. It diminishes us. It’s un-American. Why don’t we just cut their head off with a dull knife while we’re at it? I mean, they’re just foreign enemy combatants… They don’t have rights, do they?

If they have the right to be treated humanely, I would submit for your consideration that they also have the right to a trial. Either they are shit, or they are NOT shit. And if we fire people for the abuses that occurred at abu ghraib and elsewhere, then these people are OBVIOUSLY people… So we should TREAT them as people.

209

[quote]angry chicken wrote:

These laws were written at a time before satellites, before drones, before wiretapping a pulling cell phone conversations out of the air (before cell phones) etc…

I think it’s safe to say that in the YEARS we’ve held these people, without trial, that we KNOW what they did. I mean, these are WORST of the WORST, right? They are not “typical soldiers/combatants”, right? We DO have evidence against them, right? We don’t have THOUSANDS of them, do we? So it isn’t a logistical issue, or an issue about not having information - we HAVE all of that. So what’s the excuse not to try them?
[/quote]

For the reasons I’ve stated. For example one of them commanded a Taliban force that massacred thousands of Shia Afghans. He can’t be prosecuted for that by US courts. Yet releasing a genocidal maniac onto a highly unstable Afghan state is a really bad idea for obvious reasons.

Why do you think the Taliban has been pushing for the release of these specific people for so many years?

Now you’re drifting into liberal fantasy land like you did when you claimed Israel provokes its neighbours. Try to understand: they kill more of their own people than we do. They don’t give a flying fuck about civilians getting killed. The reason they hate us is because they’re Islamo-fucking-Nazis!

Oh really? Tell that to the US troops who’ve been fighting them for 12 years or to the families of the thousands of US troops killed by the Taliban.

The Afghan Taliban, Pakistani Taliban and the Haqqani network share the same goals as Al Qaeda.

You mean like the Taliban for example?

[quote]

If they are not guilty of that, why are we holding them? If they ARE guilty of that, it should be a simple matter of proving it. If we only SUSPECT them of being guilty of that, then we don’t have any real evidence and don’t really have the grounds to hold them indefinitely, now do we?

Justice isn’t perfect. Do we run the risk of letting someone go who may eventually hurt us? Sure we do. Just like we run that risk of letting criminals go when they’ve done their time, or when the prosecution fails to rise to the occasion. Are some of them innocent? YES. Do some of them go on to commit more crime? YES. But that’s JUSTICE… What we are doing by holding these people without trial is UNJUST. It diminishes us. It’s un-American. Why don’t we just cut their head off with a dull knife while we’re at it? I mean, they’re just foreign enemy combatants… They don’t have rights, do they?

If they have the right to be treated humanely, I would submit for your consideration that they also have the right to a trial. Either they are shit, or they are NOT shit. And if we fire people for the abuses that occurred at abu ghraib and elsewhere, then these people are OBVIOUSLY people… So we should TREAT them as people.[/quote]

They’re treated better at Gitmo than US veterans are treated.

210

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]angry chicken wrote:

These laws were written at a time before satellites, before drones, before wiretapping a pulling cell phone conversations out of the air (before cell phones) etc…

I think it’s safe to say that in the YEARS we’ve held these people, without trial, that we KNOW what they did. I mean, these are WORST of the WORST, right? They are not “typical soldiers/combatants”, right? We DO have evidence against them, right? We don’t have THOUSANDS of them, do we? So it isn’t a logistical issue, or an issue about not having information - we HAVE all of that. So what’s the excuse not to try them?
[/quote]

For the reasons I’ve stated. For example one of them commanded a Taliban force that massacred thousands of Shia Afghans. He can’t be prosecuted for that by US courts. Yet releasing a genocidal maniac onto a highly unstable Afghan state is a really bad idea for obvious reasons.

[/quote]I agree, genocidal maniacs SHOULD BE BROUGHT TO JUSTICE. If not by the US, then by the country or international body that CAN convict them. [quote]

Why do you think the Taliban has been pushing for the release of these specific people for so many years?

[/quote] Please note, I’m not pushing for a blanket release, I’m pushing for a trial and a conviction. [quote]

Now you’re drifting into liberal fantasy land like you did when you claimed Israel provokes its neighbours. Try to understand: they kill more of their own people than we do. They don’t give a flying fuck about civilians getting killed. The reason they hate us is because they’re Islamo-fucking-Nazis!

Oh really? Tell that to the US troops who’ve been fighting them for 12 years or to the families of the thousands of US troops killed by the Taliban.

The Afghan Taliban, Pakistani Taliban and the Haqqani network share the same goals as Al Qaeda.

You mean like the Taliban for example?

Which is a fucking TRAVESTY! I agree with you 100% on that one. But again, MY reasoning is that people can THINK what they want. If someone has the “goal” of making the United States a “Muslim” country, so what? The Catholic Church would probably have the same “goal”. They may as well have the “goal” to make the sun rise in the west. But what I’m concerned about is terrorists attacking us. Which they are not… Because our intelligence is better than theirs.

211

I agree. However the UN - which is certainly not anti-Israeli or anti-American by any means (eyes roll) - is not interested in doing so. The security council would have to unanimously agree to send forces to capture them and then prosecute them at The Hague. If China or Russia veto the idea then it won’t happen. China and Russia only use the UN to further their own foreign policy interests which almost always conflict with those of the United States.

213

“After arriving in Qatar, Noorullah Noori kept insisting he would go to Afghanistan and fight American forces there,” a Taliban commander told NBC News via telephone from Afghanistan…

214

[quote]Chushin wrote:

[quote]Mufasa wrote:
“…They will be emboldened and will return to launching terrorist attacks on US targets and allies overseas. And probably on US soil…”

And spending millions of U.S. Taxpayer dollars at GITMO housing them was going to prevent others from doing this?

Are YOU serious?

Mufasa[/quote]

So what does that alleged (but likely nonexistent) surveillance and those hellfires cost us?[/quote]

A Helluva’ lot of tax dollars.

Your point?

Mufasa

215

[quote]Chushin wrote:

So what does that alleged (but likely nonexistent) surveillance and those hellfires cost us?[/quote]

“Us”?

Don’t tell me you’re paying U.S. taxes. :stuck_out_tongue:

218

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

I agree. However the UN - which is certainly not anti-Israeli or anti-American by any means (eyes roll) - is not interested in doing so. The security council would have to unanimously agree to send forces to capture them and then prosecute them at The Hague. If China or Russia veto the idea then it won’t happen. China and Russia only use the UN to further their own foreign policy interests which almost always conflict with those of the United States.[/quote]

The International Criminal Court has been established since 2002.

States have to be party to international laws to be bound to them. Even then, they do not have the power of domestic laws, but are loose norms of behavior. This effectively means they op in or out of international legal statutes. The US, along with Israel and Sudan, opted out of the ICC.

It’s disengnous to treat the UN as an independent entry. It is a supranational organization, constituted by member states, of which the US is a de facto and de jure leader. The US assuredly uses its standing in the UN to its advantage (and has benefited greatly) ,as do all of the P5. For instance, participation in a nearly universal international regime exponentially reduces the transaction costs of international relations. The Security Council’s preemptive goal is to prevent great power war, which it has done so very successfully since its founding.

219

[quote]Chushin wrote:

[quote]Mufasa wrote:
“…They will be emboldened and will return to launching terrorist attacks on US targets and allies overseas. And probably on US soil…”

And spending millions of U.S. Taxpayer dollars at GITMO housing them was going to prevent others from doing this?

Are YOU serious?

Mufasa[/quote]

So what does that alleged (but likely nonexistent) surveillance and those hellfires cost us?[/quote]

While I agree that trading five high ranking Taliban officers for a morally naive grunt who cost his countrymen dearly was hardly an equal transaction, asserting that the US is going to leave the aforementioned individuals unmotitored is a bold claim to say the least. The costs of human surveillance by CIA Special Activities Division operatives (most of whom are former members of tier-one counter-terrorism units) are relatively low, especially so given the costs of not doing so (not to mention the gains derived from their assassinations should they violate their Qatar house arrests)

220

[quote]Chushin wrote:

[quote]Mufasa wrote:

[quote]Chushin wrote:

[quote]Mufasa wrote:
“…They will be emboldened and will return to launching terrorist attacks on US targets and allies overseas. And probably on US soil…”

And spending millions of U.S. Taxpayer dollars at GITMO housing them was going to prevent others from doing this?

Are YOU serious?

Mufasa[/quote]

So what does that alleged (but likely nonexistent) surveillance and those hellfires cost us?[/quote]

A Helluva’ lot of tax dollars.

Your point?

Mufasa
[/quote]

Same as yours.

Or maybe that holding them would be cheaper in the long run? I don’t know.

And I’m still waiting for your response to the point that past releases have NOT supported your contention that “We got these guys under control.”[/quote]

I never said “We had them under control…”, but that they were under surveillance, and far from being “free”…

I also agree with whomever said (I think that it was AC…?)…that while keeping them in GITMO may prevent them from personally “being in the fight”…it is doubtful that is as much a “deterrent” as a well-placed Hellfire.

Mufasa