The Washington Post hurts my brain

[Blaupanzer]

Uniforms keep the sorting simple. Wearing civilian clothes in a battlezone and doing something warlike means you can be tried and shot as a spy. In a lot of cases, the spy's sole trial is an accusation. "A spy!" Bang! Bang! "Move on."

The fact that laws force you to consider what you are doing once the situation settles down is a good thing. Laws help constrain the hot-headed. And nothing makes a man as hot-headed is you (amorphous other to be tried later) killing a person he knows.

[Kuciwalker]

No war has been declared. We are not at war with any nation.

Puh-leeze. We had Congressional authorizations for the use of force for OEF. If that doesn't count as us being at war, neither does the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. I guess we weren't allowed to keep POWs then either.

Thus, arguments about US rights re foreign citizens in wartime is a sham argument, a strawman.

ARGGADFASDGASDGADSFSFD YOU CONTINUE TO MISUNDERSTAND THE TERM.

A strawman is not a sham argument! A strawman is an OPPOSING argument set up for the purpose of debunking!

#$@%#$#$%@#$%@#$%@#$%

No one lives in or can go to Taliban

Dude, the Taliban was just the name of the government of Afghanistan.

or Al Qaeda. Thus those groups have members, but they are also citizens of some state. You cannot intern foreigners unless you are at war with their nation (which was Snoop's point awhile ago).

And we were, in fact, at war with Afghanistan after the authorization for OEF (or, arguably, after 9/11, given that we invoked NATO Article V in response). The fact that we've installed a puppet government in large parts of the country doesn't mean the war is just over.

[Kuciwalker]

The issue is that leaving detention up to executive discretion leads to very bad things. Rules constraining the use of force stop us from going off the deep end (see i.e. the Milgram experiment). What we customarily have done is adjudicate status disputes in a competent tribunal (as called for by Article 5 of the Geneva Conventions) where the suspects are given something short of full legal rights. The Bush Admin broke from this custom - which was suiting us perfectly well, creating sham "CSRTs" to rubber stamp detentions.

I agree completely.

[Blaupanzer]

You agree with Ramo that executive discretion is a bad idea? You agree that a competent tribunal should intervene? If these are yes, then on what basis, under what circumstances would we gain any additional understanding by discussing whether any of these men is too dangerous to release. The tribunal will not consider potential future actions of the individuals in question by international law. Are we done here? The Washington post headline led your thinking in the wrong direction, and that's that.

[Jon Miller]

I am happy to keep them as POWs....

JM

[Kuciwalker]

Because Ramo's proposal is about how we need to do things in the future; my concerns relate to how we clean up the messes we've already made.

[Kuciwalker]

I am happy to keep them as POWs....

JM

The problem is that the war has no defined end.

[Zkribbler]

When in history have enemy soldiers had the ability to prove thier innocence of the crime of being the enemy?

Enemy soldiers tend to march around in uniforms, hang out with their army, etc. It's pretty clear they're the enemy.

Lots of these guys have been snatched off the streets based merely upon someone's accusation -- who then gets paid for turning in someone "from al Qaeda." It's not at all clear they're the enemy.

I don't need proof of their "crime," i.e. that they were trying to kill Americans. I just want proof of their affiliation. Once it's established that they really are al Qaeda, as far as I'm concerned they can rot in jail for the rest of eternity.

[DinoDoc]

War means "a combat between states".

No, it doesn't.

[Theben]

Because Ramo's proposal is about how we need to do things in the future; my concerns relate to how we clean up the messes we've already made.

Likely the lesser of 2 evils approach. Let them go if we can't try them and keep a very close eye on their activities. I don't see a satisfactory solution as possible.

[Naked Gents Rut]

Don't let any of them go. Just ship them to Bagram; it's the new Gitmo, with none of the PR problems.

[Blaupanzer]

NGR has a solution.

The problem of the dangerous man (1 or more) in detention is a moral dilemma. As I see it, it breaks like this:

1) How do we determine the man or men are dangerous? Note two things: with some men you just know they're dangerous, but courts aren't inclined to support such claims without evidence, and OTOH many suicide bombers seem very passive up until they go off, more sheep than rams.

2) What are our alternatives if 1) notes the individual is dangerous, but we have no crime to charge him with (or no charge we can prove). Bush admin people seemed to be pushing toward a Kangaroo court (hearing). You can release him, a continuation of 1)'s dilemma. You can kill him, a crime under national and international law. You can take him to court and either lose or get involved in perjury (another national and international crime).

3) If this dangerous man is put on the street, you can monitor him as best you can for as long as you can. Such a long-term effort is futile, especially if you have several such men and no certainty as to if or when anything might happen.

In my earlier discussion, I leaped directly to number 2, and said that without a chargeable crime we must let him go, however dangerous he is and however distasteful that is to us. As a sidenote, I indicated the dilemma of coming up with a legally acceptable way of identifying a dangerous man.

Kuci wanted to discuss the moral issue that is in front of 1-3, thus his indication that my arguments were strawmen or tangential points. Alright, let's discuss the dilemma. On the one hand we have the moral dilemma of knowing a dangerous man is headed back to the streets unless we act. On the other, we don't appear to be legally able to keep him from the streets. Now what?

I leave this to Kuci to continue, pardon my interruption.

[Blaupanzer]

DinoDoc, which Geneva Convention is it you have been reading? "War" has an international definition and that is based on nation states itself. If you have another definition, include its basis in international context. Conflicts, insurgencies, civil conflicts, etc., also look like war, I will admit, but "war" is not what defines the generic conflict against al Qaeda. In the cases of Iraq and Afghanistan, the state-based definition does apply, those are wars. A Government was overthrown, a different "government" was instituted, and that second Government has invited us to stay and give them a hand.

In answer to a sideswipe comment earlier, Viet Nam also was a "war" as the Gulf of Tonkin resolution named a specific nation, North Viet Nam, as the enemy. Of course, in his inimitable fashion, Nixon sent US troops on renegade excursions into Laos and Cambodia, both countries not officially at war with us.

[Zkribbler]

NGR has a solution.

1) How do we determine the man or men are dangerous? Note two things: with some men you just know they're dangerous, ...

How do you KNOW he's dangerous without some kind of trial, test, set of criteria, etc. Ouiji board? Seance? Or as now, when there's an unsupported accusation by someone who gets paid for every "terrorist" he turns in.

[Blaupanzer]

Witnesses, paid or otherwise, indicate past dangerousness. We are not advanced enough to try people for future crimes. But if you have been around men attracted to combat, or to low-life violence, you can often get a sense that a specific person is dangerous, either nearly out of control constantly, or as cold as ice in relation to human emotions. As I said, you may be able to sense it, but you can only prove it based on past actions.

I agree that we lack a test or set of criteria and I specified that "no crime, no time." However, Kuci's dilemma is posed for police somewhat regularly when roundups grab such men. The LA police in the '80s apparently baited the near-out-of-control types just to set them off (and, ostensibly "get them off the streets." Judges took a real dim view of the films showing the police doing that and sent a few cops to jail.