‘Enemy combatant’ held at Guantánamo petitions for release because war is over | Hacker News Reader

‘Enemy combatant’ held at Guantánamo petitions for release because war is over

theguardian.com

25 pointssofixa22 comments

Enemy combatant is one of my favorite Orwellian wordings to violate the Geneva Conventions. It is up there in Orwellian language like the Excelesque Disposition Matrix murder killings that only Nobel Peace Prize recipient Obama could get away with.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposition_Matrix

Or the Clintonesque term for international kidnappings, torture and murder ring:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition

——

My favorite Guantamao Bay concentration camp story is that one of the translators (aka torturer in combat fatigues) there of Uyghurs, Rushan Abbas, is now running a CIA funded Uyghur liberation movement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_detainees_at_Guantanamo...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rushan_Abbas

I'd like to agree with you, but you make it sound like only Obama and Clinton were the crooked presidents in the last 30 years.

To get back to the topic, Guantanamo was the invention of the G. W. Bush admin.

Oh I agree with you. The article was about enemy combatants which was W Bush "innovation."

If you move into a new house and find there are people tied up in the basement, then let them go, that isn't your fault. If you move into a house, find people tied up in the basement and proceed to keep them there for 8 years until you are evicted, you are a kidnapper.

the top comment is trying to correct the record and the damage has been done

In time, hopefully, we'll have books that explain this charlie foxtrot. There's so much to the story, I can't wrap my head around even the outline. Especially hard because every actor can only tell their own facet, and I'm not smart enough to connect the dots.

Obama promised to end Guantánamo Bay's detentions. I've long wanted to know why that didn't happen. His book Promised Land lists some of the challenges, but left me with more questions. My takeaway is that a cleanup effort that tries to follow the rules is all but impossible when the mess was created by ignoring the rules. In other words, maybe ultimately we have to ignore the rules to cleanup snafus; which is a very scary prospect, right?

The 5-4 podcast, about "why the SCOTUS" sucks", has episodes about the ridiculous, contradictory, nonsensical decisions which ultimately allowed these extra-legal detentions. Stuff like Justices, IIRC, not understanding that their prior decisions to ignore habeas corpus prevented detainees from ever appealing. Real facepalm stuff. If the Justices don't even understand their own snafus, what hope do the rest of us noobs have?

As an American, Guantánamo Bay is just such an embarrassment, fills me with impotence and despair. So big, so ugly, I can barely comprehend it.

As I recall, congress stopped Obama from shutting down Guantanamo by pulling all funding required to make it happen.

And he didn't try very hard to go around that. Or at all.

> Obama promised to to stop Guantánamo Bay's detention. I've long wanted to know why that didn't happen. His book Promised Land lists some of the challenges, but left me with more questions. My takeaway is that a cleanup effort that tries to follow the rules is all but impossible when the mess was created by ignoring the rules. In other words, maybe ultimately we have to ignore the rules to cleanup snafus; which is a very scary prospect, right?

Poor excuses. Shut the thing down, free everyone, and give them some sort of compensation in the millions for the horrible conditions they endured. Some of them might end up joining Al Qaeda or whatever, and using that money to fund terrorism, but can anyone really blame them? They were detained illegally and tortured for literally decades. They have every right to be pissed at the US and everything related to them, so if they decide to take it out, it's their prerogative. That's why it was a very stupid idea to begin with.

Well, if a freed person is then involved in an attack against America, it'd be political suicide.

TBH if you're in politics it's about trade-offs. Following your conscience might mean you get voted out, and having the other side in power would be disastrous for the citizens (e.g. reversal of Obamacare, or now the upcoming "All your uterus are belong to us" thanks to Trump's justices). And the trade-off of "I want to keep the kleptocracy[1] out of power so the average folk don't get fucked even more" vs "I want to do the honourable thing and let these illegally detained foreigners free" weighs sadly against some foreigners.

[1] If we work under the premise that the Democrats is, on balance, still working for the people, whereas the GOP is on balance just a cronyist pro-elite party.

> Well, if a freed person is then involved in an attack against America, it'd be political suicide

Well, it should be a well deserved and expected reaction. You can't kidnap and torture someone for decades, just release them and hope all is forgotten. Active effort should be made in that regard. And even if they do retaliate, IMHO it's still better morally than leaving them to rot to death.

I wonder if Americans will stop overlooking the literal hell on earth they've been casually subjecting people to now that their wealth and importance are quickly fading. Or maybe things will get even worse when poverty gets out of hand. Either way, that's one country I ain't fucking visiting (and not for a lack of nostalgia).

While I'm certainly not proud of these places, what makes you think wealth & power -- or the loss of them -- correlates with being "nice"?

Countries act like kids, and it's the kid with the worst home that is the worst on the playground.

It's wishful thinking on my part that there's a rule or reason to this collective stupidity, rather than it being inevitable.

Half of the country significantly defends the hell on earth and acts to make it worse or defend it's current bullshit. And the other half seems to be okay with going back on promises to end gitmo and continuing to sign orders for the drone-based murder of strangers in a far away land.

This is not both-siderism, I promise one is better than the other, though possibly not in the "war-crime" dimension

> Denbeaux added: “The war is over. How can you detain enemy combatants when there’s no combat going on?”

The ignorance of History is staggering. Don't they know that it's a thing to detain enemy combatants even when the conflict is finished? Ever heard of a small, tiny conflict that happened in the 20th century called WW2? German prisoners stayed for years after the year in several countries to work for free, before they were allowed to return home. And among the unlucky ones who were imprisoned in the East (USSR), most of them never came back.

I have several objections.

USA lost this war. I don't think Germany and Japan kept a lot of allied war prisoners after the war ended.

The prisoners that were kept back then were enemy soldiers. Enemy combatants is recently made up term invented so that USA can pretend those pesky rules about treatment of enemy soldiers don't apply to them.

And since we are inventing words, isn't it reasonable to expect that combatant ceases to be a combatant when combat doesn't happen anymore?

That's a violation of the Geneva Convention, art. 118[1]:

> Prisoners of war shall be released and repatriated without delay after the cessation of active hostilities.

Which wasn't in place during WWII (signed in 1949, but is now). However, The Hague convention of 1907 was, which stipulates[2]:

> Art. 20. After the conclusion of peace, the repatriation of prisoners of war shall be carried out as quickly as possible.

So, the Allies were breaking international law and committing war crimes, even after Nuremberg where they made a big point of punishing German war crimes ( not even talking about before). That's great and all, but is it really an excuse to violate international law and commit war crimes today? Not to mention the torture, illegal kidnapping and detention of many people in Guantanamo, etc. etc. No wonder the US is afraid of the ICC, half the military and political leaders from the last few decades will end their lives in The Hague if they complied.

1 - https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/Article.xs...

2 - https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/4e473c7bc8...

The idea behind calling them ‘enemy combatants’ is that they are not prisoners of war so you don’t have to afford them the rights the Geneva Convention grants prisoners of war.

You can’t torture or degrade prisoners of war. That’s why the US calls these people ‘enemy combatants’.

> Geneva Convention

Nobody cares about this piece of paper, because it's never applied in any conflict of post-conflict situation.

> is it really an excuse to violate international law and commit war crimes today

International Law is not a thing. You are being brainwashed if you think it exists. A Law only exists if it is enforced, and only superpowers are actually able to enforce anything.

> Nobody cares about this piece of paper, because it's never applied in any conflict of post-conflict situation.

Of course it is applied, and whenever it's not, and the war criminals in question aren't from the US or Russia, there are consequences like the ICC or the ICTY. Far from perfect, many more people have to face justice in The Hague, but dismissing it outright is ludicrous.

> International Law is not a thing. You are being brainwashed if you think it exists

Of course it's a thing. Even the US has seen so, in benign cases, with the WTO ruling against illegal Boeing subsidies.

> A Law only exists if it is enforced, and only superpowers are actually able to enforce anything.

Or consensus. The UN, WTO, ICC, ICTY etc. manage to enforce things without being a superpower.

wow. imagine capturing and torturing a guy for 20 years without pressing any charges. things you can do only if you're the leader of the free world...

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