Guantanamo is an example of improper treatment of POWs, not detainment of citizens in a totalitarian state.
Many of the detainees weren't "captured in war" in any meaningful sense, they were civilian noncombatants sold to US forces by various local militias during the occupation of Afghanistan; but its correct that that's more a symptom of the US being a global empire and than of the metropolitan system of government within that empire being totalitarian.
For instance, afaik POWs from lawful sides in conflicts can be kept until the conflicts are over. The Afghan war is still raging, arguably. And the Guantanamo conditions are hardly much worse than the horrid US prison system.
I have seen this subject discussed, but never in a serious way. E.g. please don't write that they should be treated as civilians or something, the point of the Geneva conventions etc was to give POWs some protection, it is just stupid to then argue that to ignore those laws would give better protection.
(And I have no idea how many of the people at Guantanamo are innocent, as dragonwriter claims to know. The people making claims on that subject aren't exactly to be trusted if they really would know!)
Sigh, I guess I deserve downvotes for the stupidity of asking a tricky legal question on newsYC which doesn't have to do with startups. :-)
And as for the conditions at Guantanamo, I hope that "enhanced interrogation techniques", water boarding and similar, isn't used all that frequently in the US penal system.
And for the US prison system, Google stop prison rape.
Your point is that democratic countries should behave better than the international treaties they sign, even if it will result in dead citizens of those countries.
And you compare with children, to give "weight" to your argument? Sigh...
The point with democracies is that they take input from their citizens, or the leadership will get kicked out. The point with terrorism is to scare people, mainly in democracies.
If the terrorists succeed in scaring voters enough, then the politicians will throw out the law book and all other concerns (see Germany, UK, Spain, Israel, USA, etc) because they want to get reelected above anything else... What you ask for go against the central interests of the involved parties.
I might also note that your moral world view is based on living inside a society with a state violence monopoly, in a democracy. If you go outside that, the attitude is ... well, read up on clan societies yourself. A typical example is when Israel did one sided peace gestures -- it was taken as signs of weakness and attacks increased (leaving south Libanon and Gaza).
tl;dr: You're not naive, you just don't think. This is HackerNews, please start.