The Origins of Extremism

[Space Marshal]

Originally Posted by Mike Honcho

Let me say that, while George W. Bush was a terrible President and a terrible human being, this isn't (just) a bash Bush thread. Bush isn't President anymore. Here's what the Obama administration has been up to:

*Increasing drone bombings of Pakistan
*Defending the use of extraordinary rendition
*Once we render them, the Obama DOJ has argued that detainees at Bagram in Afghanistan have no rights. No habeus corpus. No right to any kind of judicial review or oversight whatsoever. The DOJ brief that argued this was written against complainants who have been detained without charges for six years
*Reaffirm threats to UK to cut off intelligence if UK court used passages describing US torture
*Use of state secrets privilege to scuttle lawsuits that might reveal extent of US torture

And of course much of Congress is along for the ride. This isn't a party line issue - both parties are significantly militarist. To work against this stuff you have to go outside the binary conflict of democrat and republican.

Honestly, our biggest problem is our military spending. It may seem simplistic to say so, but without the ease of projecting power we would not be tempted to do so as often.

[The Dude]

Is it even politically possible to support a massive, massive reduction in military spending anymore? Has any notable politician even tried since the end of WW2?

[Space Marshal]

Well, under Clinton's administration we saw some reductions.

[Divi Filius]

Because of the end of the Cold War. Don't expect to see that again any time soon!

[Divi Filius]

Originally Posted by Phaedrus

I'm not sure why we're suddenly talking about Islam as a worldwide phenomenon when all along the discussion has carried through the identifier "in the region." That region being the Middle East. Where almost all of Islam's economic, religious, cultural and political power resides.

Probably because their message disseminates and is carried far beyond some abstract regional boundaries, and they recruit all over the world.

[Phaedrus]

Originally Posted by Divi Filius

Probably because their message disseminates and is carried far beyond some abstract regional boundaries, and they recruit all over the world.

I understand the global implications, I just missed the point where we went from talking about the middle east to worldwide Islam. I said

Originally Posted by Phaedrus

Pushing them back to the polticial and cultural fringe in the region would be enough, I think.

In response to

Originally Posted by Divi Filius

We weren't exactly blowing up villages in Afghanistan/Iraq/Pakistan when 9/11 happened, which was the catalyst for our invasion of the region in the first place. . . . If your aim is to totally eradicate radical Islam as an ideology . . .

To which you said

Originally Posted by Divi Filius

But by any reasonable measure, they were on the political and cultural fringe when they destroyed the WTC and blew a hole in the Pentagon.

I assume now you were implying they were a fringe group globally, which I can at least understand if not agree with; and also that you think the goals in the war on terror (oh how I hate that phrase) should be global instead of local - to which I agree. But in light if the fact that military actions - like all politics - have significant local flavor, a local strategy must also enter into the argument. And that is the argument I thought we were discussing.

[Sprint]

Our bloated,gigantic military and runaway spending will be the doom of the United States.

We're doing to ourselves in slow motion what we did to the USSR in the 90s.

Also I don't really buy that Obama is some kind of despot in training; since we don't have access to the intelligence he's got, I am not willing to write him off just yet. He's made some pretty concrete efforts to change the direction of government, and I think it's pretty unrealistic to assume that he can make a boat that big turn on a dime.

Obama tends to listen to experts. We (liberal left college students etc) are not experts.

[Divi Filius]

Originally Posted by Sprint

Obama tends to listen to experts. We (liberal left college students etc) are not experts.

Well, there's this, too, but we tend to scoff at that around here. I've met and worked alongside some of these guys, and they've had more field experience in these hot spots than most of us have been alive. It has made me sort of incredulous towards some of the knuckle popping, teeth gnashing rants on US foreign policy I've seen on the forums.

[Mike Honcho]

That's just appeal to authority, and what can you say to that? The people who have locked up (and approved the locking up of) suspects up for years without charges or legal representation were all "experts".

[Sprint]

I just think you're rushing to judgement and you have no information except for what's in the press, and the President by virtue of his position is going to end up being better informed than you are.

I mean, you can believe that Obama has suddenly been transformed into an autocratic tyrant, or you can try for something with a bit more nuance. I'm not happy 100% either but if you think that everybody that got nabbed is some kind of innocent and there will be no consequences to them being out and about, I don't know what to tell you. And Obama would have to deal with the political fallout of releasing guilty people that were abused under someone else's orders.

[Mike Honcho]

I feel safe in saying that they had to catch at least ONE guilty guy, by sheer statistics. I'll give you that. I'm not saying throw open the gates and give them gift bags on the way out. I'm saying we need to put these people through a legal process, rather than claiming we have the power to keep them rotting in a jail cell for years because they have no status and no rights. Preferably, this legal process would involve not using evidence gathered via ball slicing.

I mean, can you use this hyperbolic language of tyrant or dictator, but that's you framing the issue. The post I made earlier on things the Obama administration is doing, those are all facts. Obama is doing those things. Several of those things are things he loudly campaigned against. You can frame it as "tyrant Boratk Huinsane 0bong0 ran a false flag campaign full of lies," "the CIA told Obama that the terrorists have a Mech Suit and we need to lock them up or they'll level Tokyo," "Obama is worried about bad PR and Republicans," whatever. But these are the things that are going on. The very fact that they're even arguing for them is damaging to our system of laws. And it's not like he's saying "We're going to fix this, just give us some time." They're saying Bush was right.

[Sprint]

But he's already making the effort you want! They're going to be giving that 9/11 mastermind dude a civilian trial in New York City.

I just can't understand why you don't get that reversing 6+ years of crappy legal maneuvering isn't the sort of thing that can be done instantaneously.

[Turtle Tomorrow]

Originally Posted by Sprint

But he's already making the effort you want! They're going to be giving that 9/11 mastermind dude a civilian trial in New York City.

I've heard it argued, also by Glenn Greenwald (and it is a pretty persuasive argument), that such trials are basically show trials because they know they have the evidence to convict. If they don't have the right evidence (or the properly obtained evidence) then, welp, no civilian trial for you. It's not necessarily a comfort, and in some ways is worse.

[Vaal]

Originally Posted by The Dude

Is it even politically possible to support a massive, massive reduction in military spending anymore? Has any notable politician even tried since the end of WW2?

Considering the fact that back in the first quarter, we got the unobfuscated military budget of 'way too fucking much' and people were like, 'sure, fine whatever -- but MOTHER FUCK a pittance for changing over the government fleet to fuel efficient cars', I'm going to say yes, very much so.

[Mike Honcho]

Originally Posted by Sprint

But he's already making the effort you want! They're going to be giving that 9/11 mastermind dude a civilian trial in New York City.

I just can't understand why you don't get that reversing 6+ years of crappy legal maneuvering isn't the sort of thing that can be done instantaneously.

They're giving the remaining 9/11 dudes their day in court, yes, good. Props for that, they're catching a lot of shit for it, it's the right thing to do. HOWEVER, we have way, way more people locked up in Bagram over in Afghanistan who not only aren't getting trials, they're not even CLOSE. The Obama administration is actively working for the argument that they're not POWs, they're not protected persons, they're not civilians who took up arms, they're uncategorized enemy combatants who thus have no rights and who we have no obligations to. So we can lock them up without oversight and never give them any kind of hearings, even the questionably legal military commissions. I understand that you can't flip a switch the day after Bush leaves and fix shit. Look at Obama trying to empty out Gitmo and running into problems with some of the Uighers. I get it. What I can't understand is why you don't get that they're not trying to reverse a lot of the crappy legal maneuvering. They are sending out people from the Department of Justice to make the same arguments the Bush administration made. They are following that party line. That's not something that takes years to reverse. All it takes is sending in a brief that says Bush was wrong. They're not doing that. It's not that they're having a hard time, it's not even that they're doing nothing. They are using the same arguments.

[Ash Plissken]

Originally Posted by Turtle Tomorrow

I've heard it argued, also by Glenn Greenwald (and it is a pretty persuasive argument), that such trials are basically show trials because they know they have the evidence to convict. If they don't have the right evidence (or the properly obtained evidence) then, welp, no civilian trial for you.

I'd be okay with that, if the alternative to the civilian trial were "GG, GTFO, and if we catch you again, you won't be so lucky," like it is with normal suspects.

[Beleg]

Originally Posted by Sprint

I just think you're rushing to judgement and you have no information except for what's in the press, and the President by virtue of his position is going to end up being better informed than you are.

I have had people use this reasoning, heck, even some of this wording, to defend Bush and torture. There are specific situations where I'll buy it, but in general it's a cop out.

[Sprint]

To the best of my knowledge all of the torture and other forms of coercion have been stopped. AFAIK the CIA stopped torturing people in the Bush years. What we're left with is a big messy legal mess, and while it may be possible for Obama to just say "let 'em all go", I don't know how wise it would be, considering the mere mention of terrorism pretty much makes everybody in this country an idiot. Given the resistance the (idiotic) American people are giving to something as innocuous as univeral health care (IE, people are literally calling efforts to give health care to 40+ million Americans both socialist and Nazi), I don't really think that freeing a bunch of people who are most probably active terrorists is really that high on the President's agenda.

I dunno; I'm glad I'm not him.

[Mike Honcho]

I don't think anyone here is arguing that we should let everyone in US custody go.

[Turtle Tomorrow]

I am obviously sympathetic to the fact that Obama inherited some difficult problems, and he is obviously a very smart guy, and I am sure he is playing the long game here and is being pragmatic about very sensitive issues, but at the same time there's very little actual reason to believe he's going to make some changes outside of merely hoping or assuming he will. Nobody is calling him a tyrant, but it would be nice to be thrown a bone.

[Ash Plissken]

Originally Posted by Mike Honcho

I don't think anyone here is arguing that we should let everyone in US custody go.

Well, I basically do think that we have just as much obligation to release those we lack the evidence to prosecute as we would with normal criminals in a similar situation (deporting those who are not in the US legally, of course).

It sucks, but hey, maybe it'll serve as an effective lesson not to fuck things up next time.

[AKBoarder]

I don't think we should let any of them go, but I would definitely push for reorganizing the prisons in places like Bagram into POW camps. The problem being that POW camps, and the way POW law works, is set up around the idea of fighting against a regulated and organized military, with a rank structure, discipline, etc. I mean, technically you're supposed to pay POWs for services rendered, and treat them with the respect they deserve due to their rank, even if they happen to be in your custody at the time. It jives with the whole idea of "professional war".

At least then we could harness all the prisoners we have to do infrastructure work and stuff.

But the point is that I definitely agree that their current legal status is bullshit, but I also don't necessarily want them getting hearings and charges and everything, and you'd avoid that with POW camps.

[Blurry]

Originally Posted by AKBoarder

But the point is that I definitely agree that their current legal status is bullshit, but I also don't necessarily want them getting hearings and charges and everything, and you'd avoid that with POW camps.

We can't treat them like POWs because the war on terror will literally never end. There will be no end of hostilities where our nation and their nation are no longer at war, when it's okay to send the captured soldiers home because we're at peace with one another. If we don't charge them with something, what do we do? When do we let them go? Do we let them go? What if someone is in the wrong place at the wrong time and gets picked up as an enemy combatant?

[AKBoarder]

Originally Posted by Stingray Sam

We can't treat them like POWs because the war on terror will literally never end. There will be no end of hostilities where our nation and their nation are no longer at war, when it's okay to send the captured soldiers home because we're at peace with one another. If we don't charge them with something, what do we do? When do we let them go? Do we let them go? What if someone is in the wrong place at the wrong time and gets picked up as an enemy combatant?

You're absolutely right to raise all those questions, and honestly I don't have the answers and I really can't begin to try and give you answers, all I know is that at least recognizing them as POWs extends a number of rights and responsibilities to them that they don't have now, as well as legitimizing things internationally, while still avoiding releasing them necessarily.

But all those issues you brought up exist now, except they literally have almost no rights and the rights they do get, even simple things like eating decent food, are changed on a daily or weekly basis as we see fit.

[Blurry]

Originally Posted by AKBoarder

You're absolutely right to raise all those questions, and honestly I don't have the answers and I really can't begin to try and give you answers, all I know is that at least recognizing them as POWs extends a number of rights and responsibilities to them that they don't have now, as well as legitimizing things internationally, while still avoiding releasing them necessarily.

But all those issues you brought up exist now, except they literally have almost no rights and the rights they do get, even simple things like eating decent food, are changed on a daily or weekly basis as we see fit.

We really do need to decide on a classification for this kind of prisoner and come up with some standards of how to treat them. Call them "enemy combatants" if you want, but we have to stop using the lack of definite legal obligations to mean we can do whatever the fuck we want to them. We treat them like they aren't human simply because they're not American (so they don't get to enjoy OUR rights ) and they're not professional soldiers (so they don't get to enjoy Geneva rights )

I'd be fine with calling them POWs for the interim while they figure that shit out, but it would probably never happen because it would imply treating terrorists with respect, and to the average American they are literally not human beings.