OK?

I read the Op/Ed piece by Col. Davis completely differently from Glenn, and I read what Glenn cited completely differently from Glenn.

Hicks was physically, and perhaps sexually abused, before he got to Guantanamo, and possibly afterwards, but Davis is talking about post-Camp X-Ray, and is probably correct in asserting that the facility is now a modern prison similar to Leavenworth Super-Max.

As far as I can tell, Hicks doesn't seem to claim that rifle butts and pointing guns and so forth happened at Guantanamo. What he does say happen at Guantanamo post-Camp X-Ray is solitary confinement and drugging.

I'm also not sure that a guy whose father asserts that he joined LeT needs to have had a confession coerced from him, so I'm not sure Glenn has a case for that. LeT has been a banned terrorist organization since before al Qaeda was a twinkle in Zawahri's eye.

And it is not a good practice to use the word 'Tribunal' to describe the Military Commissions, it is perilously close to deliberately obscuring the very different roles and possibly different legality of two very different proceedings: the Combat Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs), and the Military Commissions (MCs).

Is it wrong, punishably a war crime, probably systematic and therefore worse, what happened to Hicks initially on his way to Guantanamo and during Camp X-Ray? Absolutely. Does it qualify as treatment in violation of our signed treaties and military confinement policies to have drugged him and kept him in isolation for 22 hours a day for months at a time? Absolutely.

The Military Commissions are set up for the sole purpose of trying alleged war criminals who also happen to be not U.S. citizens or residents at the time of capture, and have been determined to be illegal enemy combatants. The trial reported on and cited in Glenn's post had nothing to do with determining those things, only trying Hicks for crimes.

And that is where Col. Davis was most disingenuous, and how I read the whole thing in the paper this morning. Because of what the Military Commissions do, they have nothing to do with the right that the Hamdan decision found that these prisoners have under "Common" Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions to challenge the validity of their detention. That article maintains that this be done "...by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples." This judgement is done by the CSRTs. They, unlike the MCs, were not set up by an act of Congress, allow far fewer rights than those stipulated by Davis in his enumerations of the MC procedures, and have never been judged affirmatively to be a "regularly constituted court" by any American federal court.

Of the people being held at Guantanamo, there are some who are not legitimately enemy combatants. There are some who are enemy combatants and are not illegal enemy combatants. There are some who are illegal enemy combatants and are not alleged to have committed war crimes, and there are some who are illegal enemy combatants and are alleged to have committed war crimes (there may also be some who are enemy combatants but not illegal enemy combatants who are alleged to have committed war crimes, I don't know). Only the last group, those illegal enemy combatants who are alleged to have committed war crimes are possible defendants in Military Commissions. So Colonel Davis is talking about treatment that very few of the detainees will face at all, even though he is talking about the only court in Guantanamo that could be considered to be a regularly constituted court, since it was created by Congress.

Holding the non-combatants without charge is illegal. Holding combatants for the duration of a conflict, be they legal or illegal, is not illegal (unless you dispute that there is a conflict, which is reasonable), such combatants are not normally charged with crimes since they aren't criminals, they are detained combatants. Not bringing them before a regularly constituted court to challenge their status is illegal.

The people in the Office of Military Commissions generally assert that there is no inhumane treatment going on at Guantanamo, and they always speak in present tense. They also always talk only about the legitimacy of the procedures for the Military Commissions. They may very well be speaking truthfully, and some of them may not be hiding anything.

The shame and disgrace comes in discussing the past at Guantanamo, and the bogus Common Article 3 protections of the CSRTs. And there is renewed shame and disgrace if the allegations of constant solitary confinement and drugs are true. Colonel Davis should be asked to investigate such allegations and determine their veracity. If they are true, then he should ask for charges to be brought, and he should tell us what he knows.

We are judged by how we treat the worst among us. A guy who is commonly acknowledged (his father was never tortured) to have been a member of Lashkar-e-Taiba is not a nice guy. If he aided al Qaeda during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, then he really is an enemy combatant too. But it's disgusting that he was treated the way he was, and we are therefore judged by that treatment.

bucky1:

-- Paul Rosenberg attacks antiwar.com

[me]... I went shopping a couple of hours ago, just after voting in the special election for Congress (CA-37). There, in front of the Trader Joes, was a bustling little table of anti-Bush organizing... by the LaRouchies. Possibly the only outfight in America more psychologically unfit to run the country than the gang that's actually in charge. ...

It is interesting that Paul R. uses the LaRouchies to make some obscure point that antiwar.com is not worthy of his big tent. Fine, if you are so partisan that the fellows over at antiwar.com are not good enough for you that is your business.

I wasn't attacking antiwar.com at all. I was attacking your logic (or lack thereof) in touting them.

My point is simply that being a big tent for all comers to a good cause does not necessarily make one good--or evil. Nor does it make those who come good or evil. (The war is evil, but some who oppose it are evil, too.) If there are literally no limits then some scamming and duplicity will certainly occur, perhaps even fatal doses. One has to deal with what actually occurs, and not rely on high-fallutin rhetoric.

[me]... Bourne was 14 in 1900, but was never remotely a libertarian. ...

If you read what I wrote, I said that he would be a liberal in the classic sense; which today is called libertarian because of the socialists that came to dominate the group we moderns call 'liberal'.

I read what you wrote and responded by cutting to the quick. The libertarian laissez-faire ideology was in full sway in 1900, it was supported by McKinnley/Hannah Republicans. And Bourne was not one of them.

It was opposed in various different ways by the Populists, Socialists, Anarchists, Social Gospel folks and Progressives (in both the Democratic and Republican parties). Bourne was a progressive who broke with the leading progressives who bought into Wilson's illusion of a war to make the world "safe for democracy." But that break came in the last couple of years of his tragically short life. And he did not suddenly become a laissez-faire Republican when he broke with the progressive hawks.

As for your malarky about "socialists," it's strictly Rush-speak. Which is to say, lies.

British liberals began having serious doubts about laissez-faire by the mid-19th Century, aided in part by the novels of Dickens. By the 1870s, the New Liberals (Green and Hobhouse, most notably) began making the case for a positive role for the state in fostering conditions for the realization of positive liberty.

See, for example, wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_liberalism

American progressives were influenced by social liberals, as well as by social democratic ideas, neither of which are socialist--although it was also influened by the Social Gospel movement, and there certainly were some Christian socialists in their midst. The Pledge of Allegience was written by one, for example. And we all know what a powerful socialist influence that turned out to be!

Socialism is public control of the basic means of production. Outside of public services, American liberals have almost never shown any affinity for this, except on rare occassions where private ownership has seemed particularly inimical to the common good. Single payer health care, for example, is not a plan for public or government ownership of the health care sector, but for government payment--just like Medicare.

While a number of self-identified socialists became involved in the New Deal, for the most part their influence was either minor, or their concept of socialism was dilute. Nothing in the New Deal was remotely socialistic, except, arguably, for the Tennessee Valley Authority. But the beneficiaries were--for once--simply too grateful for the benefits it brought to quibble about it. The market was never going to meet their basic development needs, so they took it whichever way they could.

In short, bucky1, stop playing Humpty Dumpty. Words don't mean whatever you choose to make them mean.

There's glory for you.