"D. Simmons" wrote:
>   These are not soldiers of some nation-state that upon discharge from
> service will peacefully return to "tending their farms" while perhaps every
> 10 years or so getting together for a reunion at which they will swap old
> Jihad stories. The Al Queda prisoners are voluntary members of an
> organization whose goal is the killing of Americans -- indeed even fellow
> Arab Muslims who are not religiously 'pure' enough. If released, there is no
> reason to think that they will not regroup and continue their Jihad.

Yes, but, their stated objectives are much more complex than killing
Americans.  For example, they want the Saudi dictatorship dismantled.
That facet of their objectives is legitimate.  The point is that there
are legitimate grievances among their list of grievances, and someone
should fight for those causes.  With respect to that specific grievance,
America is on the wrong side.

> The Taliban prisoners picked the wrong crowd to hang out with. I assume that
> if it is decided that they are no longer a threat or of intelligence value,
> they will be shipped back to the sewer they came from.  However, the members
> of Al Queda voluntarilly chose their path of Jihad against Americans and
> should now expect to spend the rest of their lives in prison.

You mean even if they have committed no crime?  It isn't a crime to
defend Afghanistan against American invasion.  Hanging out with the
wrong crowd, as you put it, is not a punishable offense.  And the issue
here is the state of lawlessness at the international level.  The US has
now established, after long years of undermining the UN and the World
Court, its "right" to do literally anything it wants to do, just like
the terrorists.  The US is already responsible for orders of magnitude
more deaths than all the terrorist actions put together.  The US harbors
known terrorists.  The US trains terrorists.  The US trained the
terrorists that started the Al Queda network.  The US trained them to be
terrorists.  The US will never pay for those crimes against humanity,
nor any of its other crimes against humanity, because there is no world
court and world police force that can stop it.  There is no body of
international law that the US obeys.  The US is as lawless as the
terrorists.  You don't mind because you are on their side.  What will
you do, when you suddenly find yourself not on their side?

> >>I would be surprised if members of its armed forces (or even civilians) who
> are captured by the many enemies of the US can expect civilised treatment
> from this day forward.>>
>
>   You mean future American POWs should no longer expect the kind of
> "civilized" treatment they received in Japanese POW camps? North Korean POW
> camps? North Vietnamese POW camps? A rather specious argument, at best
> (Somehow I suspect that the treatment of an American POW is not very high on
> your list of concerns).

The point is that, from now on, Americans taken prisoner can expect to
be killed.  There are no rules anymore.  The US does not recognize any
international laws with respect to prisoners, so the US no longer holds
any ethical high ground.  You can argue that the prisoners in Cuba are
being treated ok, and I won't disagree, but regardless of the state of
the prisoners in Cuba, the US is clearly and deliberately refusing to
follow any international law with regard to these prisoners.  So why
should anyone else?  You either work to establish world standards of
criminal law, or you work to undermine them.  The US has worked
tirelessly to undermine them, and now there aren't any.

> >>This is an outrage that offends people all over the world. And don't think
> that we reserve our animosity for the government of the US alone, the
> citizens of the US who tolerate this are every bit as guilty and deserving of
> collective punishment. Every person who supports this, or even remains
> silent, deserves to be regarded as the scum of the earth.>>
>
> A selective "outrage" to be sure. With neither rancor nor malice, go diddle
> yourself, Mate.

Your attitude exactly conveys my point.  You don't care about the rest
of the world.

martin

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