What do you know? You're back, after ignoring my earlier emails. That's
OK, let's deal with this one.
At 04:08 PM 5/02/2002, D. Simmons wrote:
> The Taliban and Al Queda prisoners being held in Cuba are receiving three
>nutritious meals a day, are provided with personal toiletry items, are
>provided with the opportunity to bath regularly, are provided with a a towel
>solely to be used as a prayer mat, provided with individual copies of the
>Q'ran, are allowed visits from an Islamic clergyman, are provided with
>medical treatment whenever needed, have been visited by the Red Cross, and
>are being held in their wire enclosures only until completion of a permanent
>facility.
Sure. They're held in defiance of all normal law just until slightly less
bad accommodation can be made. Their conditions remain appalling. The
invented category of "battlefield detainees" or "unlawful combatants" was
invented to justify a breach of the Geneva Convention. Hint - this
convention says that if there's any doubt as to whether someone is or is
not a prisoner of war, then they are.
>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.
This is untrue. Many people were drafted into the Taliban at gunpoint,
which was, for better or worse, the governing body of
Afghanistan. Therefore, the draftees, one would think, have a very high
chance of returning to their farms.
>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.
Why is an American life worth more than an Afghan life? Or an Iraqi
life? The soldiers of the US armed forces are voluntary members of an
organisation with the goal of killing Iraqis, whether for or against
Hussein. And who assisted Hussein into power?
>If released, there is no
>reason to think that they will not regroup and continue their Jihad.
If treated as actual PoWs, then release isn't immediately required, but
humanity is.
>The Taliban prisoners picked the wrong crowd to hang out with.
Guilt by association, and never mind the conditions under which their
decision to "hang out" with the "wrong crowd" were made.
> 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.
That'd be the rubble your country left of their country? You'll bomb them
until they no longer hate you, I presume?
>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.
But they're not going to spend their life in prison, are they? They're
going to face secret military trials - in defiance of all known
international and domestic law - and they're going to be shot. We won't
ever know how many are shot, because your President won't allow you to know.
> You mean future American POWs should no longer expect the kind of
>"civilized" treatment they received in Japanese POW camps?
Pre Geneva Convention. And the US locked up Japanese-born US citizens in
concentration camps during WWII.
>North Korean POW
>camps? North Vietnamese POW camps?
How did US armed forces treat Vietnamese civilians? Hint - My Lai. The
point the original poster made was that if you treat your enemies humanely,
then there's more chance they'll treat you the same way. I'd argue
differently - you should treat your enemies humanely because they're human.
>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).
I have exactly the same amount of concern for a US PoW as I do for an
Afghan PoW.
Alister
--
"Let us not fool ourselves, half a century after the adoption
of this Declaration (of Human Rights) and supposedly under its
protection, millions of people have died in the world without
reaching the age of 50 and without even knowing that there was
a universal document that should have protected them."
Roberto Robaina, Cuba's Foreign Minister
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