Difference between revisions of "Talk:Lecture 14"

Revision as of 07:04, 1 December 2005

Geneva Conventions

Lazowska, repeating my email:

I feel that Bryan Del Monte presented an irresponsibly one-sided view of the Geneva Convention issue.

The question of whether the Geneva Convention should apply was the subject of considerable debate within the administration, with Colin Powell and his counsel losing the argument. See the PBS chronology here.

(Scan particularly for "January-February 2002 Bush administration's internal battle over Geneva Conventions.")

To present this as a clear-cut situation is intellectually dishonest and irresponsible.

It's not unlike presenting one-sided intelligence to the Congress, concealing the fact that there was in fact considerable debate and disagreement within the intelligence community. (See here for example (Seattle Times article re Congressman Norm Dicks).

The whole PBS coverage is rooted here.

--Gmusick 22:52, 30 November 2005 (PST) I found his entire presentation rather disengenuous (but fun to complain about). The worst offense was bringing up the founding fathers (something people love to do when they are not sure their ideas have enough merit on their own) and saying that our humane treatment of "enemy combatants" in battle was founded during the Revolutionary War as opposed to the British.

First, the would-be US government was trying to establish itself as a legitimate nation. So it had to play by civilized rules to get international respect, especially from the European powers. Second, to the British, the entire Continental Army was a band of rebels and back then they didn't look too kindly on rebels. And, lastly, it didn't take me too long to find a point where "American" armed forces did their own massacre (Gnadenhütten massacre in Pennsylvania). Of course, it was only Indians...who weren't proper soldiers and therefore didn't have the "laws of war" to protect them.

Anyway, Al Qaida sucks because what they do is evil and wrong and they do need to be stopped. But the US Government (in it's current form) sucks because it knows what is right and doesn't do it anyway.

Eye for an Eye

Chris Fleizach - I found it particularly disturbing in the "normative" debate section that there was a bullet point talking about what Al Qaeda does to our soldiers/civilians. I didn't realize America had started looking to Al Qaeda for it's moral and ethical lead. If America wants to be the global policeman then it must set a high standard of conduct, lest we have little to say to countries that practice abuse in the open. The fact that this point made it into the presentation presumably means that there has been a lot of serious discussion by the policy makers. As a nation "that does not commit torture," according to President Bush, this discussion should have been ended quickly. Instead, it seems it has curried at least some favor if the Department of Defense feels it's acceptable to present to this class as a potentiality.

Blame the Media

--Gmusick 22:19, 30 November 2005 (PST) I really liked the presentation by Christina, but I did get tired of hearing the old refrain of "it's the Media's fault" that our policies are misunderstood. Perhaps if the policies weren't totally formed in secrecy and marked "classified" then we wouldn't have so many misunderstandings about what is going on. And before somebody says it, there are plenty of examples of "the Media" doing really bad things or totally misrepresenting the situation. But there are more examples of the government doing horrible things and covering it up. Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I am a former journalist for an itsy-bitsy weekly paper.

--Altin Dastmalchi Did anyone ever catch that episode of the Daily Show when Stewarts making fun of Cheney, who actually publicly asked Congress for CIA exemption from the torture bill. OK so i understand that the CIA has to do something to get some answers, but i believe other methods (psychological means)are morally appropriate.

Chris Fleizach - The "blame the media" approach was a poor way to ignore addressing the real issues. The two presentations both showed that thoughtful discussion and debate went into crafting these policies and that, according to policy, America acts basically how most people would expect it to. The problem is that policy has not matched reality. Abu Gharib goes against everything discussed in the presentation. The fact that most abuse didn't happen during interrogations doesn't excuse the fact that it happened. Moreover, if interrogaters were not aware that the prisoners they were supposed to be interrogating were dying, then they were either grossly incompetent or not physically present at the facility. I think the presenters believe the media should only report on the actual policy. Unfortunately, reality has diverged from stated policy in many instances. The question that really needs to be addressed is why were there deviations from policy? The government would have us believe it was the work of a few bad apples. Why does working as a detention personnel happen to bring out the sadism in people while removing the chain of command and supervision?

Redifining Combatants

Chris Fleizach - With the presidential directive that says America does not recognize Al Qaeda detainees as prisoners of war and that they don't apply to the Geneva convention because they haven't signed the document should cause anxiety for all U.S. citizens. It seems the only thing keeping the government from having the ability to detain and torture me is that I haven't been declared a terrorist, since I too have not signed the Geneva Convention. If I'm not tortured, I can still be held indefinetly without being charged. Jose Padilla "was" an American citizen until declared an enemy combatant. No one is saying he should be released, but as an American, should he receive the legal protections given to him in the Constitution? Apparently not, because he didn't sign the Geneva Convention. A similar situation happened with the sleeper cell supposedly busted in Buffalo, New York. The New York Times found that these citizens had attended Al Qaeda training schools, but didn't like the direction bin Laden was pushing at. One of them even notified the FBI afterwards to declare he had done so. The government, to great fanfare, announced a few weeks later that they had broken up a sleeper cell. At the time of the article, the men had been imprisoned without being charged for years.

--Gmusick 22:25, 30 November 2005 (PST) It should worry everyone because this isn't the first time the US government has done something like this. If you have ever been to the Smithsonian, you will find a rather fascinating and depressing topic about the Japanese interment camps during WWII. There were mass arrests of American citizens whose only crime was their skin was "yellow". We're not there yet and we probably won't go back there totally, but the first step is making "administrative" decisions to hold people who may pose a threat to the security of the United States of America.

Altin Dastmalchito add to the above mentioned, i agree that US policy seems to have hated some group since forever. From Nazi's (ok maybe they deserved it), to "Japs" to Russians and McCarthyism to today and Terrorism. Now i'm not saying that all these groups didn't have there fare share of problems, but the way the situations were exploited by provoking Americans into FEAR is not ethical.