Difference between revisions of "Talk:Lecture 14"

Revision as of 17:31, 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.

Jeff Bigham - Looking at the below quote, it seems that what the enemy does affects whether or not the Geneva Convention officially applies to them. Certainly if another state decided to disregard the Geneva Convention then it would seem natural that the U.S. wouldn't be held to it in regard to the offending nation's prisoners. It seems that al Qaeda has chosen to break the rules. Not that we should allow the legality of abandoning our morality to force us to do so. Terrorists organizations don't seem to be included in the text (largely, it seem to me, because the writers didn't think of them), and, even if it is interpretted so they are, then they don't qualify after they violate it.

"Although one of the Powers in conflict may not be a party to the present Convention, the Powers who are parties thereto shall remain bound by it in their mutual relations. They shall furthermore be bound by the Convention in relation to the said Power, if the latter accepts and applies the provisions thereof."

The rhetoric coming from the administration would certainly have you believe that they don't treat terrorist prisoners differently than proper war prisoners, so it's unclear why it's important whether or not the Geneva Convention applies. If it is determined not to apply, then it gives them something to say to those that don't buy the argument that they are war prisoners. Are the precise interrogation/torture methods that are and are not acceptable explicitely defined in the Geneva Convention or have they since been fleshed out? Why are we only now debating what torture means? Depending on your outlook, all or none of the methods mentioned as possibilities mentioned in today's lecture could qualify as inhumane so it seems like someone would have already had to decide this already. Is the DoD/CIA veering away from established practices or defining something that hasn't been defined?

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?

Moving Past Blaming the Media

Jameel Alsalam Because I have spent some time working in a beaurocracy (the UC administration) I have some sympathy for what Christina was saying about the media putting a bad face on DOD. I am sure that any of us get defensive when the media turns its attention towards us. After all, media is trying to sell media, and that often means saying inflammatory things.

The question I wanted to ask her is this: It seems like a lot of what is fueling the fire of criticism of the detainee and interrogation policy is that there is a combination of 1) Secrecy (no observers, etc) and 2) Distrust (of the government, esp. the military, so we don't want to just trust that they are making good judgements). So my question is, is this a policy question worth addressing?

Perhaps DOD or the administration can come up with mechanisms to increase trust - i.e. some level of oversight by an organization like the red cross, or some mechanism for detainees to make pleas on some set of grounds in a civilian court context. Normal criminal justice is counter-balanced by the fact that citizens who are wronged by the criminal justice system can argue their case in front of a judge, and to some extent the American people. So we are worried because it seems like in this case there is no force to balance the decisions of the executive branch.

But so far it sounds like the executive policy is that because this mode is legal, they are going to do it. Obviously there are other motivations than legality, but I for one felt convinced that at least legality is on their side.--Jameel 09:31, 1 December 2005 (PST)

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.