Lileks' new 'Screedblog' details the injustices and inhumane treatment suffered by a Gitmo detainee.
I'd have traded him for Jr. High Gym class in a heartbeat.
For the record, many years ago I sent money - American Dollars, as my dad would say - to Amnesty International. I did so because they were on The Front Lines, Taking Direct Action, saving lives one at a time. (cue the kid-and-the-starfish story). They very nicely sent me a sticker, and for a couple of decades now it has adorned the case of my primary guitar.
Tonight I peeled it off and tossed it in the trash, where it now belongs. So now I've got a spot about 3" square available for a new sticker. Suggestions, anyone?
3 comments:
You need to join the dots between this and your post on private aviation. If you can accept that the behaviour of the state is unreasonable with regard to private pilots, then can't you see that there is the possibility that what is happening to supposed "prisoners of war" (a war against terror, not a state - a conveniently a-legal definition - so the citizenship of these individuals is irrelevant) held offshore (so that nobody has jurisdiction over them) might just also be unreasonable?
A key difference that you overlook - private pilots are exercising their legal rights to operate properly licensed aircraft under the Federal Aviation Regulations. If they violate those regulations they are subject to legal sanction.
While some of the post-9/11 restrictions (e.g., carrying photo ID) are reasonable, many are not (e.g., 30-nm "pop-up" TFRs, proposed security measures at ALL airstrips, etc.), and have the effect of preventing law-abiding citizens from carrying out legal, peaceful, and economically beneficial activities.
The Gitmo detainees are not POWs and they are not criminal suspects. They are "unlawful enemy combatants" - persons captured in combat without a declared state allegience, wearing no uniform, engaged in combat operations against our forces.
Legally, they are entitled to a summary battlefield execution and nothing more. That is how the German army treated French and Russian partisans during WWII, while captured Allied soldiers were imprisoned in POW camps subject to Red Cross inspection under the Geneva Convention.
Geneva doesn't apply to Gitmo.
I put a NASA 'meatball' in the vacant spot.
We are go for throttle-up...
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