The Syrians are handling their own incarcerated Islamists with their customary humanity and kindness:
The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 25 people had been killed after military police fired live bullets at Islamist inmates.
The Syrian authorities have so far not commented on the situation, which remains unclear. One inmate told the BBC he believed more than 25 had died.
Prisoners said the clashes were sparked by raids in which guards beat inmates.
They said the guards had also desecrated copies of the Koran.
This whole desecration of the Koran thing has come to seem almost ritual, formulaic. Something learned by rote in Loonie 101. It all starts to sound rather like the boy who cried “wolf”, after a while.
At least in Gitmo we don’t shoot the boys that cry wolf.
Every jihadist who is released says the exact same thing vis-a-vis their detention and the conditions under which they were “tortured.” It’s rather funny to see their claims, which have always been directed towards western nations, are now being used against their Islamic brothers. Loonie 101 taught them to make those claims post-captivity, now they need to graduate from loonie 201 so they understand that those claims are only to be used AGAINST the west. Wonder what the curricula for loonie 301 is?
Perhaps if you are an islamist, death is preferable to rotting away in Cuba with no rights, no trial, no parole, no status, no hope, and no end in sight.
I wouldn’t call it rotting away. They have better accommodations than many mil-spec personnel and most college students.
Or, Paul, they could have not taken up arms against us. But if you do take up arms, in any war, don’t be surprised if your well-being isn’t the top priority of the folks on the other side.
I imagine Andy McNab would have some rather frank comments to make about the comparison between Mid-East prisons and Gitmo. His stay in an Iraqi prison during Gulf 1 wasn’t under conditions we would consider humane.
You’re spot on about the accomodations, Geo. I’ve often wondered how long a State or Federal Prison system would get away with incarcerating prisoners on decommissioned troop ships, anchored out with prisoners made to maintain ship’s services.
Oh, the inhumanity of it all!
Can we investigate outsourcing our Gitmo facilities to Syria? Seems to me to be a win-win. Syria gets an economic boost, we get rid of a publicity problem and the jihadi’s get their 72.
Oh, Paul… where to begin?
Death is preferable to …
1) NO Rights: are you talking about the people who are so protected that even the Koran must be held in high regard by their guards, who are not of the Muslim faith. Special diets, foot baths, exercise hours… it goes on. They have more rights than many Americans who are not imprisoned.
2) NO Trial: are you listening, Paul. Please check out the recent Supreme’s song and dance about trials for this group of ENEMY combatants. Did your grandfather ask Hitler or Stalin for a trial?
3) NO Parole: Oh, that we should let these poor soldiers of Al-Quaida or the Taliban out early so they might join their bretheren on the battle field, you know – to kill our own children, mothers and fathers, a bit earlier than those we have already released. Parole? Are you kidding? These fine people are military prisoners who would kill, given the slightest chance.
4) NO Status: Hey, they have status. They’re prisoners of war!! Are we now to be concerned with foes’, who would kill us, status? Paul, they’re the enemy! They shot bullets and missiles at my very own. Status… they’re getting better than what they deserve.
5) NO Hope: I have an idea. How ’bout you give them voting rights… Mr Obama will give them hope. (Really, Paul, hope for what… a better life? NEWS FLASH: They enjoy a better life as our prisoners than that which they had before.)
6) NO End in Sight: You posit that death would be better than the situation in which they find themselves. Is that why they brutally kill, maim and decapitate U.S. military men and U.S. citizens? They’re doing them a favor, right… providing them with an end?
Paul, you have no clue!!! A phrase from the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” says “Let us die to make men free…” Many people have died so you may live and breathe your warped sense of what is happening in the world today. You seem to be more concerned with our enemy’s well-being than that of your neighbor.
Men and women are fighting and dying for you today, Paul, in both Afghanistan and Iraq. How about you give them the respect they deserve? At least as much as you wish for those who’s goal it is to kill any and all Americans they may.
Our guys are the home team, Paul. Whose side are you on?
PeterGunn, the detainees are NOT prisoners of war. They haven’t earned that status. Paul is wrong on the status, but I’ll grant him a little wiggle room here. They are in a grey area. The Third Geneva Convention covers the treatment of prisoners of war, and defines who is a prisoner of war. These folks ain’t.
The Fourth GC covers treatment of noncombatants, or protected persons. The most narrow reading of the two conventions would lead you to believe that those are the only two classes of persons as neither convention specifically mentions unlawful combatants. But the 4CG specifies who is a protected person, and how they must qualify. It doesn’t specify what their status is if they do not qualify as protected persons. Hence, they grey area.
It is my speculation that this failure to define those persons who are neither lawful combatants being held as POWs nor protected persons was deliberate on the part of the parties that drafted the conventions- this as a means to have the ability to define them and how they should be treated.
But Paul is mistaken in his assertation that detainees have no status, no hope and no end in sight. Each of the detainees is subject to review by our military to justify holding them further. He may not like the structure, but it is in place and their representation by JAG officers very impressive, so much so that many honorable JAG officers have been accused of being on the wrong side.
Thanks for the solid info, Brad. I stand corrected in the legalities of who these people are.
As far as it goes, between you and me, I’ll probably continue to think of them as prisoners of war, just the same. It seems as though that may have been where you were headed?
Peter, they are far closer, in my mind, to the status of pirates, than POWs.
If you fight in accordance with the law of war, you are accorded that status. Why should we bestow that upon people who honor none of the conventions of war? Pirates of old were “outside the law” and forfeited the protections of such.
I went fishing today, on a lake a few miles north of my home, my nephews of 8 (and a half!) and 5 years in tow.
I caught a carp. Well, OK I had a rod ripped from its holder and taken to the murky depths while I was away from it teaching nephew #1 how to slide a worm on a hook, I got a rather impressive sunburn, I discovered we did not pack appropriate amounts of water, and that though The Company I Work For has stayed operational lo these 20 years they apparently cannot do so on the Saturday *I* am on-call and paged me four times. Ssomewhere in there I caught a carp on my hook.
Why, yes, it was a busy day. Thanks for asking.
So I remove the hook from the mouth of this carp and the eldest nephew asks if he can see it. I answer yes. Eldest nephew approaches gingerly. I announce that he can either pick it up and throw it in or he can kick it into the water, but he has about 5 seconds to do so because fish out of water can’t breathe and we’re not going to let it suffer. Nephew allows as how I should throw it back.
Brother-in-law, half the s0urce of the nephews, cries out. “You’re throwing back a carp?”
“Yeah,” says I, “I’m not about to follow Fish and Game law and kill something just because it’s not liked or may compete with other fish. Follow that path and you’re weaning your country of Jews and Gypsies by law. I won’t go there.”
I then stated to my nephew, “I’m throwing this one back. He’s too small to eat, and as one of God’s creatures we’re going to let him live.”
I hope the boy takes the lesson to respect life.
Now, about those AQ detainees. They’re alive, though in prison. Beats the heck out of a firing squad if they were captured out of uniform and unable to name their chain of command.
Soldiers wear uniforms so they might stand out on the battlefield, as members of the oppositon. Armed combatants. Armed combatants that disassociate themselves from the civilians via place and time and uniform are to be treated honorably and as prisoners of war.
People who hide in the civiliam populace? They are not covered under the Geneva conventions, are not soldiers serving with honor. In more traditional times they’d be cast as spies and shot on sight, burial in the latrine hole once the camp moved on.
So, one might say these folks in Guantanimo lack a few rights. That may be true. They’re still breathing, aren’t they? Better treatment than most irregulars get. Better than we give to carp, at least according to our laws.
Kind of gives one a bit of perspective.
– Max
Thank you for sharing that, Max.
Your words are well chosen and edifying to consider.
I once saw the father of a friend of mine brutally deal with a ‘trash fish’ on a fishing trip they had invited me on, and that brief moment turned me off from sport fishing for life.
I’m curious now about the status and specified treatment of pirates. Eaglespeak has daily reports about pirate activity.
Best regards, Peter Warner.
Max,
In being kind to the carp, you chose to break the Fish & Game regulations put in place to protect the health of the entire lake. The fish has no moral agenda, but it’s natural behaviors threaten the health of the ecosystem. Letting one go probably makes no difference in a lake full of them, but every one removed is one less problem.
We can be as kind as we want to the Islamist prisoners at Gitmo. But if we let them go, their sworn objective is to convert the entire world to their system of thinking, and kill anyone that resists. It really isn’t the handful we are storing that is the issue, it’s what do we do about the millions we haven’t caught yet. Still, every one not out there plotting my death, and yours, is one less problem.
Well said, ASM, and thought-provoking. My policy towards the carp is fairly simple — it was there already, in throwing it back I made things no better but also no worse, and I didn’t take life where I had no need to. Leave no trace, as the Boy Scouts like to say.
But you raise a good point. Carp aren’t a plague, an overwhelming invasion that must be fought and lives taken on both sides until each can live in peace. We face many such threats, the Islamists are but one of them. My respect for the sanctity of life dwindles remarkably when said life is violently opposed to my own.
I shall have to study the carp problem more, come up with a moral solution I can sleep soundly with.
Perhaps they’ll make good fertilizer for the garden, that at least in their death they’ll still provide food for my family albeit indirectly. Aren’t we told of the Indians doing this when teaching the Pilgrims how to plant maize? Yeah, I could do that and look myself in the mirror afterwords.
(Snort!) Betcha the Indians and Pilgrims never thought about fertilizing a row of sweet corn with a bucket of carp and a wood chipper…
– Max
PG, Brad, Max, et al.
Who’s side am I on? I am on our side. If they have been chopping the heads off of people, then lets try them for murder. Sniping, exploding bombs around, shooting at or otherwise causing death to our troops or anyone else for that matter, lets charge them with murder or attempted murder. If they have been conspiring, or aiding in terrorist operations, then lets try them on conspiracy or aiding and abetting. IF they have broken any laws at all, then by all means lets try them and lock them up for a good long time.
The fact that six years on, nobody has been tried or charged bothers me. Military Tribunals, fine. Courts marshal, great. Let’s do it. We are not running the Bastille East.
It’s in the Constitution, the same one I swore to up hold and defend.