(i) You ought to ask yourself a question: here we are, at war with people who've declared they want to kill or enslave us all and destroy our civilization,

When exactly did Afghan taxi-drivers declare they wanted to kill or enslave us all and destroy our civilization, Stirling? New York cab drivers, okay, but Afghanis?

ii, -- that's individual persons, as I said. It simply doesn't apply in this instance.

Why - because you say so?

They're held as individuals. The Third Convention is quite clear: "Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal." That's in article 5 of the one signed, by the US in 1949 (or possibly 1950).

iii, It's interesting to watch who reflexively tries to handicap the side of good and empower that of evil.

It's interesting to watch people who use terms such as "good " and "evil" without regard for actually demonstrating an undrestanding of which side their tactics put them on.

iv, Law, in the sense of binding, enforceable edicts, is the product of sovereign power.

Can you tell us what the first power of the President mentioned in the second paragraph of Article 2 Section 2 of the Constitution is?

v, When they think it's in their interests to disregard treaties (or customary methods), they do so. Eg., we simply renounced our nonproliferation treaty with the USSR some time ago.

And when exactly did the US renounce the Charter of the United Nations, Stirling? Date, please. States have a right to renounce treaties - when they ignore them or disregard them, this is regarded as dishonourable.

vi, In the current situation, the _entire organization_ we are fighting is in violation, and hence _none_ of its personnel have any protection.(*)

Really? I refer you to the Third Convention, Article 4, Section 1, the sixth category of "Prisoners of War" mentioned. We also note that the US treated with the Taliban prior to Sept. 11th, suggesting that it considered it the de facto government of Afghanistan, which was logical based on its control of the country.

And before you go on about them all being "terrorists", that determination is left by the Conventions to a competant tribunal - which you are not.

And, of course, your country is also torturing Iraqis. That is to say, people who have taken up arms against an occupying army after an illegal invasion. Insurgents. Resistance fighters. "Red Dawn" style patriots.

Apologies: I was unclear as to why the tribunal provision didn't apply in this case.

The tribunal provision is designed to separate the sheep from the goats -- those who are entitled to the protections of the Convention from those who aren't, in a situation where most are but some aren't.

It's aimed at segregating _individuals_ who have violated the provisions of the Conventions, from a mass who _are_ entitled to the protections.

In the current situation, the _entire organization_ we are fighting is in violation, and hence _none_ of its personnel have any protection.(*)

_Everyone_ on the other side is in violation, by definition.

It's not a matter of determining whether one individual wasn't wearing a uniform, or any other specific violation, since the organization for which they were fighting doesn't abide by the Conventions as a matter of policy.

For example, during WWII the Germans didn't abide by the Conventions on the Eastern Front; it wasn't a matter of individual violations, but of deliberate and systematic disregard ordered from the top.

Therefore the Soviets were under no obligation to treat German POW's any better than the Germans treated theirs; and in point of fact, they didn't.

Conversely, in NW Europe, Italy and North Africa, the German army (generally speaking) abided by the Conventions in its treatment of British and American soldiers. Hence we were obliged to respond in kind.

I hope that's clearly put.

(*) of course, there might be a question as to whether some individual wasn't in fact a member of al-Qaeda or the Taliban or whatever. However, that doesn't bring the Conventions into the picture either, of course.

"International Law" is one of the illusions of our age.

There is, in fact, no such thing as "international law" in the sense far too many people use it; the type of prat who thinks the UN is some sort of global legislature or embryonic government. Or that its pronouncements are anything but statements of opinion from the sort of organization that puts Syria and the Sudan on its Human Rights Committee.

Law, in the sense of binding, enforceable edicts, is the product of sovereign power. It applies within the boundaries of sovereign states, who enforce it through their courts and police, and ultimately by the military in the event of insurrection.

States make treaties with each other, and abide by them as long as they please. When they think it's in their interests to disregard treaties (or customary methods), they do so. Eg., we simply renounced our nonproliferation treaty with the USSR some time ago.

Nothing constrains them except the threat of retaliation by other sovereign states.

It's rather like the relations between Mafia families, who also make treaties with each other and have customary methods of solving disputes. When those don't suit, they "go to the matresses".

International affairs is not ruled by law, since there is no world government and nothing beyond or above the authority of the State. It's an anarchy _sensu strictu_, ruled by force and its threat.

The above is a descrptive statement: it's the way things are.

Prescriptive statement: that's exactly the way it should be.

The sovereign nation-state is the sole possible locus of democratic self-government.

Witness recent events in Europe, where the people mounted a roar of protest at having authority leached away from the places where they can hold it to account. "The People" exist only in the context of "the nation".

More generally, since we're fighting people who don't follow the rules, _the rules don't apply at all_.

This is elementary logic. If we were bound by the rules, and they weren't, it would be impossible to fight them effectively.

They want a war to the knife, they get a war to the knife. War by the "Hama Rules", which are simple: a) rule or die, b) there are no rules.

It's interesting to watch who reflexively tries to handicap the side of good and empower that of evil. There's some psychological mechanism involving an unacknowledged self-loathing at work.

"Should any doubt arise as to whether persons,"

-- that's individual persons, as I said. It simply doesn't apply in this instance. And, of course, the so-called ammendments of 1977 don't apply at all, since we didn't sign them.

You ought to ask yourself a question: here we are, at war with people who've declared they want to kill or enslave us all and destroy our civilization, and your instinctive impulse is to cark at your own side, and sympathize with the sort of people who blow themselves up in restaurants full of mothers and children.

Why, exactly, do you have this reflex?

Dave: JoatSimeon is S. M. Stirling.

Could somebody explain who JoatSimeon is.

I'd like to make sure I don't know him.

"Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal."

Convention 3, Part 1, Article 5. The Guantanamo prisoners have (allegedly) committed belligerent acts, and have fallen into the hands of the enemy. The convention says that they are to be accorded the protections of the convention until a competent tribunal says otherwise.

"Isn't it true that some unknown proportion of the Gitmo detainess were not under arms when arrested, and there's no way of knowing whether they were combatants _at all_?
-- well, they'd say that, wouldn't they? "

And the people holding them captive would disagree, wouldn't they? A tribunal would be a good place for the airing of evidence, wouldn't it. But no, I forgot, you've decided that the rules don't apply. Convenient.

Jim, I saw him first, that fiver's mine.

>because the other places you mentioned were
> violations of the general rules. We're not violating any
> rule.

You are a twat and I claim my £5.00

Cheers

Jim

In a message dated 6/23/2005 7:11:00 AM Mountain Standard Time, qtopic+15-cysSFgyrHZf@quicktopic.com writes:

Don't the rules also say that the decision not to apply the
Geneva rules to a given prisoner must be made by a competent
tribunal?
-- nope. You're thinking of taking measures against _individuals_ who've violated the Conventions. This is quite different; their entire _side_ are outside the Conventions.

Isn't it true that some unknown proportion of the Gitmo detainess were not under arms when arrested, and there's no way of knowing whether they were combatants _at all_?
-- well, they'd say that, wouldn't they?
 
>And if your position is simply "The rules are - here we make therules", why
the sniffiness about people comparing Gitmo to other places where the same judgement has been made?



-- because the other places you mentioned were violations of the general rules. We're not violating any rule.

Don't the rules also say that the decision not to apply the Geneva rules to a given prisoner must be made by a competent tribunal?
Isn't it true that some unknown proportion of the Gitmo detainess were not under arms when arrested, and there's no way of knowing whether they were combatants _at all_?
And if your position is simply "The rules are - here we make the rules", why the sniffiness about people comparing Gitmo to other places where the same judgement has been made?

And to get technical, the detainees at Gitmo (or in the "Hotel California") have neither the rights of criminal defendants nor those of prisoners of war.
On the one hand, they were captured in war, not arrested on suspicion of crimes. They haven't necessarily committed any offense except being on the other side.
 
In war, you don't arrest enemy combatants; you just kill them on sight, armed or unarmed, coming at you or running away, or for that matter while they're sleeping or sitting on the crapper. The only time you're not allowed to kill them is when they're actively trying to give up, and you're under no obligation to go out of your way to give them an opportunity to do so; eg., when you bomb a troop-train or a truck convoy with PGM's from 35,000 feet.
 
When you do capture them, you're perfectly entitled to hold them prisoner until the conflict is over. We didn't release our German prisoners in 1944, or let them have lawyers.
 
Hence, Gitmo detainees have no right to legal representation, to be charged with a crime, or what have you. We _can_ charge them with crimes and try them if we find an individual has done something skanky, but we don't have to. They're not being held for committing crimes, but for being taken in arms against the United States.
 
On the other hand, since they were fighting for states and/or organizations which don't themselves abide by the laws of war when dealing with us, they therefore have no protection as prisoners of war under the Conventions, which apply only to those who follow them themselves.
 
Eg., the rules say that combatants are allowed to hide physically but cannot pretend to be innocent bystanders; they must wear uniform or other identifying marks (armbands, etc.) which make them easy to distinguish from civilians, and they must carry weapons openly.(*)
 
If you don't do the above, you're fair game for anything, and these turkeys were certainly not abiding by that rule or any of the others.
 
Hence we have a perfect right to do whatever we want with them, including just shooting them in the back of the head whenever we please. They're the "enemies-general of human kind", like pirates.
 
If we chose to be more merciful than that, it's purely out of the goodness of our hearts or calculation of our own interests, not any form of obligation whether moral or legal.
 
(*) and you can't go home, bury the rifle, take off the uniform/armband, pretend to be a farmer, and then start up again later, either.

In a message dated 6/22/2005 12:41:04 PM Mountain Standard Time, qtopic+15-cysSFgyrHZf@quicktopic.com writes:

Actually, Steve, I wouldn't dismiss Jonathan's argument that
quickly.


-- it should have included "that's a perfectly kosher detention camp" as an option.

Actually, Steve, I wouldn't dismiss Jonathan's argument that quickly. Far as I can see between the typos, he's not saying the USA is equivalent to Nazism/Khmer Rouge/etc, but saying that we need metrics that allow us to clearly gauge how a society is doing. There's a political continuum that, along one axis, presumably includes both states with a (hypothetical) perfect human rights record and states that practice internal and external genocide; it would be kind of useful to understand how to evaluate it without miscounting stuff.

(If you're an animal rights nutter, then by your own cultural standard of "meat is murder" every country on the planet is carrying out a campaign of genocide, or at least condoning freelance mass murder in death camps called "farms". Being able to exclude this sort of argument from the debate, without going so far in the opposite direction that we fall for arguments of the form "that's not a death camp, that's a perfectly legal penal facility for dealing with criminals", is pretty important.)

In a message dated 6/21/2005 9:28:14 AM Mountain Standard Time, qtopic+15-cysSFgyrHZf@quicktopic.com writes:

Is the USA's position regarding Gitmo
closer to Nazi death camps, Khmer Rouge killing fields, or USSR
gulags, for example.


-- well, that settles that.

I've just written a 3,900 word draft paper on "The Topology of Politics" -- a subject that Mr. Stross has explored in "Elector." I've emailed copies to several folks who've requested it, and have at least 1,000 words more to add in the next draft. I mention this here for the Stross connection, and that Arrow's Theorem and problems with voting were mentioned here earlier. Readers debate as to whether or not political positions can be infinitely far apart, whether political position space is separable, whether political position space is a metric space. One key issue is to measure (if possible) the difference between political positions. Is the USA's position regarding Gitmo closer to Nazi death camps, Khmer Rouge killing fields, or USSR gulags, for example. USA is not Nzi, one comments, but is it different enough? Does the triangle inequality hold? Is the space dense (is there always a compromise position in between any two positions)?Hacker's said, some 20 years ago, that "topology is politics" -- but does that apply only to decisionmaking about networks, or is it more general? Writing nonfiction gets in the way of writing fiction, but it can get faster feedback.