Thursday, February 23, 2006
Paul Campos' Opinion
Paul Campos is a law professor. I believe, from reading him for several months, that he is a liberal. Here's what he wrote this week in the Rocky Mountain News with my comments in color interspersed
This is the story key word of a man without a name. For the past four years he has been a prisoner of the United States government; yet if our leaders had their way, the fact he even exists would remain unknown to anyone but themselves. That's because the best way to fight against an enemy who will not wear a uniform is to make the illegal combatant seem to disappear, if we capture them. It is a sound tactic. According to the administration, this man is a terrorist, and therefore deciding whether to imprison him indefinitely without trial is the sole and unreviewable prerogative of the president. That's correct, but we say he is a prisoner of war not a terrorist, and an illegal combatant at that (so we could execute him as we did the German spies/saboteurs (that is, soldiers who would not wear uniforms) in the ex parte Quirin case). He's not a criminal being imprisoned while charges are prepared and prosecuted. We're in a war not a series of unrelated crimes. The inability of the left to grasp this fact is becoming very tedious.
His real crime is that he was born in Afghanistan. I'll grant Professor Campos that he would probably not be in Guantanamo Bay if he had not been born in or traveled to Afghanistan. But, as I just said, this is not a matter of criminal activity but of fighting in a war. War not crime. Will anything convince the liberal elements of our society that we are in a war? This negligent act sarcasm is not the Professor's strong point caused him to be conscripted by Taliban soldiers, except for a recent article in the LA Times which obviously Mr Campos took for gospel and clearly was the basis for this ill thought out editorial, I've never seen any evidence of conscription by the Taliban--did he have his draft card with him when he was captured? but this is a strawman argument, see below who forced him to become a cook's assistant in the city of Narim. When Narim was attacked, he fled the city before surrendering to the Northern Alliance. These soldiers then turned the cook's assistant over to the American military, who imprisoned him at Guantanamo Bay. The soldiers who were drafted by the Germans during WWII and forced to fight were kept as prisoners of war after capture during that war right along with the Waffen SS zealots. There is no mental state for prisoner of war status (true believers imprisoned, unwilling draftees returned to the fight) because prisoner of war status in not a matter of committing a crime. Engaging in a legal indeed righteous war (like WWII for us and our allies) can cause you to spend time as a prisoner of war. It has to be an unwillingness to see this that keeps Mr. Campos writing silly things.
The administration takes the view that being conscripted into the Taliban as a cook's assistant makes someone a terrorist, no, they take the view that being captured while fighting against American forces and our allies makes one a prisoner of war and that fleeing from aerial bombardment constitutes "engaging in hostilities" against United States forces. Wouldn't that necessarily be so? I'm unclear what Mr. Campos thinks is engaging in hostilities. My father never fired a shot during WWII, but was often fleeing from aerial bombardment by Japanese kamikazes; I think by those acts he was engaging in hostilities against Japanese forces and he has the medals to prove it. The administration also believes that such people should have no access to lawyers or courts, right, just as the German and Japanese prisoners of war did not have access to lawyers and courts; more confusion of war with crime. I believe there is nothing that will convince Mr Campos and his ilk that we are at war and that they should be "detained" - this is a polite word for being locked in a cage kinda, some at Guantanamo have cells and some have a more communal sort of living, kinda like prisoner of war barracks- and subjected to "coercive interrogation techniques," (which is a polite phrase for torture) No, coercive interrogation techniques are short of torture. Only torture is torture and to call other, lesser things torture slanders our troops, undercuts the outrage we should feel against real torturers, and debases the suffering of real victims of torture until the end of the global war on terror, which is to say for the rest of their lives. This might be true particularly if Mr. Campos and his ilk make it so hard to conduct the war properly we are unable to win it quickly or at all.
There is nothing unusual about this nameless man's tale. Most of the 500 men being held at Guantanamo Bay can tell a similar one this also Al Jezeera's position here - or would if they hadn't been forbidden from speaking to anyone in the outside world. Which is absolutely appropriate for this sort of war. Because the Supreme Court has finally allowed lawyers to examine the allegations against these men, we now know that almost none of them are terrorists in even the loosest sense of the term, and that indeed most of them are guilty of nothing. Even if we knew this, and the only ones talking are those without Rule 602 knowledge (so I'm not prepared to use the word 'know") the repetition of the word terrorists and guilty again shows Mr. Campos has missed the point. Again, we do not accuse them of being terrorist or of having committed any crime but of taking up arms against American troops or our allies and being captured during that time or immediately thereafter.
Glimpses of this shameful story can be gotten from a report authored by Mark Denbeaux, a Seton Hall University law professor, and his son Joshua, an attorney in private practice. Thanks for the link, pal, I couldn't find this guy's or his son's report through google although there were plenty of stories in which the good professor Denbeaux was quoted. This report reveals that, according to the government's own allegations, only a handful of the prisoners at Guantanamo are supposedly al-Qaida fighters, and that only a tiny percentage were captured by U.S. forces (many were turned over to the U.S. by bounty hunters; the evidence against them consists of nothing more than the bounty hunters' accusations). This is semantical nonsense, the US government's report is about categories into which the group of prisoners belongs. Belonging to neither the Taliban or al Qaeda (as 10% did) is not the same as 'was not captured bearing arms and/or engaging in hostilities' but his intentional confusion about these different concepts is the only explanation I have for this rhetorical legerdemain by Mr. Campos These concessions are all the more stunning once one realizes that the government defines being a member of al-Qaida so loosely that prisoners who have been accused of having spoken to someone in al-Qaida can be declared members of the organization on that basis alone. Is there any support for this accusation?
Combine this with the fact that, unlike the cook's assistant, who was with the Taliban, right?--but against his will the majority of the prisoners are not charged with "engaging in hostilities," and it becomes clear that most of these men were not even Taliban conscripts, let alone terrorists. Not clear at all. And this is the case even though the report is forced to assume, how can a report assume? Back to remedial English class for the Professor because these men have been denied any access to lawyers or courts, I thought he just said that lawyers were visiting them that everything the government alleges is true. (Imagine what this "evidence" would look like if the government was actually required to prove anything). I imagine it is compelling. Mr. Campos, who wants to believe the worst against the US, based almost exclusively on the self serving, untested (by their lawyers) statements of the prisoners smuggled out though the lawyers who rush to help our enemy, imagines it is less than compelling. I decline, without better sources, to imagine the same fantasy Mr. Campos seems to revel in.
The only difference between the Gulag and Guantanamo is the scale of the crime. (There is one other difference: Stalin's efforts to keep the homeland secure were not inconvenienced by independent courts or a free press.) So Guantanamo is like the Stalinist Gulags and not like the German and Japanese Prisoner of War camps during WWII. Another false comparison and cheap shot at our troops who necessarily must be like the Soviet Gulag guards, a position Dick Durbin is already on record as agreeing with. The men who ordered this crime what crime? keeping prisoners of war? not a crime to be committed, and who are taking care to ensure that it continues to be committed, call themselves Christians. Most do; some are Jews who don't. On the Day of Judgment, will it profit them to point out that they imprisoned and tortured just a few hundred innocent men? And what account will we give of what we did or failed to do when we learned such things were being done in our name? Learned from whom? those imprisoned who have had their military tribunal about their status and failed to convince anyone with knowledge of the facts of the captures in front of them (and the ability to cross examine) they were peaceful farmers? You mean the guys who we're keeping as prisoners who probably want to go home and have every reason to lie? That's how we're supposed to learn of this? I'm willing to believe a small percentage of mistakes in any prisoner population because, as humans, we do our best but are not perfect. I do not believe Paul Campos, his unnamed sources in the LA Times, the contracts professor at Seaton Hall he mentions or his son, whose primary source of information could only be the prisoners, because I do not believe the prisoners, mainly because of the captured al Qaeda documents which instructed those captured to lie about their status and treatment, and because of the series of whopping big lies that have appeared in American newspapers about Guantanamo Bay.
The last, about Christians answering on Judgment Day, is pure drek and the worst sort of appeal only to emotions. Keeping our enemies locked up in prisoner of war camps is not illegal nor un-Christian. The alternative is to kill the prisoners (a barbaric act) or to release them to return to the fight so they can kill Americans and our allies (a stupid act which has already happened--several of those released from Guantanamo have returned to fighting against us after their release (Mr. Campos would no doubt believe that we turned them into terrorists by the allegedly criminal imprisonment and torture, rather than they were our enemies who talked their way out of proper imprisonment, but I have noticed that many on the left always choose the side which reflects most badly on America and hold the murderous enemy in a sort of Rousseau-like 'innocent savage' light).
One last time--We're at war; we're not the victims of a crime on 9/11/01.
This is the story key word of a man without a name. For the past four years he has been a prisoner of the United States government; yet if our leaders had their way, the fact he even exists would remain unknown to anyone but themselves. That's because the best way to fight against an enemy who will not wear a uniform is to make the illegal combatant seem to disappear, if we capture them. It is a sound tactic. According to the administration, this man is a terrorist, and therefore deciding whether to imprison him indefinitely without trial is the sole and unreviewable prerogative of the president. That's correct, but we say he is a prisoner of war not a terrorist, and an illegal combatant at that (so we could execute him as we did the German spies/saboteurs (that is, soldiers who would not wear uniforms) in the ex parte Quirin case). He's not a criminal being imprisoned while charges are prepared and prosecuted. We're in a war not a series of unrelated crimes. The inability of the left to grasp this fact is becoming very tedious.
His real crime is that he was born in Afghanistan. I'll grant Professor Campos that he would probably not be in Guantanamo Bay if he had not been born in or traveled to Afghanistan. But, as I just said, this is not a matter of criminal activity but of fighting in a war. War not crime. Will anything convince the liberal elements of our society that we are in a war? This negligent act sarcasm is not the Professor's strong point caused him to be conscripted by Taliban soldiers, except for a recent article in the LA Times which obviously Mr Campos took for gospel and clearly was the basis for this ill thought out editorial, I've never seen any evidence of conscription by the Taliban--did he have his draft card with him when he was captured? but this is a strawman argument, see below who forced him to become a cook's assistant in the city of Narim. When Narim was attacked, he fled the city before surrendering to the Northern Alliance. These soldiers then turned the cook's assistant over to the American military, who imprisoned him at Guantanamo Bay. The soldiers who were drafted by the Germans during WWII and forced to fight were kept as prisoners of war after capture during that war right along with the Waffen SS zealots. There is no mental state for prisoner of war status (true believers imprisoned, unwilling draftees returned to the fight) because prisoner of war status in not a matter of committing a crime. Engaging in a legal indeed righteous war (like WWII for us and our allies) can cause you to spend time as a prisoner of war. It has to be an unwillingness to see this that keeps Mr. Campos writing silly things.
The administration takes the view that being conscripted into the Taliban as a cook's assistant makes someone a terrorist, no, they take the view that being captured while fighting against American forces and our allies makes one a prisoner of war and that fleeing from aerial bombardment constitutes "engaging in hostilities" against United States forces. Wouldn't that necessarily be so? I'm unclear what Mr. Campos thinks is engaging in hostilities. My father never fired a shot during WWII, but was often fleeing from aerial bombardment by Japanese kamikazes; I think by those acts he was engaging in hostilities against Japanese forces and he has the medals to prove it. The administration also believes that such people should have no access to lawyers or courts, right, just as the German and Japanese prisoners of war did not have access to lawyers and courts; more confusion of war with crime. I believe there is nothing that will convince Mr Campos and his ilk that we are at war and that they should be "detained" - this is a polite word for being locked in a cage kinda, some at Guantanamo have cells and some have a more communal sort of living, kinda like prisoner of war barracks- and subjected to "coercive interrogation techniques," (which is a polite phrase for torture) No, coercive interrogation techniques are short of torture. Only torture is torture and to call other, lesser things torture slanders our troops, undercuts the outrage we should feel against real torturers, and debases the suffering of real victims of torture until the end of the global war on terror, which is to say for the rest of their lives. This might be true particularly if Mr. Campos and his ilk make it so hard to conduct the war properly we are unable to win it quickly or at all.
There is nothing unusual about this nameless man's tale. Most of the 500 men being held at Guantanamo Bay can tell a similar one this also Al Jezeera's position here - or would if they hadn't been forbidden from speaking to anyone in the outside world. Which is absolutely appropriate for this sort of war. Because the Supreme Court has finally allowed lawyers to examine the allegations against these men, we now know that almost none of them are terrorists in even the loosest sense of the term, and that indeed most of them are guilty of nothing. Even if we knew this, and the only ones talking are those without Rule 602 knowledge (so I'm not prepared to use the word 'know") the repetition of the word terrorists and guilty again shows Mr. Campos has missed the point. Again, we do not accuse them of being terrorist or of having committed any crime but of taking up arms against American troops or our allies and being captured during that time or immediately thereafter.
Glimpses of this shameful story can be gotten from a report authored by Mark Denbeaux, a Seton Hall University law professor, and his son Joshua, an attorney in private practice. Thanks for the link, pal, I couldn't find this guy's or his son's report through google although there were plenty of stories in which the good professor Denbeaux was quoted. This report reveals that, according to the government's own allegations, only a handful of the prisoners at Guantanamo are supposedly al-Qaida fighters, and that only a tiny percentage were captured by U.S. forces (many were turned over to the U.S. by bounty hunters; the evidence against them consists of nothing more than the bounty hunters' accusations). This is semantical nonsense, the US government's report is about categories into which the group of prisoners belongs. Belonging to neither the Taliban or al Qaeda (as 10% did) is not the same as 'was not captured bearing arms and/or engaging in hostilities' but his intentional confusion about these different concepts is the only explanation I have for this rhetorical legerdemain by Mr. Campos These concessions are all the more stunning once one realizes that the government defines being a member of al-Qaida so loosely that prisoners who have been accused of having spoken to someone in al-Qaida can be declared members of the organization on that basis alone. Is there any support for this accusation?
Combine this with the fact that, unlike the cook's assistant, who was with the Taliban, right?--but against his will the majority of the prisoners are not charged with "engaging in hostilities," and it becomes clear that most of these men were not even Taliban conscripts, let alone terrorists. Not clear at all. And this is the case even though the report is forced to assume, how can a report assume? Back to remedial English class for the Professor because these men have been denied any access to lawyers or courts, I thought he just said that lawyers were visiting them that everything the government alleges is true. (Imagine what this "evidence" would look like if the government was actually required to prove anything). I imagine it is compelling. Mr. Campos, who wants to believe the worst against the US, based almost exclusively on the self serving, untested (by their lawyers) statements of the prisoners smuggled out though the lawyers who rush to help our enemy, imagines it is less than compelling. I decline, without better sources, to imagine the same fantasy Mr. Campos seems to revel in.
The only difference between the Gulag and Guantanamo is the scale of the crime. (There is one other difference: Stalin's efforts to keep the homeland secure were not inconvenienced by independent courts or a free press.) So Guantanamo is like the Stalinist Gulags and not like the German and Japanese Prisoner of War camps during WWII. Another false comparison and cheap shot at our troops who necessarily must be like the Soviet Gulag guards, a position Dick Durbin is already on record as agreeing with. The men who ordered this crime what crime? keeping prisoners of war? not a crime to be committed, and who are taking care to ensure that it continues to be committed, call themselves Christians. Most do; some are Jews who don't. On the Day of Judgment, will it profit them to point out that they imprisoned and tortured just a few hundred innocent men? And what account will we give of what we did or failed to do when we learned such things were being done in our name? Learned from whom? those imprisoned who have had their military tribunal about their status and failed to convince anyone with knowledge of the facts of the captures in front of them (and the ability to cross examine) they were peaceful farmers? You mean the guys who we're keeping as prisoners who probably want to go home and have every reason to lie? That's how we're supposed to learn of this? I'm willing to believe a small percentage of mistakes in any prisoner population because, as humans, we do our best but are not perfect. I do not believe Paul Campos, his unnamed sources in the LA Times, the contracts professor at Seaton Hall he mentions or his son, whose primary source of information could only be the prisoners, because I do not believe the prisoners, mainly because of the captured al Qaeda documents which instructed those captured to lie about their status and treatment, and because of the series of whopping big lies that have appeared in American newspapers about Guantanamo Bay.
The last, about Christians answering on Judgment Day, is pure drek and the worst sort of appeal only to emotions. Keeping our enemies locked up in prisoner of war camps is not illegal nor un-Christian. The alternative is to kill the prisoners (a barbaric act) or to release them to return to the fight so they can kill Americans and our allies (a stupid act which has already happened--several of those released from Guantanamo have returned to fighting against us after their release (Mr. Campos would no doubt believe that we turned them into terrorists by the allegedly criminal imprisonment and torture, rather than they were our enemies who talked their way out of proper imprisonment, but I have noticed that many on the left always choose the side which reflects most badly on America and hold the murderous enemy in a sort of Rousseau-like 'innocent savage' light).
One last time--We're at war; we're not the victims of a crime on 9/11/01.
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 7:53 PM 
Comments:
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Pure rhetoric Roger,
First definition of war reads...
A state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties.
But this "war on terror" to me is more like the "war on drugs" which falls into the second category...
A concerted effort or campaign to combat or put an end to something considered injurious: the war against acid rain.
If we declared war on Afghanistan or the Taliban, or even Al-Qaida, then I think you would have a better point. Unfortunately, if it was a war on the Taliban that was the justification, these men would have to be realeased since the Taliban have been ousted.
I'll be publishing something on Guantanamo soon. I'd be deligthted if you would read and comment.
Thanks,
Mike
First definition of war reads...
A state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties.
But this "war on terror" to me is more like the "war on drugs" which falls into the second category...
A concerted effort or campaign to combat or put an end to something considered injurious: the war against acid rain.
If we declared war on Afghanistan or the Taliban, or even Al-Qaida, then I think you would have a better point. Unfortunately, if it was a war on the Taliban that was the justification, these men would have to be realeased since the Taliban have been ousted.
I'll be publishing something on Guantanamo soon. I'd be deligthted if you would read and comment.
Thanks,
Mike
Good though, but I do disagree. The AUMF which I have been talking about in FISA/NSA context is a declaration of war against al Qaeda. We disclosed to the Taliban that we needed Bin Laden and would interpret their refusal to do so as support of al Qaeda. The told us to come and get him. I don't see our reaction to that news as the same as the sham wars on poverty, and drugs. That we call it a war on terrorism is because we don't want to lose an early propaganda battle by identifying it as a war against militant islamicism, as it truly is. It's a real war in my book and the continuing battle in Afghanistan is a real war, which we've won.
I look forward to reading a new entry at your foreign blog.
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I look forward to reading a new entry at your foreign blog.
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