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Sep. 26th, 2003 05:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zana16The following is an entry I deleted from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
iwishforpeace, which I mod. I don't believe that this diatribe is in tune with the purpose of the community, which aspires to peace. I have provided a link since I believe in free speech, so the entry and comments are reproduced behind the cut:
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
adamyoshida writes:
For once I agree with Amnesty International and the rest of that sorry lot: there is a human rights problem at the prison camp established for terrorist detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The problem is as such: the terrorists there have human rights: they shouldn’t. By many accounts the Gitmo prison camp has become something of a Club Med for terrorists, who are given good food, prayer mats, and other luxury items. According to some recently-released prisoners the guards are even buying the prisoners things with their own money and several of them have been convinced to convert to Islam. Something must be done to improve the human rights situation at Guantanamo Bay.
For all of the fuss that was made over Taliban and al-Qaeda detainees not being treated as Prisoners of War under the Geneva Convention, the conditions at Guantanamo would seem to be far superior to those in a typical camp for prisoners of war. This must stop immediately. The terrorists there are lucky that the United States has allowed, for now, them to go on living. They should know no comfort or solace in their remaining time upon the Earth.
The main practical reasons for keeping Prisoners of War alive is to give your enemy an incentive to keep the prisoners that it holds alive. Al-Qaeda and its ilk, to say the very least, do not do this. Any American captured by al-Qaeda will almost certainly die relatively soon after their capture. Therefore, there is no reason to keep al-Qaeda prisoners alive except in cases where they might have valuable information to disclose.
Certainly, historically, the members of fighting forces such as al-Qaeda have not been considered prisoners of war. The sort of men who fight out of uniform, conduct terrorist bombings, and operate in the same fashion as the Islamist does do not deserve the protections or the honor of a solider. A spy or bandit caught out of uniform is subject to summary execution in the field. By right all members of al-Qaeda and groups like it should receive nothing more than a single bullet in the head (or rope around a neck and a tree) followed by a quick trip to an unmarked grave. If such a general policy is unacceptable for foolish sentimental and political reasons then, at the very least, we should endeavour to make the remainder of their lives as unpleasant as possible (as well as to reduce their numbers by attrition).
These terrorists should not know a restful night of sleep or a warm and satisfying meal. Instead they ought to be fed meagre rations (preferably with pork as the main staple of their diet) and their receipt of even those rations ought to be made conditional upon the performance of hard labor.
What would I have them do? The first idea which comes to mind is to force them, at gunpoint, to sew Israeli flags, but that hardly seems to be strenuous enough. My preference would be to force them to manually dig and refill graves for sixteen hours a day. This would not only be backbreaking and frustrating- it would also alarm many of the detainees. Just whose graves, they will wonder, are we digging? This way, when some of the terrorists inevitably are killed while attempting to rebel or die by other means, there will be plenty of places to dump them.
Those who can be proven to have committed crimes should face a military trial followed by a swift execution. The rest ought to be provided with sturdy sheets along with rafters to which those sheets might be easily secured.
Right now great lengths are being taken to show respect for the Islamic religion- all of these efforts should end right now. Prayer mats and Korans should be confiscated. Efforts should be taken to deliberately disorient the prisoners in an effort to prevent them from determining where they must turn to face Mecca. Loudspeakers should be set up to broadcast a constant stream of anti-Islamic propaganda.
The discovery of an apparent Islamist spy ring at Guantanamo also makes something else quite clear (something, I might add, which should have been clear a long time ago): no Islamic soldiers should be allowed to serve at the camp. As I have said elsewhere, in a time when the United States is at war with a power which claims to speak for Islam (and which has great support in the Islamic world) no Moslem soldiers should be deployed anywhere they might be directly involved in dealings with al-Qaeda or its associates. Moreover, the men assigned to Guantanamo Bay should be carefully screened to remove those with a strong humanitarian streak. Those assigned to the camp should be hard-core Islamophobes, angry men who’ve lost wives, sisters, brothers or fathers to the terrorists: people who will show no mercy to the human refuse that al-Qaeda members, supporters, and sympathizers are. By means such as these, Gitmo might be made into the Islamists’ Andersonville.
These terrorists who we face now are sub-human scum. They do not deserve to be treated with any decency or respect, but rather as garbage to be disposed of as is convenient to us. They are monsters: murderers, evil and indecent men who are incapable of love or honor. These ‘men’ deserve nothing more than swift exile to hell, any existence that they know in the interim ought to be characterized by nothing more than pain and suffering.
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tropical_rat replies:
Don't worry about it man, we're doing all sorts of things like capturing suspected terrorists families and holding them prisoner until they turn themselves in. Also now that we have territory in Afghanistan and Iraq--neither of which signed the Geneva Convention or various Human rights conventions, we can and are playing smacky-face with these guys. Actually thanks to the Patriot Act, you could be picked up and sent to Iraq and have some smakcy face played on your head, because someone in the DOJ doesn't like you and frankly no one would know because the checks-and-balances are gone. I'm so glad we've decided to be an example of democracy to the world.
quabazaa replies:
I'd just like to say that I object to you calling terrorists "sub-human scum" afterall, they are still human. I believe there is a reason that terrorists exist, and it's not just because they want anarchy. To me it seems like the frustrations of people living in nations which are being strangled and unfairly treated by other countries.. Plus, how can you think that any human rights exist on Guantanamo Bay? If they wanted to give the terrorists human rights, they would be in a prison under US law, not in Cuba where they can do anything they like. Both sides have done a disgusting amount of bad things, and unless nations are willing to treat people proerly, in my opinion it will never stop.
vardissakheli replies:
Peace or vengeance? Pick one. Because I firmly believe you ain't gonna get both.
reyl replies:
This post makes me sick. I don't know what else I can say.
acidbitch replies:
I hope you find peace and resolution for your inner turmoil my angry young conservative friend.
sillygoosegirl replies:
You must be a big fan of Hitler.
That aside, I'd like to point out two things:
(1) People like you are to blame for 9/11. As long as there are still people like you, there will still be terrorism and there will still be war.
(2) Not everyone being held at Guantanamo Bay is a terrorist. They have not had trials. Our government has as much business holding (or killing) potentially innocent people as they had killing potentially innocent people on 9/11. The difference: we should know better and we should be powerful enough to find another way.
iwishforpeace, which I mod. I don't believe that this diatribe is in tune with the purpose of the community, which aspires to peace. I have provided a link since I believe in free speech, so the entry and comments are reproduced behind the cut:adamyoshida writes:For once I agree with Amnesty International and the rest of that sorry lot: there is a human rights problem at the prison camp established for terrorist detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The problem is as such: the terrorists there have human rights: they shouldn’t. By many accounts the Gitmo prison camp has become something of a Club Med for terrorists, who are given good food, prayer mats, and other luxury items. According to some recently-released prisoners the guards are even buying the prisoners things with their own money and several of them have been convinced to convert to Islam. Something must be done to improve the human rights situation at Guantanamo Bay.
For all of the fuss that was made over Taliban and al-Qaeda detainees not being treated as Prisoners of War under the Geneva Convention, the conditions at Guantanamo would seem to be far superior to those in a typical camp for prisoners of war. This must stop immediately. The terrorists there are lucky that the United States has allowed, for now, them to go on living. They should know no comfort or solace in their remaining time upon the Earth.
The main practical reasons for keeping Prisoners of War alive is to give your enemy an incentive to keep the prisoners that it holds alive. Al-Qaeda and its ilk, to say the very least, do not do this. Any American captured by al-Qaeda will almost certainly die relatively soon after their capture. Therefore, there is no reason to keep al-Qaeda prisoners alive except in cases where they might have valuable information to disclose.
Certainly, historically, the members of fighting forces such as al-Qaeda have not been considered prisoners of war. The sort of men who fight out of uniform, conduct terrorist bombings, and operate in the same fashion as the Islamist does do not deserve the protections or the honor of a solider. A spy or bandit caught out of uniform is subject to summary execution in the field. By right all members of al-Qaeda and groups like it should receive nothing more than a single bullet in the head (or rope around a neck and a tree) followed by a quick trip to an unmarked grave. If such a general policy is unacceptable for foolish sentimental and political reasons then, at the very least, we should endeavour to make the remainder of their lives as unpleasant as possible (as well as to reduce their numbers by attrition).
These terrorists should not know a restful night of sleep or a warm and satisfying meal. Instead they ought to be fed meagre rations (preferably with pork as the main staple of their diet) and their receipt of even those rations ought to be made conditional upon the performance of hard labor.
What would I have them do? The first idea which comes to mind is to force them, at gunpoint, to sew Israeli flags, but that hardly seems to be strenuous enough. My preference would be to force them to manually dig and refill graves for sixteen hours a day. This would not only be backbreaking and frustrating- it would also alarm many of the detainees. Just whose graves, they will wonder, are we digging? This way, when some of the terrorists inevitably are killed while attempting to rebel or die by other means, there will be plenty of places to dump them.
Those who can be proven to have committed crimes should face a military trial followed by a swift execution. The rest ought to be provided with sturdy sheets along with rafters to which those sheets might be easily secured.
Right now great lengths are being taken to show respect for the Islamic religion- all of these efforts should end right now. Prayer mats and Korans should be confiscated. Efforts should be taken to deliberately disorient the prisoners in an effort to prevent them from determining where they must turn to face Mecca. Loudspeakers should be set up to broadcast a constant stream of anti-Islamic propaganda.
The discovery of an apparent Islamist spy ring at Guantanamo also makes something else quite clear (something, I might add, which should have been clear a long time ago): no Islamic soldiers should be allowed to serve at the camp. As I have said elsewhere, in a time when the United States is at war with a power which claims to speak for Islam (and which has great support in the Islamic world) no Moslem soldiers should be deployed anywhere they might be directly involved in dealings with al-Qaeda or its associates. Moreover, the men assigned to Guantanamo Bay should be carefully screened to remove those with a strong humanitarian streak. Those assigned to the camp should be hard-core Islamophobes, angry men who’ve lost wives, sisters, brothers or fathers to the terrorists: people who will show no mercy to the human refuse that al-Qaeda members, supporters, and sympathizers are. By means such as these, Gitmo might be made into the Islamists’ Andersonville.
These terrorists who we face now are sub-human scum. They do not deserve to be treated with any decency or respect, but rather as garbage to be disposed of as is convenient to us. They are monsters: murderers, evil and indecent men who are incapable of love or honor. These ‘men’ deserve nothing more than swift exile to hell, any existence that they know in the interim ought to be characterized by nothing more than pain and suffering.
-----------------------------------------------
tropical_rat replies:Don't worry about it man, we're doing all sorts of things like capturing suspected terrorists families and holding them prisoner until they turn themselves in. Also now that we have territory in Afghanistan and Iraq--neither of which signed the Geneva Convention or various Human rights conventions, we can and are playing smacky-face with these guys. Actually thanks to the Patriot Act, you could be picked up and sent to Iraq and have some smakcy face played on your head, because someone in the DOJ doesn't like you and frankly no one would know because the checks-and-balances are gone. I'm so glad we've decided to be an example of democracy to the world.
quabazaa replies:I'd just like to say that I object to you calling terrorists "sub-human scum" afterall, they are still human. I believe there is a reason that terrorists exist, and it's not just because they want anarchy. To me it seems like the frustrations of people living in nations which are being strangled and unfairly treated by other countries.. Plus, how can you think that any human rights exist on Guantanamo Bay? If they wanted to give the terrorists human rights, they would be in a prison under US law, not in Cuba where they can do anything they like. Both sides have done a disgusting amount of bad things, and unless nations are willing to treat people proerly, in my opinion it will never stop.
vardissakheli replies:Peace or vengeance? Pick one. Because I firmly believe you ain't gonna get both.
reyl replies:This post makes me sick. I don't know what else I can say.
acidbitch replies:I hope you find peace and resolution for your inner turmoil my angry young conservative friend.
sillygoosegirl replies:You must be a big fan of Hitler.
That aside, I'd like to point out two things:
(1) People like you are to blame for 9/11. As long as there are still people like you, there will still be terrorism and there will still be war.
(2) Not everyone being held at Guantanamo Bay is a terrorist. They have not had trials. Our government has as much business holding (or killing) potentially innocent people as they had killing potentially innocent people on 9/11. The difference: we should know better and we should be powerful enough to find another way.
