Eric Margolis (Toronto Sun): Gitmo appalling

[Dudley_DUright]

Last week Duncan Hunter, chairman of the powerful U.S. House armed services committee, went on TV to rebut charges by Amnesty International that the Bush administration is running "the gulag of our time" at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

<snip>

Americans are being told that all Guantanamo inmates are mad-dog terrorists. Not true. Many were rounded up in Afghanistan by local warlords offered $10,000 or more per head by the U.S. for "terrorist" captives.

Some are Pakistanis who were visiting Afghanistan for religious or family matters. Some had joined Taliban forces to fight the Russian-backed Afghan Communist Party known as the Northern Alliance -- not against the U.S. Others were jihadis preparing to fight Uzbekistan's brutal communist regime or to oppose Indian occupation of Kashmir. Only a handful of real anti-U.S. al-Qaida members are there.

Sen. John McCain, himself a former POW, is right to call for speedy trials of Guantanamo's inmates and an end to their indefinite jailing. But the past three years have shown that people charged with terrorism are unlikely to get fair trials in post-9/11 America. A military defence lawyer told Congress this week his superiors warned that if he represented a prisoner at Gitmo, "only a guilty plea would be accepted" -- shades of the U.S.S.R.

more...

http://torontosun.canoe.ca/News/Columnists/Margolis_Eric/2005/06/19/1095168-sun.html

[Puzzler]

1. Good article

This is my favorite quote:

"The White House says Taliban and jihadi fighters were "illegal combatants" deserving no mercy or legal protection. Then what of the 20,000 plus non-uniformed U.S. and British mercenaries operating in Iraq and Afghanistan as "civilian contractors," and non-uniformed U.S. Special Forces?"


-P

[Igel]

2. If they're mercenaries--as opposed to security guards working

for somebody with a contract for rebuilding a sewerage processing plant--then they're not covered by the Geneva Conventions, as far as I understand them.

On the other hand, nobody--here or in Iraq--seriously even tries to think that the "resistance", whether Iraqi Sunni Arab or Pashtun Taliban, is obligated to do squat by the Geneva Convention. So it's a non-issue.

[Puzzler]

4. yes but...

... I think the point is that, regardless of whether they're covered by the Geneva Convention or not, do you think the US would just sit idly by and think it would be OK if over 500 US contractors were being held indefinitely in some "terrorist" prison camp?

-P

[Igel]

5. I think some DUers should be thinking something exactly along

those lines, if Xinhua reports from last year are right. I suspect, however, that these reports, defended at the time, were just dropped as being indefensible beyond a certain point.

The problem is that that argument supports *. (I think there's a bit of truth to it, but that's flame bait and I'll deny ever having written these words.) It presumes that the Afghan, Pakistani, and other detainees at Gitmo are part of a self-identified group equivalent to mercenaries, be it Salafists or "true Muslims".

I noticed that when some of the US special forces surrended or were captured and disarmed by Taliban adherents and executed a few minutes later, there was mostly popular complaints. No bloviating about Taliban war crimes in that case. Such talk was saved for the execution of soldiers in uniform.

Now, your argument may be more equivalent to having, say, a bunch of US citizens, non-mercenary men and kids of various sorts, kidnapped by Canadians and held there. After all, the claim isn't that they were even mercenaries, or even working with the Taliban, but looky-lous and tourists. In which case the self-identified group is just "Muslims", and the argument holds water. But it crucially relies on believing that most Gitmo detainees weren't picked up on the battlefield, but exchanged for $ by vindictive or greedy Afghans.

[Dudley_DUright]

3. Welcome to DU, Puzzler

:hi: Eric Margolis is one of my favorite columnist writing for a Canadian paper (even though he is a transplanted New Yorker). He was just on the Guy James Show yesterday. You can check out archives of the show at

http://www.whiterosesociety.org/James.html