John Yamamoto-Wilson wrote:
> I wrote:
>
>>> What I do know is that in the last couple
>>> of years such people are under suspicion in a way they were not
>>> previously and that a number of them have been arrested in FBI-led
>>> operations that would hardly have taken place a couple of years ago,
>
> Kevin Gowen replied:
>
>> So what?
>
> So I lived through a similar period in the UK when overzealous
> responses by the government and police did little to curb the real
> (IRA and UDF) activists, and served mainly to alienate people who
> might otherwise have remained unaligned, as well as eroding rights
> among UK citizens as a whole.

What rights of UK citizens were eroded?

>>> and in many cases not a shred of evidence has been put forward
>>> explaining why they have been detained.
>>
>> What are some of the cases in which there has been not a shred of
>> evidence?
>
> Well, here's an example:
>
http://www.sptimes.com/News/122301/Worldandnation/From__Zoomcopters__to.shtm
> l, but I'm not going to go to any great lengths filling you in, since
> I've already cited numerous examples which you just dismiss as
> "stories".

No need to fill me in. The story seems to be about the inability to find a
piece of paper. The headline is "The page cannot be found".

> The answer was in the three sentences which followed. Targeting
> Catholics in Ulster is now emerging as one of the main reasons that
> conflict has dragged on so long.

Whom should they have targeted?

> Just to give you some idea of the
> kind of tangle the Brits got involved in, check
> http://www.sundayherald.com/np/fru.shtml. No doubt you trust your
> government to do better, but I don't see any very encouraging signs
> of that.

Which stories are relevant to your point about US policy?

>> Whole communities/ethic groups have not been attacked. No one has
>> been attacked.
>
> See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Try
> http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Mail/xmcamail.2002_12.dir/0105.html. Again,
> though, there's no point in giving you lots of examples, since you'll
> only dismiss them as more "stories".

I stand by my original statement. It seems that you have a curious idea of
what "attack" means. BTW, the exact number of detainees was 705.

>> [snip] People who do not
>> want to remain outside [=inside?] the jurisdiction of these
>> conventions should leave Earth. Custom is another source of
>> international law but
>> the issues you are talking about are generally covered by written
>> agreements between states.
>
> That's what I thought.

Would you rather that there be no GCs?

> Global control, no escape. Scary.

How curious that "global control" scares you while you make appeals to the
so-called "international community" and suggest that states should be
accountable to someone/something.

>>> These things take time to surface, given the rights governments have
>>> to keep many of the relevant documents under wraps and the time it
>>> takes to put together the necessary research to establish a case.
>>
>> I see. Then I can safely assume that you will keep quiet until such
>> evidence does arise. When this evidence does arise, I will condemn
>> those horrible acts.
>
> No, I will not keep quiet. I will voice my concerns.

Concerns about speculations?

> If independent
> investigation proves them to be unfounded, all well and good.

I won't expect a retraction.

> And if
> there is nothing to hide no one need be overly anxious to sweep such
> concerns under the carpet and enjoin silence from those who voice
> them.

I don't know anyone like that so I can't respond to straw man arguments
involving them.

> Over and above issues arising during the war itself, I continue to be
> concerned by the present occupation. In Fallujah 18 civilians have
> been killed and over 80 injured in recent clashes with US troops, and
> a further 15 have been killed in Mosul. The longer the US and Britain
> stay in Iraq the more such deaths there are likely to be. It seems
> the British government can already see this is not what Iraq and the
> world understood by "liberation" and is getting cold feet about the
> numbers of its troops stationed in Iraq. I am concerned that the US
> has already shown it is good at winning the wars but not very good at
> winning the peace, both in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that this may
> result in a mess that is more than anyone bargained for. I hope not,
> but simply keeping quiet and hoping it'll all go away isn't going to
> cut it.

*yawn* I love all the rhetoric about winning the peace.

>>> The Gulf War took place in the context of a far greater
>>> international consensus that such action was necessary.
>>
>> How do you measure the international consensus? The coalition that
>> fought in the Iraq War contained more member states than the Gulf
>> War.
>
> Hmm. OK, the Gulf War did not provoke anti-war demonstrations by the
> citizens of coalition member states.

What? It sure as hell did in the US. I remember because I took part in them.

> It was not, taking the
> temperature in the UK at the time, a war that the populace greatly
> relished, but there was a kind of grim recognition that it was a job
> that needed to be done; an aggressor had invaded and occupied a
> sovereign state (Kuwait), and the legitimacy of conflict was not a
> matter of legal technicalities debated over by experts, but something
> that the average Joe could perceive as self-evident.

Self-evidence is something that people talk about when they don't feel like
supporting their position.

> What we saw in
> the latest conflict was governements siding with the US in the face
> of considerable opposition from their own citizens and with a very
> tenuous and ambiguous mandate.

Nothing ambiguous about the mandate at all. If you had read the relevant
UNSC resolutions you would know that.

>>> (it's likely to hinge on whether those alleged WMDs
>>> ever turn up) -
>>
>> That answers my question about whether or not you read UNSCR 1441.
>
> Oh, I've read it.

Not very well.

> It doesn't read to *me* like a carte blanche to
> make war on Iraq,

Really? You must have missed the parts that talk about *any* member states
taking action to uphold the relevant UNSC resolutions. Cameroon could have
gone in all by itself had it wanted and it would have been authorized.

> and if it wasn't for US hegemony I doubt anyone
> would ever had got away with interpreting it as such.

What does hegemony have to do with anything?

> But if it turns
> out that Saddam Hussein
> *had* destroyed any and all WMDs before the war ever started then, my
> friend, you have a state which *complied* with UN requirements and
> *still* got blasted for it.

I see. You didn't read the resolution. UNSCR 1441 was not about destroying
WMDs.

> Lawyers may be able to find a loophole,
> but if that does turn out to be the situation it is not going to do
> the US or Britain any good in the eyes of their detractors.

I see. All that matters is the uninformed dissent of detractors. Got it.

> This will
> hinge on the gut feelings of large masses of people, not on the legal
> niceties of a few men in suits.

Wow. Gut feelings. That's a great way for a state to make foreign policy
decisions: the gut feelings of ignoramuses in foreign states.

> He should. If it transpires that Iraq *had* complied with the UN then
> the legitimacy of the conflict is open to doubt.

Again, read UNSCR 1441 for the first time. The destruction of WMDs is not
compliance under UNSCR 1441.

>>> Kevin, you are a US citizen and a lawyer.
>>
>> I am not a lawyer until next year.
>
> You hope!

No, I know.

> Am doing so.

You are doing nothing of the kind.

> I want the US and Britain to come out of this looking
> rosy just as much as you do

I don't give a damn how the US or UK look, rosy or otherwise.

> (perhaps for different reasons, though),
> so I'm putting across the hostile perspective as hard as I can to see
> whether they're going to look rosy to anyone coming at it from that
> perspective.

Tomorrow the headlines could say "World peace declared! US and UK gives
delicious candy and hugs to all!", and those assholes in Crapistan and other
shitholes would still being thinking of ways to blow us up.

> So far, you seem to be telling me they can swing it
> their way on legal technicalities,

"Legal technicalities" is what people call "the law" when the law doesn't
swing their way.

> but I'm afraid that isn't going to
> satisfy a lot of people in the long run,

What does satisfying people have to do with anything?

> and I'm equally afraid that
> it's going to *dis*satisfy some so much that they turn to radical
> solutions to their frustration.

If that's what they choose, so be it.

>>> You tell me all the things I am concerned about are legal. If you
>>> are right - and I'm still not fully convinced of that, but *if* you
>>> are right - then it seems to me that the law is open to the charge
>>> of letting the ends justify the means,
>>
>> Again I ask, which law?
>
> Stop being silly.

Nothing silly at all. Which law?

>>> something which, according to
>>> you, is immoral.
>>
>> When did I say that?
>
> In the thread "Do gaijins have any rights in this place?" where you
> went on about it in great detail.

Read it again.

>> I see you are still a bit confused about ends/means.
>
> Do you?

Do I what?

>> The
>> protection of rights under the US Constitution does not extent to
>> non-US citizens who are not in the US. This is why a Vietnamese
>> citizen in Hanoi cannot exercise his 1st Amendment right to free
>> speech and why an Argentinean in a Buenos Aires courtroom cannot
>> assert his 5th Amendment right of silence.
>
> Right. But those are examples of members of sovereign states
> undergoing the process of law in their own countries. What we have
> here is non-US citizens being held by the US government in a little
> bit of offshore territory.

Yes. That offshore territory is called "Cuba". The last time I checked, Cuba
was a sovereign state i.e. not US territory.

> I quite agree that they have no rights
> under the US constitution.

Then why are you so confused?

> Equally, then, the US has no rights over
> *them*,

Incorrect.

> other than those it claims through some spurious loophole

"spurious loophole" = "John doesn't understand"

> that may have a shadow of legal validity but has no moral validity.

For reasons I have already mentioned, I cannot respond to your appeal to
morals.

> Can you imagine a US citizen being held by the Argentinean government
> on some little bit of offshore territory that afforded a loophole
> whereby they claimed the right to keep that citizen in a cage
> indefinitely without charges and without explanation?

I can imagine it very easily. This offshore territory, what sovereign state
would it be in? Certainly not Argentina.

> do you think it
> would make any difference to US outrage if that US citizen got fatter
> in his cage and got to watch Tom Hanks movies a couple of times a
> week?

What does outrage have to do with anything? The people in Afghanistan are
not outraged, BTW. The folks released from GTMO have generally been told "We
don't want you back".

>>> But I repeat, you are a US citizen and a lawyer.
>
>> I'll be a lawyer next year.
>
> You hope!

No, I know.

>>> I am
>>> neither. All I can do is try to follow the debate.
>>
>> Then keep up.
>
> Doing my best.

Your best is not good enough.

>>> The case against
>>> Guantanamo is widely discussed, and you can see the general concerns
>>> by following such links as: [snip]
>
>> Don't waste my time.
>
> Ditto. Just say you couldn't care any less about Muslims than you
> could about the world's poor and save me the bother of responding to
> you point by point.

I'll say nothing of the kind.

>>> One specific issue, which has come up in the last couple of weeks or
>>> so, is that several children are also being detained at Guantanamo:
>>> [snip]
>>
>> Yes, and did you know that they play touch football with their
>> guards and have VCRs/DVD players in their rooms? Apparently their
>> favorite film to watch is Tom Hanks's "Castaway".
>
> Yawn. Address the issue please.

What was the issue? That they are children? Big deal! When a kid is being
raised in a terrorist training camp, I don't think that he is going to grow
up to be a volunteer worker for the Red Cross.

> Rapists don't get lesser sentences by
> saying, "But your honour, I gave her a candy afterwards."

??? Are you drawing an equivalence between the US's legal actions and a
rape? How daft.

> If it's
> wrong to imprison them then it's wrong to imprison them.

That is not an argument; it is a conditional statement and a tautology.

> Being *nice*
> to them doesn't make it right. And if it isn't wrong, please explain
> why not.

Your argument contains a fallacy. You have falsely shifted the burden of
proof. Please explain why it is wrong.

>> Sorry, but I never entertain morally based
>> arguments from relativists.
>
> The disclaimer does not apply.

Then you are an absolutist?

>> There is no "international community".
>
> I wish Bush would say something as dumb as that.

It's not stupid. It's accurate.

> It'd spell political
> suicide for him as surely as Margaret Thantcher saying there's no
> such thing as society. And, er, if there's no international
> community, can you explain the following exchange:
>
> Me:
>
>>> who the heck is making these laws and how does one ensure that
>>> one remains outside their jurisdiction? ;-(
>
> You:
>
>> Since these are matters of international law, they are written in
>> various conventions signed by a number of the planet's states.
>
> Does that mean there *is* an international community with laws and
> whatnot when the US chooses to recognise such an entity to further
> its own goals, but there isn't an international community when
> acknowledgement of such might go against US interests?

No. There is no international community. I think the problem that you are
having is that you do not know what "community" means. It's a group of
people having common interests or identity. You can speak of the Jewish
community, Tokyo community, and Mexican community, but there is simply no
such thing as the international community. There are no common interests or
identity at that level.

>> It also may interest you
>> to know that the Iraq War had the largest ever deployment of judge
>> advocates to the field to advise on RoE etc.
>
> Somehow, that doesn't reassure me as much as you might think.

I never said anything about reassurance.

>>> Just a final note. It may be that the US is perfectly justified
>>> (both legally and morally) in all its actions and that its
>>> detractors simply misunderstand it. However, it is pretty much
>>> impossible to verify that without (1) accountability and (2)
>>> transparency. The US is currently holding itself accountable to no
>>> one,
>>
>> And this makes the US different from what state? To whom do Cameroon
>> and Sweden hold themselves accountable? Please don't make me laugh
>> by saying "The UN". There is no world government, John. There is no
>> world court with compulsory jurisdiction.
>
> But there are, as you point out, "matters of international law".

Yes. My questions remain unanswered.

> Actually, Cameroon and Sweden aren't actually treading on too many
> people's toes right now, but those who have offended the
> international community you deny exists - in places like Rwanda and
> Kosovo and, yes, in Afghanistan and Iraq, and potentially in Burma
> and Zimbabwe, etc. (though they may have less to fear from Bush since
> they aren't rolling in oil) - have found or may henceforth find that
> they are not immune to being held to account. History will play
> itself out.

Accountable to whom?

>>> and so much of what goes on is
>>> kept under a shroud (keeping minors at Guantanamo and not actually
>>> telling anyone until it leaked is just one example among many). If
>>> the US was dealing plainly then the suspicions would not arise,
>>
>> I had no idea that you were a comedian. What state on this planet
>> completely divulges its acts to the world?
>
> No, *I*'m not the one who's playing jokes here. But on the eve of the
> war with Iraq Tony Blair and his government were telling the British
> people that there was much, much more they could tell us about the
> threat Saddam Hussein posed to the world, but they couldn't divulge
> it for reasons of national security, and the US public, from what I
> picked up, were getting a similar message. So, now that Hussein is no
> longer a "threat" - and especially since a lot of what we *were* told
> has proved to be without foundation - may we ask what was it that we
> couldn't be told back then that made war such an imperative?

Answer my question.

BTW, why are you still talking? You said "just a final note". Well, is it
final or not?

-- 
Kevin Gowen