Gabrielle Giffords

Skipjack · Post by **Skipjack** » Tue Jan 11, 2011 4:50 pm

Alcohol is by far the most dangerous recreational drug around. It is the only recreational drug known to induce violence in some (medical studies not newspaper reports). Ask your local police if they would rather arrest some one jacked up on alcohol or would they prefer arresting pot heads.

Msimon, I do agree that alcohol can induce violence in some people, but it is not the only drug known to do that. Methamphetamine does the same.
It is true that alcohol is pretty bad if you compare its effects gram to gram with other drugs.
The difference with alcohol is, that you have to consume a lot of doses until there is a measurable effect. That is, if you (like most Europeans) posess the genes to produce the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase (German name). Some etnic groups like native americans do not posess this gene and therefore are much more sensitive to alcohol and its effects. This is indeed a problem and I do honestly not know what to do about that. I have to admit that I do like meself a beer once or twice a month (if the occasion is right), or a glas of red wine in the evening every once in a while. So I would certainly miss that, if alcohol was prohibited. I would much more miss soda though (and that is not healthy for you either). I do prefer my cola and red bull over alcoholic drinks (though they are really bad for me).
That said, there are to many alcohol addicts out there and I do wonder whether there will soon be a treatment for those. Some sort of gene therapy maybe.
Anyway, the average alcohol user does not get drunk every time he drinks. The average user of illegal drugs sure does get the equivalent of being drunk, every time he uses the drug (call it high, stoned, or whatever).
This is why alcohol is slightly less dangerous, even though the substance intself is more dangerous if compared grams versus grams.

Skipjack · Post by **Skipjack** » Tue Jan 11, 2011 5:34 pm

How is Guantanamo a violation of any human rights? Combatants can be lawfully held until the end of hostilities, and unlawful combatants have fewer rights than even lawful ones.

Forgot to adress that earlier:
If these are all unlawful combatants as you call them. Who says they are? What court decided that? Who knows, maybe some of them are just there because of a mixup in names, false evidence, etc? In modern democracies, suspects are usually innocent until proven guilty in the court of law. In this case though it looks more like guilty until proven innocent. And then there may be innocents that are imprisoned without the right to a lawyer that get tortured and misshandled and nobody even knows whether all of them really deserve that. IMHO this is not justice, this is more in the line with what we saw in my country 65 years ago. Both not great.

TDPerk · Post by **TDPerk** » Wed Jan 12, 2011 9:47 am

"Who says they are?"

The US military, the same as when a uniformed, lawful combatant is seized.

"What court decided that?"

One of the things that reasonably and lawfully distinguishes a war from a civil law enforcement action is the criminal standard of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt does not need to be satisfied by a jury trial. This is not contravened by ether common sense nor any law or treaty--and it is itself a conclusory and prejudiced question. You will read the Geneva convention and UCMJ both in vain for any requirement that combatants must be tried and found guilty to be held until the end of their lives or of the hostilities, whichever comes first.

"Who knows, maybe some of them are just there because of a mixup in names, false evidence, etc?"

Possibly. But I think tolerably unlikely.

Skipjack · Post by **Skipjack** » Wed Jan 12, 2011 10:33 am

The US military

There is your problem. This is why democracies have a separation of power. The prosecution, the judge and the execution are separated powers. The prosecution has to proof to an unbiased party that the person they arrested really is who they claim it is and did what they say, he did. You however are putting all three instances into one pot and that is a receipe for desaster.

for any requirement that combatants must be tried and found guilty to be held until the end of their lives or of the hostilities

Yes, the emphasis here is on combatants. Since these people were not wearing uniforms at the time of their caption, you can not say for sure that they actually are combatants.
This is why soldiers wear uniforms.

Possibly. But I think tolerably unlikely.

This should not be your job to judge. Mixups do happen and I would rather let 10 guilty ones go instead of falsly imprisoning an innocent. If you keep doing that, you will notice that soon you will loose the respect of other nations. IMHO something like that Guatanamo has no place in todays world. It appears anachronistic to me and reminds me of certain things that happend in my own country 65 years ago.

happyjack27 · Post by **happyjack27** » Wed Jan 12, 2011 2:07 pm

Skipjack wrote:
The US military
There is your problem. This is why democracies have a separation of power. The prosecution, the judge and the execution are separated powers. The prosecution has to proof to an unbiased party that the person they arrested really is who they claim it is and did what they say, he did. You however are putting all three instances into one pot and that is a receipe for desaster.

for any requirement that combatants must be tried and found guilty to be held until the end of their lives or of the hostilities
Yes, the emphasis here is on combatants. Since these people were not wearing uniforms at the time of their caption, you can not say for sure that they actually are combatants.
This is why soldiers wear uniforms.

Possibly. But I think tolerably unlikely.
This should not be your job to judge. Mixups do happen and I would rather let 10 guilty ones go instead of falsly imprisoning an innocent. If you keep doing that, you will notice that soon you will loose the respect of other nations. IMHO something like that Guatanamo has no place in todays world. It appears anachronistic to me and reminds me of certain things that happend in my own country 65 years ago.

on this note of wearing uniforms, i don't see any reference to this in the geneva conventions. (besides the fact that it's just utterly absurd.) (and what, it's the theory of that yoko guy of "unitary executive" and all? great, now we're giving that luny an iota of credibility!)

ladajo · Post by **ladajo** » Wed Jan 12, 2011 3:13 pm

I think you guys are missing the fact that War in the modern world, especially the idea of "Just War" is soley the purview of states.
If you are not mandated by a state, and you are fighting, that makes you an illegal combatant.
The fine line, which in reality is not so fine, because a state can do as it chooses, is whether or not you are in a condition of "war", and as such, who are you fighting. Being at war requires that you are fighting another state.
A state fighting a nation does not normally qualify as war. It is more of insurrection, or suppression, but not war in the legal sense.
The problems we have today embedded in the average dudes philosphy, are generally grand misunderstandings in what Joe Citizen thinks is war and isn't, and the debate over what is Just War for the last two hundred yearas or so has only made that worse. Many great theorists have chewed on this, and a great many laymen have taken bits and pieces of these principles and arrived at wonderous completely misguided conclusions, especially in the last 40 years.
Imagine telling Churchill that he could not bomb German cities.
Imagine telling folks in New Jersey that they could not shoot German military who landed in civilian clothes from a submarine.
Imagine telling a US or British soldier in western Germany that they could not shoot and kill a civilian who picked up a weapon to attack them, or for that matter a civilian who is unarmed, but carrying ammo to a machine gun emplacement that is pinning them down. What is that civilian's status? Is he a combatant?
By European convention from 200 years ago (and longer), he is an illegal combatant. An by European convention from 200 years ago as such he is to be killed immediately. No prisoner taking allowed. This was, and still is, based in the concepts that war is soley the purview of states. Because the idea of "arming the populace" is really scary to governments. You even see this today in gun laws.
This was not an american idea. In fact, typically, the american idea is much more forgiving in this concept. It is not hard to figure out why.

Skipjack · Post by **Skipjack** » Wed Jan 12, 2011 3:44 pm

If you are not mandated by a state, and you are fighting, that makes you an illegal combatant.

That would make everyone involved in the US civil war an illegal combatant.

By European convention from 200 years ago (and longer), he is an illegal combatant. An by European convention from 200 years ago as such he is to be killed immediately.

I assume you are referring to the Den Hague convention. This was written in 1900. So it is only 100 years old, not 200.

Also, both the Hague convention and the Geneva convention seem to allow even unlawful combatants the right to a fair trial (by the laws of the detaining country):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_combatant

ladajo · Post by **ladajo** » Wed Jan 12, 2011 4:59 pm

Basing your arguments on wiki articles is dangerous.
And, no, the idea of Just War is much older than the Haugue Convention.
Interestingly enough, in a civil war, the state is fighting itself, and therefore, until there is a winner who then decides how to spin it, the combatants are not really illegal. Altough this has many historical precedents goign either way. The point is, it is a conflict within the state, not between states. Even in a war of seccession, an attempt to establish another state, the status of combatants is not over until the fat lady sings. They can be lawful, uniform wearing (an important tenant), or not. Even in our civil war here, there were folks executed as illegals on both sides.
The status of civilians was also a point of contention, but it generally followed pre-existing European conventions about "invovolved or not". The impetus for change in European ideas came following the 7-Years war. But that was more of a shift towards clarifying Just War, as well as the sepeartion of combatants from non-combatants, with severe penalty for illegal combatants, ie civilians picking up arms on there own.
The US, set a scary precendent with the formal recognition of civilian militias as core to state security. That thing that Europe feared most, an armed populace. And it was done on absolute purpose. It is a recognition of the power of the people in regard to government. Since then, we have struggled back and forth to the depth of the idea of an armed populace, but rest assured, it was a core tenant for a majority of the US Founding Fathers, as a balance of power, and thus got into the US Constitution.
Clausewitz even captures the theme of combatants verses not in his overarching concept of the Paradoxical Trinity - Passion/Primordial Violence to Reason/Policy to Chance/Imagination/Creativity which are domains capture by the People to Government to Military. He made a conscious seperation of the people and military. His intent is also the recognize that while the people support a political/military campaign, they do not participate. He even goes on later in his work to discuss the merits and not of an armed populace, and the fact it is one of the hardest things to deal with, and thus in his ideas, he leans for dealing with it thoroughly, or not letting it happen in the first place. Two good books to explore this are the Howard/Paret presentation of Clauswitz's "On War" and the treatise by Handel called "Masters of War". I would say that a lot of this conjecture was driven especially by Napolean, Jomini and Clausewitz.
If you want to specifically dig into American ideas, I suggest "The American Way of War" by Weigley.
On the idea of how far back these issues go, give Griffith's "Sun Tzu" a go.

Skipjack · Post by **Skipjack** » Wed Jan 12, 2011 5:17 pm

Look, you can spin it as much as you want, simply holding people indefinitely without an actual trial is IMHO pointless, if not a violation of human rights and I have not even gone into the torture yet.
If they are guilty, then there should be nothing in the way of a fair trial. Get them tried and then punished in whatever way you want. Just give them a fair trial. What speaks against that?

Skipjack · Post by **Skipjack** » Wed Jan 12, 2011 5:19 pm

I have read the art of war multiple times. Nothing in their says anything about imprisoning people indefinitely without a trial (not that the concept of a fair trial was even developed back then.

ladajo · Post by **ladajo** » Wed Jan 12, 2011 5:34 pm

You are trying to apply micro level to macro level.
Take a step back in regard to "The Master - Sun" and think about why he was saying what he was saying. Where does the populace fit into his ideas on war?

Another good read on the historical struggle regarding the ideas of "Jus ad Bello" and "Jus in Bello" and Jus post Bellum" is by Orend, "The Morality of War". He gives a good summary on the history of the argument up front in chapter 1.

The point is, you are discussing a point regarding the foundations of civilization. One which crosses many concepts. What are the rights of a person from one state, commiting a "crime" in another? What is the basis of his rights? And, specifically, what are the rights of a "stateless person" when commiting a "crime" in a state? Who is to say what is right and wrong for that state? You are tredding on sovereignty and state rights verses the concept of universal human rights.
This is not spin of any sort. It is the root of the matter.
It is like asking where it says that Nuclear Weapons are illegal?

Skipjack · Post by **Skipjack** » Wed Jan 12, 2011 6:13 pm

Sorry, but according to the Geneva convention a unlawful combatant should be treated by the laws of the detaining country. That is very simple. Plus, I regard it as a human right violation, no matter what. I am not allone with this, most Europeans do and the US is suffering a huge imageloss because of things like Guantanamo and a few other things that happened in the wake of 9/11. The whole Wikileaks debacle was for once a result of this and it has done nothing to make the US look any better in the public eye. The reaction of the US does not help either.
The US is definitely not the "good guy" anymore as it used to be until the end of the cold war. Now, you may be OK with this now, but it may happen to bite you in your lower back one day.

ladajo · Post by **ladajo** » Wed Jan 12, 2011 6:14 pm

Give this link a spin. It will give you more depth.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/justwar/

To your point on Detainees: It would be much simpler just to shoot them on the battlefield. More humane than locking them up. And a better choice based on historical precedences.

Skipjack · Post by **Skipjack** » Wed Jan 12, 2011 6:22 pm

Yeah, but were all of them detained on the battlefield?

Skipjack · Post by **Skipjack** » Wed Jan 12, 2011 6:30 pm

I am trying to see your point, but I can not. I think there are many ways to rationalize human rights violations. People have historically done it and they still do it all the time. It may seem justified to some americans, but I think much of the rest of the world does not agree...
Quite honestly being married to an american and still having the US as my future place to live (if I ever get to), I am worried about the way the rest of the world is loosing respect for the US. I talk to a lot of people here, from all over the world and it is defending the US is NOT easy.
Things got a bit better for a brief period after Obama was elected, but that did not last long. Things are brewing here in Europe and there may be a time coming very soon when US military is not welcome here anymore. E.g. I was reading a german computer game forum recently and people here were openly discussing the ongoing occupation by US forces and that they are not happy about that. 20 years ago, that was not an issue.