[Vision2020] Response to Joe, Bill, Paul, and Andreas

Wed Aug 23 08:49:36 PDT 2006

    Bill, Joe, Paul, and Andreas,

      I don’t think you fully understand my position. Perhaps it  was me being unclear. I agree with a person being charged with a crime receiving  due process and a fair trial. But that is not the issue we are facing here.

      I also think you guys are only concentrating on illegal  incidences that took place at one or two prisons, which I agree obviously were  wrong, not the separate issue of whether or not the US has the right to detain  persons outside the United States that it believes are a threat to national  security. That is a separate issue.

      The first issue here is if the “terrorists”, “terrorist  sympathizers”, “Family Friends of Terrorists”, or the “lost guy walking the dog  on the wrong block at the wrong time” have in fact indeed committed a crime.  The answer to that is “no”, they have not. Nothing illegal about being friends  with Osama Bin Laudin, his friends, or his family, if that was the case, half  the US  politicians including Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, and George Bush Sr would  all be in jail right now, along with about every oil executive in the world. So  it is awfully hard to try and convict a person who has not committed a crime  isn’t it. There is nothing to try them for committing, because they haven’t  committed it yet. 

      So the second issue is, “Does the United States Military  have the right to detain a person or persons from another nation or country it  believes is a threat to the safety and security of the United States  and/or its citizens?” “Does the United    States or any country have the right to  defend itself and to take preemptive action to prevent mass casualties of its  own citizens?” I think any reasonable person would believe that yes it does. 

      The United States  has every right to detain any and all person(s) outside its boarders it feels  may compromise the security and safety of people in the US, its  citizens, and its property so long as it believes that threat is real. That is  what it is doing.

      It is unfortunate that innocent people will be detained and  we should make a good natured effort to release those we think are not a  threat. 
      It is unfortunate that grandma, your child, and every Tom,  Dick, and Harriett has to be slowed down and searched at the airport along with  potential terrorists and forced to buy $4.50 bottled water at the Airport. A  good faith should be made to minimize the inconvenience to those that are not  terrorists. 

      To answer each of you:

      “To turn a "suspected terrorist" into a  "convicted terrorist" requires a court of law.  To call them  terrorists and treating them as sub-humans with no evidence presented to a  court is throwing some of our ideals out the window.  Personally, I'm  tiring of throwing our ideals out the window.”-Paul

      Again, Paul, there is not conviction, just detention for the  security of the United    States. And no, there is not court because  there is not crime. I don’t agree with the mistreatment, and that is illegal  and not necessary to detain someone. 

        “We are bound to follow our laws, even in war, even in  the face of an

existential threat.”—Andreas

I agree, we should follow our laws, and we are in regards to detaining those we consider a threat. I don’t agree with the treatment of the detainees, give them decent living quarters. Which laws do you believe have been violated Andreas, besides those of sexual abuse by the guards?

“Without a trial, imprisonment has no more moral authority than kidnapping and the death penalty no more moral authority than murder.”

Andreas

Sorry, but you incorrect on that one. You can imprison someone who is a danger to themselves, without trial. You can also detain someone for medical reasons, such as a being inflicted with an airborne illness. You can also detain enemy troops and in cases of national security you can detain them, and in some cases for the rest of their lives. That is the law. We are following it. 

“Our commitment to process, law, and universal rights is not and never has been a weakness: it has always been the very core of our strength.”-- Andreas

That is bunch a baloney. Ever hear of the Japanese Concentration Camps? Hiroshima? Ask Nick Gier how many Black people have hung for being Black? I won’t get into what we did with Communists, Gays, Lesbians, and Women, or how popular the KKK was up until the 1930s.

How do you know whether someone accused of being a terrorist, actually is one?—Bill L. 

You let them out and see which ones bomb and kill people—that is only way I know to know for sure. But since this result ends in mass murder, disability, chaos, fear, suffering and destruction of the economy, some forward thinking people think we should choose an alternative method of detecting them. 

“How many were terrorists?  How many were average guys in the wrong place at the wrong time? ” Bill L. 

Why didn’t the government in Pakistan and Afghanistan prevent them from being taken? Why did the US see a need to go into a country made mostly of just dirt and “kidnap” hundreds of people? Just for the fun of it, nothing else to do on a Saturday night? If Pakistan is not willing to hand over those that are attacking the US, perhaps we are justified in controlling the entire country and detaining as many as we can. 

“Why not give them a trial to discover the answer?” ---Bill L.

And charge them with what? Thinking about blowing up the US? Is that illegal to think about something now? Does a trial always point to truth or just who has cash and/or public sympathy? Would you let Michael Jackson spend the night with your kids? He was found innocent. 

“Why do you suddenly discard the "innocent until proven guilty" rule?” Bill L.

I don’t think they are guilty Bill. I think they are innocent. The ones that were guilty of 911 are all dead. They smashed into a building and burnt up in a crisp. They were innocent too until they actually committed the crime. Thinking about doing something illegal is still not yet a crime, Bill. 

“Once we start locking up people independently of being able to prove their guilt in a court of law, we give up the general principles of liberty and justice for which this country stands and the enemies of freedom and democracy have effectively won.” Joe C.

Joe, by that same argument, you are saying that when we fight an enemy in battle, we should try each one individually, and let them go, not wait until the war is over and just release them all? I am glad you are not in charge of national security. We would not last long as a nation. 

If you have to have a nation before you can have a court system. You have to have to have a crime committed before you have a trial. A person thinking of pushing a button but has not pushed it yet and is such not a criminal until after they push, the only moment of their guilt you and they are dead. National survival and the protection of innocent human beings from being killed MUST take precedence over that of anything else. 

Best,

_DJA

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