Why not just execute the prisoners kept at Gitmo?
Asked by
josie (
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February 23rd, 2016
Before you get in my shit, I am not saying or implying that anybody should do that.
But let’s face it… after a decade and a half of them being imprisoned without due process, especially denial of habeas corpus, isn’t it sort of getting to the point of asking “what’s the difference?”
Nobody really cares about them. So why not?
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19 Answers
Presumably because the United States still wants to project the illusion of at least a modicum of moral standing to the rest of the world.
I’m not in the US and I care about them.
Given the experiences of David Hicks, whose conviction has been overturned, and the recent UN ruling that Australia violated his rights by keeping in gaol following his transfer to Australia, how can anyone be sure the people being held there are guilty of anything? As you say, they’ve been imprisoned without due process. I’m sure we would all prefer some of them were not released, but we can’t determine the accuracy of that assumption without a trial.
If the US can’t give the remaining 91 prisoners a real and fair trial, perhaps you just have to let them go.
I care about them. Guess that is where we differ.
Judging from the amount of real estate he took up on my Facebook page before he was released, an awful lot of people cared about Omar Khadr while he was being detained at Guantanamo.
I don’t condone execution.
It would be a violation of their civil rights, and their rights as human beings. It is better and more civil to set a good example to those and others of their ilk. The old “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” concept.
I don’t think the proper response to violating someone’s due process rights is to violate them even further. There are other foreign prisons that Obama can transfer the detainees to without violating the congressional ban on transferring them to the US.
You can’t say, “nobody cares about them.”
In his announcement this morning about closing Gitmo, Obama said foreign leaders bring it up when they meet.
@josie you know better than any of us those prisoners are nothing more than politcal chattle in a middle east card game no one is folding at…raise you a thousand…
Because the next time there is a beheading by ISIS, we lose any ability to be outraged, and the terrorist groups get to say “just like Gitmo.”
Besides, I am against the death penalty. And the Gitmo detainees should have been tried years ago.
I think the prisoners might notice a difference. WTF is wrong with you tonight?
I would like to add that of the 500 Gitmo detainees we have released, 116 have returned to the battlefield. These remaining detainees are the worst of the worst. Given the still volatile situation in the world that do we honestly want to put these bad actors in a position to do greater harm than they already have? Even if we move them to US prisons they will still be held as enemy combatants and all we will have accomplished is to set up a Gitmo North.
Doesn’t matter. For a myriad of reasons: strategic, moral and otherwise, you don’t shoot prisoners. I’m amazed that we’re even discussing this.
I think they should be tried/convicted/sentenced under due process. If they’re guilty then they can rot in prison/be executed, if they’re not guilty, then we should let them go. It’s only complicated because Bush created the mess in the first place.
Because a society can’t call itself “civilized” without due process, and because I’m vehemently opposed to executions.
Because they’re still alive and innocent until proven guilty, and in addition to that more-than-adequate and reason, other people also still care about them.
Oh, and also because it makes the United States government ethically bankrupt, and deserving of violent attacks by people pissed off at the US locking people up without trial.
I would say, why not just put the people who put them there in with them, before letting them out and trying to make it up to them somehow.
I don’t care about any of the prisoners at Guantanamo. I do care a great deal about what WE allow the government to do to them. The only purpose of guantanamo is to deny its residents access to the courts. And I for one, am very uneasy with the government’s claim that it should be allowed to lock folks up for unspecified periods of time.
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