I’m sorry, Ms. Palin, but out there in Alaska, between moose shoots, did you hear about Bagram, Abu Ghraib, renditions, waterboarding, Guantánamo and the rest?
John McCain knows what happens when those rights disappear. He described his Vietnamese nightmare the next night: “They worked me over harder than they ever had before. For a long time. And they broke me.”
A man remembers getting broken: That’s why McCain fought the use of torture by the Bush administration. His condoning of those words from his vice-presidential candidate is appalling. Foreign policy be damned if you can score a God-fearing-macho-versus-liberal-constitutionalist point.
But the bloody wars, seven years after 9/11, have not paused for this sterile U.S. cultural battle. With some 180,000 troops in the two theaters, U.S. reserve capacity is stretched to the limit – something Iran knows when it keeps the centrifuges turning and Russia knows when it grabs Georgia.
In Afghanistan, a Taliban-led insurgency is growing in reach and effectiveness. There’s talk of a mini-surge in U.S. troops there – now about 34,000 – to counter the threat, but little serious reflection on what precise end perhaps 12,000 additional forces would serve. Until that’s clarified, I’m against the mini-surge.
Gov Palin, having a son going to Iraq in combat arms, as does McCain, and having visited reserve troops from Alaska in Iraq. I am sure that she is aware of what is going on in both Iraq and Afghanistan. McCain has fought some battles against Bush on many issues and water boarding is one of them. I don’t get this guys point!!
He’s worried that we poured some water on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, I think.
Roger Cohen has zero military experience. He has an M.A. degree in History and French from Oxford University[1977]. He has access to zero classified intelligence briefs on Afghanistan. He has been tortured exactly zero times and has been broken exactly zero times. He was born in London, England and nothing in his bio suggests that he ever became a U.S. citizen.
So, of course, he is qualified to give expert advice to the American people that is contrary to their own military and civilian leadership…and that in an election year.
This is just typical liberal political attack machine stuff. It is part of the background noise in an election year and should be filtered out by reasonable minds.
Typical! (I’m putting a second filter in.)
No one who has never been through the horrors of war can even begin to understand, as so many of us who HAVE can testify.
#3, thanks for the information on the author. So it appears that Mr. Cohen doesn’t have any background in the law either?
Ms. Palin’s line about Obama being concerned about reading captured unlawful combatants their rights is really short-hand for larger, more complex issues. As far as I know, despite what Cohen writes, there is no real impetus for engaging in the torture of prisoners by an American administration. Everyone has roundly condemned Abu Ghraib. The concern is how the US will treat unlawful combatants – something that Cohen misses completely.
In Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1, 30–31 (1942), the Supreme Court noted (cites omitted):
[blockquote]By universal agreement and practice, the law of war draws a distinction between the armed forces and the peaceful populations of belligerent nations and also between those who are lawful and unlawful combatants. Lawful combatants are subject to capture and detention as prisoners of war by opposing military forces. Unlawful combatants are likewise subject to capture and detention, but in addition they are subject to trial and punishment by military tribunals for acts which render their belligerency unlawful. The spy who secretly and without uniform passes the military lines of a belligerent in time of war, seeking to gather military information and communicate it to the enemy, or an enemy combatant who without uniform comes secretly through the lines for the purpose of waging war by destruction of life or property, are familiar examples of belligerents who are generally deemed not to be entitled to the status of prisoners of war, but to be offenders against the law of war subject to trial and punishment by military tribunals. [/blockquote]
The problem, as I understand it, is that Senator Obama believes that persons captured in the on-going “War on Terror” should be accorded full due process rights as would any subject who was detained on federal criminal charges. This brings with it all kind of minute procedural requirements which are really unrelated to the broader interests of Justice. (For example, Erwin Chemerinsky, one of the attorneys for the Gitmo detainees is arguing that the detainees must be convicted by a unanimous verdict, although the Supreme Court has consistently held that state court verdicts in criminal cases do not always need to be unanimous [Apodaca v. Oregon, 406 U.S. 404 (1972)]. This means that Osama bin Laden would have a greater degree of procedural rights than would a thief who broke into your car.)
Although I believe Senator McCain was wrong in his denunciation of Boumediene v. Bush (2008), which recognized that Guantanamo detainees could seek a writ of habeas corpus, I think Sen. Obama is *more* wrong to seek to apply criminal laws and procedures to terrorists. Lawful combatants should be accorded prisoner of war status; criminals should be treated as such, and terrorists should receive only minimal procedural protections designed to ensure a truly innocent person is not improperly detained.
Last, there has been a great deal of talk about Abu Ghraib and linking it to Guantanamo Bay – if you think the two are in any respect comparable, I would refer you to a law review article by Lt. Col. Joseph P. Bialke, Al-Qaeda & Taliban Unlawful Combatant Detainees, Unlawful Belligerency, and the International Laws of Armed Conflict, 55 A.F. L. REV. 1 (2004) at 56-61. This can be found on-line beginning here: http://tinyurl.com/5fk57d (the section titled “B. Humane Treatment of al-Qaeda and Taliban Unlawful Combatant Detainees.”) The Bialke article is also my source for some of the citations and thoughts listed above.
Waterboarding is not torture. Everyone involved in the process on our side undergoes it to know how effective it is. It does no real harm, but it does break their will. People eventually talk, which is the main purpose when dealing with terrorists, unless you are a liberal whiner.
I think that perhaps the following quote is the key to the entire article, and Mr Cohen’s mindset:
[i]France, which just mini-surged in Afghanistan, is now embroiled in an agonizing debate over the slaying of 10 soldiers, mostly paratroopers, east of Kabul on Aug. 18. At least one of them had his throat slit. Photos in Paris Match of Taliban forces with uniforms of the Frenchmen have enflamed the national mood.
Hervé Morin, the defense minister, has called for “national unity” in fighting a threat “from the Middle Ages.” But polls suggest a majority of the French favor withdrawal.[/i]
It sounds to me as if Mr Cohen is recommending no additional troop presence in Afghanistan because they might be at risk. Sad to say, but to be a soldier is to be in harm’s way. Also sad, because I think that Mr Cohen’s suggestions regarding registration of the madrassas and helping to build up pro-Western sentiment make sense. Afghanistan has, throughout the history of the region, been more a group of (warring) tribes than a nation-state. Perhaps rather than have the goal of creating a state, we should aim, at first, for the more modest, but very important step, of winning the hearts and minds of the different tribes and their leaders.
I think Cohen has a point, but he undermines it by taking a soundbite as a full scale policy statement. Palin and Obama were referring to policy priorities, not how such policies might conflict with a required resolution of such contradictions. Cohen ignores how Palin might support (due to McCain, if nothing else) better rights for Gitmo internees, as he also trivializes Obama’s probable appreciation that we have some sort of war to fight.
A simply defective article, most probably written to scare expatriates in Europe about Sarah-Barracuda.
To the extent that Gov Palin advocates a distinction between the treatment of honorable prisoners of war and the treatment of unlawful combatants, her thinking is sound, and consistent with world opinion of the civilized nations, as set forth in the Geneva Conventions. I am not convinced that Sen Obama makes that distinction, or that he is even aware of its historical and legal significance.