Thread: Is Bush in any position ...

Is President George W. Bush in any position to lecture anyone, including the Chinese, on human rights?

I think the Chinese record on human rights is execrable, but given Abou Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, rendition, torture, etc. does not Bush's criticisms put him, and the US, in a somewhat hypocritical light?

Which is a pity, as otherwise, someone as powerful as the US President criticising the Chinese regime might have done some good.

Originally Posted by Leo

Is President George W. Bush in any position to lecture anyone, including the Chinese, on human rights?

Yes

If only our enemies treated their captives as we do, what a wonderful thing that would be.

Originally Posted by Stinger

Yes

If only our enemies treated their captives as we do, what a wonderful thing that would be.

I lived in China during 1986. And the Chinese have a society that Conservatives here would love, but can't achieve here because of the freedoms we have. In China, you go to jail, you stay there. But the streets are safe enough for Grandma to walk day and night unmolested. the Government has one message, and if it were a Conservative message, and you know how you hate Democrats, well you could jail them all, and they would stay in jail.

I can totaly seeing Conservatives enjoying a crime free, Democrat free environment. Which is absolutely no more oppressive than the Chinese are.

Bush has absolutely no business being ignorant and egocentric when the Chinese have guests over . Besides, the Chinese don't have respect for weakness and they were right for telling him to bite them. I'm ashamed of Bush's hillbilly ignorance. You can't have degrees if you say Nucular

Originally Posted by Leo

Is President George W. Bush in any position to lecture anyone, including the Chinese, on human rights?

I think the Chinese record on human rights is execrable, but given Abou Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, rendition, torture, etc. does not Bush's criticisms put him, and the US, in a somewhat hypocritical light?

Which is a pity, as otherwise, someone as powerful as the US President criticising the Chinese regime might have done some good.

==================================

This post is a conversational reply to a friend, and
not a particularly thorough essay.

==================================


Let's take these issues one at a time.

What happened at Abu Ghraib Prison was not only unconscionable, and inexcusable, it was also criminal and prosecutable. The guards are being punished, the commander has had her career destroyed. From my time in the military, I can readily assume that other careers have been severely, if less publicly damaged.


This is opposed to the Chinese penal system in which a treatment standard for prisoners much lower that those found in the West prevails-- with government sanction.

In other words, Abu Ghraib can be seen as an aberration, while conditions in Chinese Prisons are not.

Guantanamo Bay is a detention facility for irregular combatants. That means, people who fight out of uniform and without a formal legal code. Traditionally, such people are summarily executed in times of open hostility.

This practice was a regular feature of the European wars of the last century. It is an extraordinary act of humane treatment that these persons have been imprisoned at all.

Now since I am answering you specifically Leo, and I have tremendous respect for your intellect and integrity, I'll proceed in a more compact and informal fashion on this topic.

These persons as I say are combatants, captured on the battlefield. They have already been granted treatment that under traditional customs of war, they did not merit. A number have been released, only to be killed or captured in battle again.

They are not criminals in the traditional sense, and the civil laws of the nation were not constructed to deal with such acts. It is not at all clear that it is somehow more legal to prosecute them as common thugs that to hold them as armed combatants.

So I will respond to your question ultimately with a question, "what would you do with them, were your prime responsibility the safety of the American people?"

Myself, I think that a return to summary execution of irregular fighters would be the most humane approach, for reasons that none of us like but which you are smart enough to recognize.


On the topic of rendition, the options for handling determined hostile fanatics is limited. Put yourself in the position of a military or civilian responsible for preventing the captured jihadi from causing more death and destruction, especially if he is possessed of intelligence information.

Many of your own people have decreed that sleep deprivation, exposure to loud music and interrogation by females ate tantamount to torture. But imagine again that you are responsible for the safety of the American people.

Would you not consider rendition to a country that might extract life saving information, considering what it is in the mind of this man to do?

What do you do when you have no good choices?

Supposedly General Patton said something to the effect that a man would know how to conduct his part in a war once he had seen his best friend's face reduced to a shapeless red mass.

I''m afraid that this fact of life has foolishly been discounted by politicians, journalists and academics who have never been confronted with lethal intent in others.

When most people say that the U.S. commits torture, they are referring to waterboarding. The U.S. government the last time I heard maintains that this has been used about three times. Each time, it is supposed to have produced lifesaving information, and practiced on men who in a saner would would have been executed soon afterward.

To return to your main question. No country is innocent, but it is to remembered that the U.S. holds a formalized bloodless coup every two to four years, when the citizens change the government.

This alone gives our leaders some right to chide the Chinese whose recent response to a student demonstration was to have its troops open fire.

Originally Posted by Goldwater

I lived in China during 1986. And the Chinese have a society that Conservatives here would love, but can't achieve here because of the freedoms we have. In China, you go to jail, you stay there. But the streets are safe enough for Grandma to walk day and night unmolested. the Government has one message, and if it were a Conservative message, and you know how you hate Democrats, well you could jail them all, and they would stay in jail.

I view things most often from a conservative viewpoint but I have yet to
get in touch with my "put Liberals in concentration camps" bad self.

Originally Posted by Leo

Is President George W. Bush in any position to lecture anyone, including the Chinese, on human rights?

I think the Chinese record on human rights is execrable, but given Abou Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, rendition, torture, etc. does not Bush's criticisms put him, and the US, in a somewhat hypocritical light?

Which is a pity, as otherwise, someone as powerful as the US President criticising the Chinese regime might have done some good.

The Chinese deny the greatest thing of all to their citizens --DEMOCRACY. The Chinese government are ruthless thugs.

Bush has the right to say what he wants.

Originally Posted by Oftencold

==================================

This post is a conversational reply to a friend, and
not a particularly thorough essay.

==================================


Let's take these issues one at a time.

What happened at Abu Ghraib Prison was not only unconscionable, and inexcusable, it was also criminal and prosecutable. The guards are being punished, the commander has had her career destroyed. From my time in the military, I can readily assume that other careers have been severely, if less publicly damaged.


This is opposed to the Chinese penal system in which a treatment standard for prisoners much lower that those found in the West prevails-- with government sanction.

In other words, Abu Ghraib can be seen as an aberration, while conditions in Chinese Prisons are not.

I agree with that for the most part, although there is a certain degree of anecdotal evidence which does more than suggest that what happened at Abou Ghraib was not merely the aberrations of 'a few bad apples'. It could be argued that this occurred as the result of policy disseminated from the highest levels of the military and the administration. A recent BBC programme argued just that case.

Originally Posted by Oftencold

Guantanamo Bay is a detention facility for irregular combatants. That means, people who fight out of uniform and without a formal legal code. Traditionally, such people are summarily executed in times of open hostility.

This practice was a regular feature of the European wars of the last century. It is an extraordinary act of humane treatment that these persons have been imprisoned at all.

I understand the point you are making, but it does not quite fit the situation at Guantanamo Bay. The practice is to summarily execute 'spies' and 'saboteurs', not un-uniformed combatants. The early stages of the American Revolution was fought by citizens in civilian clothes on the colonists' side. The British did not (nor would they have been entitled to) summarily execute all colonists who took up arms against the Crown.

Furthermore, not all the detainees at Guantanamo Bay were captured in the act of fighting American forces. A large percentage - very possibly the majority - of the detainees were sold to American forces by the Northern Alliance. There is little evidence that they were engaged in any anti-American activities. The Australian David Hicks is one such example. He was captured by an Afghan warlord while standing guard over a tank, and never fired a shot in anger. He languished for six years in Guantanamo, and eventually accepted a guilty plea in desperation (cos it allowed him to complete his sentence in the relative civilisation of an Australian prison.)

Originally Posted by Oftencold

Now since I am answering you specifically Leo, and I have tremendous respect for your intellect and integrity, I'll proceed in a more compact and informal fashion on this topic.

These persons as I say are combatants, captured on the battlefield. They have already been granted treatment that under traditional customs of war, they did not merit. A number have been released, only to be killed or captured in battle again.

They are not criminals in the traditional sense, and the civil laws of the nation were not constructed to deal with such acts. It is not at all clear that it is somehow more legal to prosecute them as common thugs that to hold them as armed combatants.

So I will respond to your question ultimately with a question, "what would you do with them, were your prime responsibility the safety of the American people?"

Myself, I think that a return to summary execution of irregular fighters would be the most humane approach, for reasons that none of us like but which you are smart enough to recognize.

I have equal respect for you, and it is with that respect that I point to the fact that the Guantanamo detainees are prisoners of war, in every sense of the term, and are entitled to the treatment accorded POWs under the relevant Geneva Conventions. The coalition led by the Americans was in the process of invading Afghanistan, and the majority of combatants captured were in the process of fighting an invading army. There was never any justification, legal or military, for summarily executing prisoners of war, whether uniformed or otherwise.

Prime responsibility for the safety of any people, American or not, does not remove the responsibility for a leader or nation to observe international, military, and civil law. The detainees at Guantanamo were not treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, and they were not afforded their rights under civil law.

Originally Posted by Oftencold

On the topic of rendition, the options for handling determined hostile fanatics is limited. Put yourself in the position of a military or civilian responsible for preventing the captured jihadi from causing more death and destruction, especially if he is possessed of intelligence information.

I accept the quandary, but the exigencies of any situation does not justify the abandonment of civilised codes of behaviour. There is a cost for civilisation, and that includes never doing certain things.

Originally Posted by Oftencold

Many of your own people have decreed that sleep deprivation, exposure to loud music and interrogation by females are tantamount to torture. But imagine again that you are responsible for the safety of the American people.

Would you not consider rendition to a country that might extract life saving information, considering what it is in the mind of this man to do?

What do you do when you have no good choices?

War in itself is not a good choice. And the 'ticking bomb' scenario has long since been discredited in logic.

Originally Posted by Oftencold

Supposedly General Patton said something to the effect that a man would know how to conduct his part in a war once he had seen his best friend's face reduced to a shapeless red mass.

I''m afraid that this fact of life has foolishly been discounted by politicians, journalists and academics who have never been confronted with lethal intent in others.

From what I know of Patton, he was a megalomaniac and a bully. I would not be favourably influenced by anything said by such a man. I have a much better example in a much more courageous military man, who happened to be a highly decorated brigadier, much closer to home. He had seen the horrors of war from a closer vantage point than Patton, and I knew him well enough to know that he would despise such melodramatic nonsense.

Originally Posted by Oftencold

When most people say that the U.S. commits torture, they are referring to waterboarding. The U.S. government the last time I heard maintains that this has been used about three times. Each time, it is supposed to have produced lifesaving information, and practiced on men who in a saner would would have been executed soon afterward.

Waterboarding is only one of the procedures to which the US government has admitted. The many others, stress positions, etc. are all regarded by the civilised world as torture. And what any government admits to, is not always a clear indicator of fact.

Originally Posted by Oftencold

To return to your main question. No country is innocent, but it is to remembered that the U.S. holds a formalized bloodless coup every two to four years, when the citizens change the government.

This alone gives our leaders some right to chide the Chinese whose recent response to a student demonstration was to have its troops open fire.

If you mean the circus which passes for your elections, you are more than intelligent enough to know that the vast majority of the developed world operates via the democratic process. This in itself gives no one the right to criticise anyone else.

But, my friend, you are losing sight of the point of my post. It is not to examine the human rights violations of the United States, nor is it to excuse the worse human rights violations of the Chinese. It is simply to point out that the questionable record of the United States nullifies any good the President's criticisms might otherwise have done. The Chinese will simply brush them aside as a case of "Mr Pot, meet Mr Kettle!"

There is a price to be paid for indiscriminate kicking ass, and doing what you like simply because you can, and the toll is most often extracted in terms of respect.

Bush doesn't have a right to lecture anyone on anything at all, let alone human rights. In contrast to China, yes we have and usually do treat people better, inmate or not. However 1 in 100 people in the US are inmates so that should tell you something right there.

Originally Posted by Goldwater

I lived in China during 1986. And the Chinese have a society that Conservatives here would love,

Actually more in line with what liberals strive to achieve, but that is another thread.

Care to address what I actually said?

Originally Posted by Stinger

Actually more in line with what liberals strive to achieve, but that is another thread.

Stinger, I will challenge you to actually start a thread on that topic if you are going to make random statements with no citations such as that above.