Germany's Merkel says Guantanamo should be shut

Reuters ^ | January 7, 2006 | Karin Strohecker

[Polybius]

And for now, I take back that "God bless you", because I don´t wish that any longer to you. I could care less about your insulting words.

I mentioned the historical facts of your country’s war record. If you consider that “insulting”, that is strictly your problem and your country’s problem.

The purpose of writing on a public forum is not to exchange private opinions or to seek blessings from God offered by posters, that is what private e-mail and prayer is for. The purpose of public forums is so that others may learn from the exchanges.

Don´t you think that your referrence to the Nazi era does not belong here? It´s silly, and it shows that you´re trying to divert from your morally and legally wrong steps taken in this "war on terrorism".

Not at all. The Nazi era is, in fact, the very reason that some Germans can now sanctimoniously criticize the U.S. about the dirty and always imperfect business of war.

At the end of your last post, you listed the Korean War and the Vietnam War and claimed that American self-interest was involved because America “couldn’t stay out” of those wars lest the Communists conquer those two countries. That, Michael, demonstrates the mindset that Germans and Europeans have developed in regards to America after World War II: America is seen as the man that HAS to go out and do the heavy work because he CAN’T allow children under his care to come to harm.

In the meantime, Germany became a self-proclaimed child in regards to war.

If South Korea needed defending, everybody from the Greeks to the Turks helped America and the U.N. defend South Korea………… But not Germany.

If a large percentage Europe's oil supplies was going to be militarily dominated by Saddam Hussein as a result of his conquest of Kuwait and his capability of invading Saudi Arabia next and something needed to be done militarily, that is what America and Britain were there for.........But not Germany.

When genocide was occurring in the 1990's in the former Yugoslavia right on Germany's doorstep, it was left for the Americans and the British to do the actual combat that stopped the slaughter.

German troops were involved in delivery of food to the besieged city of Sarajevo but avoided airdrops that could result in conflict. Service by German crews on unarmed NATO reconnaissance aircraft to help enforce the "no-fly zone" was only narrowly approved by the Federal Constitutional Court.

"Sorry. We don't dirty our pristine German hands with the unpleasant business of war outside our borders anymore."

Why?

Precisely because of the Nazi era.

Long after the Nazi era was over, Germany used the Nazi era as an excuse to leave the dirty business of war outside its own borders to other nations, especially America. “You can’t expect us Germans to go to war outside our borders, no matter how noble the cause, because look what happened the last time we fought a war outside our borders!”

Whenever wars have needed to be fought after 1945, Germany has embraced the memory of the Nazi area as tightly as a child embracing his mother.

My family came to America in 1960 and, since then, my immediate family has seen more combat than all of the former West Germany put together ever did throughout its entire existence.

Even now that Germany has changed that policy, it keeps its troops in Afghanistan restricted to the city of Kabul lest, God forbid, they may have to actually dirty their pure hands in combat.

The child that never gets behind the wheel of a car has a spotless traffic record. The physician that never sees a patient never makes a medical mistake or loses a patient. The pilot who never flies, never crashes.

Likewise, the country that refuse to ever go to war, even in the defense of others, has a perfect war conduct record and, after three generations, loses all touch with the realities of war.

I have explained why your treatment of prisoners is legally wrong. The process of determining the status by the CSRT was too slow, 38 detainees were innocent.

There is one example of losing touch with reality. As I have documented, Military Tribunals were brought to a legal halt by left-wing attorneys winning lower Court decision in U.S. civilian courts. Now, the case is working its way up the U.S. legal system to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Geneva Convention mandates that tribunals be military tribunals. By this legal logic, all the left-wing attorneys have to do is win a lower Court decision to stop the Military Tribunals and, before the case can even work its way to the Supreme Court, the Europeans are demanding that the confinement is illegal. In effect, the logic claims that the holding unprivileged combatants is legally impossible.

POW or those who are treated like that must not be tortured. When a prisoner is not a POW, he must have the rights by GCIV. The Geneva Conventions don´t know a status-free prisoner. Either you´re a POW (GCIII), or a civilian with the right of GCIV.

The GCIV requires that the prisoners be "treated with humanity". That is a rather subjective term and it seems that it takes very little for modern-day Europeans to scream “Torture!”. Thus, the terrorist that beat a U.S. Navy sailor to death is now being released after a mere 20 years in a European prison.

[Michael81Dus]

I owe you an response. Here it is:

That, Michael, demonstrates the mindset that Germans and Europeans have developed in regards to America after World War II: America is seen as the man that HAS to go out and do the heavy work because he CAN’T allow children under his care to come to harm.

In the meantime, Germany became a self-proclaimed child in regards to war.

By your own standards America HAS to go out. We´re judging you by your own ideals.

It is mostly right to call Germany a child. But it´s not that self-proclaimed. For decades our neighbours wanted us to have reduced military capabilities. We´re still not allowed to have ABC-weapons, carriers, strategic bombers or long-range-missiles. But I don´t neglect that it´s also home-made.

As for our committment in Afghanistan, we´re in Kabul, Falsabad and now in another region (forgot the name). Our elite troops also fought side by side with yours in 2001 and 2002 against the Taliban (on the hunt for those who are now in Gitmo). One of our soldiers lost his leg, but gladly nobody died. Of the regular ISAF-troops, 18 have died so far. It´s not that we ignore the WOT.

The Nazi era still doesn´t belong here. This is about Gitmo, about how to deal with these prisoners. We (as Germans) are no more or less entitled to criticize you as France, Britain, Italy or Denmark is.

Our values were (or still are), that guilt must be proven (not innocence) and that people need to (soon) be convicted for being imprisoned. That´s not the case with most of the inmates in Gitmo. If they´re POW (and there are several from Iraq and Afghanistan who have this status according to US sources), they shall be released as soon as the armed conflict in their homeland is over (e.g. Iraq is stable and the Taliban in Afghanistan are defeated). That may take some time but is in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. If they´re not POW, they´re "civilians" (= criminals, terrorists, whatever you may call them). They shall be entitled to the rights of the Fourth Geneva Convention and be treated according to the laws. Therefore, those people should face a trial. If the reason, why you refuse to try them, is a lack of trust in your judges - you should fix this problem. The Geneva Conventions don´t know the term "illegal combatant".

I agree that the collection of informations through interrogations of Gitmo-inmates have contributed to our security here, too. I also do not question the treatment of the prisoners, incl. water boarding. Not long ago, I was opposed to these forms of treatment, but I learned how the water boarding works. It´s ok considering the importance of the informations these people may have.

The difference is, that we Euros view the WOT more as a form or law enforcement, and you view it more as a war. Both ain´t right, it´s a completely new thing.

[Polybius]

It seems, Michael, that you and I often get on each other’s nerves on threads and I am certain that it is because we each feel that our country is being unjustly attacked by the other.

To try to get things back on a more civil track, let me assure you that I do not have any deep rooted historical animosity towards Germany. My family roots on all branches lead back to Spain, my paternal branches served as Spanish Army and Naval officers from the 1500’s to the 1800’s and our traditional enemy, more often than not, has been France. We have still not forgiven Napoleon.

As a result, as you may have noticed, I have defended Germany’s position at the start of World War One and have stated that I felt that Russia and France had more culpability for the start of that disaster and that a quick German victory over France in 1914, as happened in the Franco-Prussian War, would have been the best for all. I have also had a long standing interest in World War One aviation history with emphasis on the German Air Services and therefore, when reading about this or that Jagdstaffel on the French sector of the front, I often find myself thinking of the Germans as “us” and the French as “them”.

By your own standards America HAS to go out. We´re judging you by your own ideals.

Parece que piensas que conoces a los norteamericanos, Michael. Pero, de verdad, no los conoces. Esa falta de entendimiento es algo que podra ser muy peligrosa en el futuro de Alemania y de Europa.

In American history, the opposite is true. The current American internationalism is an aberration in American history.

The American ideal has traditionally been to have America keep to itself and to allow the rest of the World to kill themselves off if they so pleased. That policy began with George Washington’s advice to avoid foreign entanglements, briefly lapsed during 1917-18 and then returned in full force until 7 DEC 1941.

The conduct of France and Britain at Versailles almost put a stake through the heart of American’s brief love affair with idealism on the international stage and the most potent foreign policy force in America in the 1920’s and the 1930’s was Isolationism whose most vocal champion was the America First movement.

Make no mistake about it. If the Europeans had killed each other off to the last man, woman and child, America First could not have cared less. Although not born in the U.S. I am an idealistic believer in American internationalism. I served in the U.S. Armed Forces as a volunteer and was stationed overseas both in Guantanamo and in Europe. My family has shed blood in America’s international wars.

However, those like us are becoming an endangered species in America.

It is becoming almost impossible for America to wage a ground war no matter how noble the cause or vital the national or international interest.

When something goes wrong, as things invariably do in war, every civilian child killed by a U.S. bomb is given more international news coverage than Auschwitz received in 1944.

At the Battle of Okinawa in 1945, the U.S. Navy was losing an average of 1 ½ ships per day to Japanese kamikaze pilots and the Marines suffered 2,500 deaths just to capture Sugar Loaf Hill.,,,,,a single hill in a single battle on a single island on a single front in a war. Today, the U.S. has suffered 2,000 killed during an entire war and the Democrats and the American liberal news media are already telling the American people that the war has been lost.

In addition, the U.S. can’t even take prisoners without international outrage.

In addition, countries such as South Korea that owe their freedom to U.S. blood treat us us like dirt.

After a while, even internationalists like myself begin to wonder why we bother to risk our lives for the benefit of such people.

I live in a far-left-wing American town where the majority of the citizens would rather have the U.S, pull of Iraq tomorrow even if it meant a bloodbath with hundreds of thousands of dead Kurds and Shiites at the hands of the Sunni Baathists. I know. I have had this discussion with my neighbor.

I live in a far-left-wing American town where the majority of the citizens, given the choice of fighting a war with 5,000 U.S. deaths to spare the lives of 500,000 Germans would choose to allow 500,000 Germans to die without a second thought.

I live in a far-left-wing American town where the majority of the citizens, given the choice of fighting a war themselves in order to spare the lives of 10 million Germans, would choose to allow 10 million Germans to die and then devote their energies to campaigns to save baby Canadian fur seals from being clubbed to death for their pelts.

The Europeans should not put too much confidence in the America that feels that it HAS to come to their rescue because that America is my America and my America is dying with each passing day.

That is why I feels that it is time for Europe to stop taking the U.S. for granted in defense matters and that is why I feel that it is time for Germany to let the Nazi past be the past instead of using it as an excuse to avoid combat.

Instead of having German airdrops of food into Sarajevo…….unless it would mean conflict………I would have loved to see Germany saying that food WOULD be flown into Sarajevo by German aircraft and that any interference would have to deal with German warplanes with the venerable Eisenkreuz on their wings. I want a modern Germany of Max Immelmans, Oswald Boelckes, Ernst Udets, Wilhelm Frankls and Manfred vonRichthofens (the Germans that I have admired since my childhood) as our war-fighting allies and not a Germany that refuses to drop food over Sarajevo if it involves flying bullets.

I believe that you also share that point of view.

In regards to Guantanamo, my reading of the law is that:

*** Each belligerent has a right to have his privileged or non-privileged status determined (G.C. III, Article 5)

***Such determination is made by Military Tribunal (G.C. III, Article 84)

***The U.S. has had civilian legal obstacles thrown up by left-wing lawyers that have won lower Court decisions that have stopped those Tribunals for the time being

***The issue is scheduled to reach the United States Supreme Court this Spring and it is my firm belief that the U.S. Supreme Court will uphold the requirements of Article 5 and 84 of G.C. III so that the Tribunals for status determination may resume.

In regards to whether the actions of organizations such as al Qaeda are acts of war, as claimed by the U.S. or merely criminal enterprises as claimed by many Europeans, that is a valid philosophical argument.

I would point out that the Geneva Convention describes mere local militias as “belligerents” and al Qaeda has much more offensive power and reach than any local militia.

Consideration must also be made to the magnitude of their attacks.

Let’s assume that I am the nation-state of Polybia on the German border.

If Polybia authorizes the stealing of some natural gas from pipelines going into Germany. would Germany consider that a “crime” or an “act of war”?

If Polybia authorizes the smuggling of tax-free cigarettes into Germany, would Germany consider that a “crime” or an “act of war”?

If Polybia authorizes the bombing of a Berlin landmark that kills 3,000 Germans and also authorizes the bombing of a German warship, would Germany consider that a “crime” or an “act of war”?