> Sometimes it really does seem that "the cruelty is the point".

Yes, this is very much as American as apple pie, as they would say.

Cruelty is worldwide. See: Rwanda, Yemen, former Yugoslavia, Mexican cartels, ISIS, etc. for a small sample of non-US cruelty in the twenty-first century.

The US would not like to think of itself in that company. But it seems that quite a few Americans see ourselves as better only because of our identity as Americans and not because of any difference in behavior.

American exceptionalism goes both ways. Yes, people who see the US as uniquely moral and good are wrong. So are people who see the US as uniquely bad. It’s somewhat better than most countries in the world, and somewhat worse than some others, especially Western and Northern Europe, i.e. the most developed part of the world.

If it’s not fair to compare the US to Yemen, then it’s not fair to compare it to Norway either. It simply is what it is.

Yeah, there's two ways to look at this:

* The US is doing better than you might expect from an influential, powerful country, that could be abusing its power much more (but that's how empires fall, and the US has learned from the lessons of history)

* The US is doing worse than you might expect from a prosperous and stable country, one that doesn't need to be driven by desperation and genuine threats to survival

I wouldn't compare countries. But I can recognize what the OP said, that for many Americans the cruelty is the point, and I find that unpleasant all on its own. The comparison to the worst may not be apt, but I feel disgusted to be even inaptly associated with it.

By saying “Americans” rather than “human beings in general” you are implicitly comparing countries.

I am referring to a specific movement within the US.

Unlike these countries US is supposedly a part of the democratic and free where rule of law and human rights are a thing.

Also, apples and oranges. Cartel violence is a failure of the state but at least not a systemic cruelty by the state itself.

Lots of countries bake apple pies too.

Those countries aren’t first world, and they most certainly don’t claim to be the world superpower.

Plenty of cruelty has been perpetrated by rich, Western countries too, the Holocaust for example. What’s your point?

Also, whether a country is a superpower has no obvious connection to whether it commits human rights violations.

> Sometimes it really does seem that "the cruelty is the point".

This extends very far beyond Guantanamo. I really wonder where all these sick fucks come from. I don't remember much of a psycho vibe from classmates or work colleagues. Yet the US makes them in sufficient quantity that they seem to pop up wherever authority is. Prisons, police, military, they all seem to have endless human garbage that enjoys being cruel if they can. How has this country produced these "people" and why do they achieve positions of power instead of failure?

Haven't you encountered "The Banality of Evil," yet? It doesn't take "sick fucks" to operate a detainment facility and/or concentration camp. The staff at these institutions are simply operating in accordance with handed-down procedure designed in abstract by remote administrators.

I think a better book on this topic would be "Ordinary Men". It covers the "growth" of ordinary police reservists that had little to no Nazi tendencies to brutal mass murderers of Jewish men, women, children, elderly "just following orders". "The Banality of Evil" has legitimate criticisms directed at the book and most notably the narrative Eichmann sought to paint himself in (just an administrative employee), which contrasts with what his co-workers and superiors thought of him.

Beauracracies can be extremely cruel without a single cruel person. All is takes is diffuse, disconnected decision making to produce ridiculous rules.

I have never felt more oppressed than when my wife was intentionally disallowed from re-entering the U.S. with me during COVID, since we happened to be out of the country when Trump levied his moronic bans against visa holders. It wasn't until Biden became president that she was able to return. If Trump had remained president, it's likely I would have had to leave the country to see her again. We were separated for 15 months, for literally no reason other than Trump's idiocy and a bureaucracy that has no thinking mind of its own. I felt helpless, and I think the scary thing was that I was helpless. No one cared, at all. There was not even a person you could speak to for help or guidance.

It boggles the mind how these prisoners and others can remain even remotely sane during their times in literal holes and figurative holes of bureaucracy while being mentally and physically assaulted and tortured.

While I do agree about the bureaucracy, I believe that these bureaucracies don't have to be this way. But what it requires is that the people in charge of the bureaucracies care about finding deficiencies and fixing them, assuming they aren't the ones directing the non-niceties in the first place.

> No one cared, at all.

I know the feeling, having been involved with the US immigration process since the start of covid & living here through the last couple Trump years.

In case of American law enforcement (of every level), it is not just that. It's permeated with that "sheep / wolf / sheepdog" mentality, thanks to Dave Grossman and his lectures. And once you've neatly subdivided people like that, it's only natural to dehumanize the "wolves" if you're the "sheepdog".

Well, one answer would be that there’s no need for a “psycho vibe” on the road to heartless acts. It can look a lot more like complacency.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem#Banali...

It's important to acknowledge that there's a tendency to consider certain sets of people subhuman and deserving of anything bad thing that happens to them. Consider how America treats its poor and its sick.

> "Consider how America treats its poor and its sick."

No matter how valuable we were perceived to be or treated as (by some folk at least) prior to our illness (and subsequent "poor-ness"), or how valuable we're capable of being if only we could get one tiny shred of help or luck dealing with our medical needs, we're treated like worthless garbage and kicked to the curb to suffer miserably the moment we're no longer able to continue as a functional part of the money-producing machine for the rich and powerful. That's the truth of life on a planet where money is literally God to most people.

I suspect they look for positions of power, sadly.

I'm against prisoners in non-wartime being held without allegations or trials... I mean, Khalid was held pre-9/11...

That said, I do not care about the art, or even speech, of prisoners--of which who are properly convicted, beyond speech with their attorneys and allowed contacts (whom must be able to communicate on behalf of them). The bothersome part of this is Guantanamo's non-wartime use in-and-of itself.

> who are properly convicted

They haven't been. Legally speaking, the remaining detainees at Guantanamo are basically victims of indefinite government kidnapping, as the US government has specifically refused to actually put them on trial because there isn't enough admissible evidence to do so.

This. If they were convicted, they’d be in a US prison, not a place that the US just indefinitely “rents” so it can be off US soil.

Remember: military bases are US soil and subject to the Constitution. Except for when they’re not.

Perhaps I wasn't clear, I am saying that this is bothersome because he wasn't convicted. It's my first sentence. I just don't care about the art angle.

You don't put lawful combatants "on trial". In fact, it is illegal to do so under the Geneva Conventions.

Unlawful combatants, by contrast, are not entitled to a trial, and can even be executed on the spot if it seems advisable.

Being a lawful combatant requires, among other things, that the combatant wear a uniform or other insignia recognizable at a distance.

No uniform -> no POW rights has been the rule for a very, very long time.

> Unlawful combatants, by contrast, are not entitled to a trial, and can even be executed on the spot if it seems advisable

When you write these things, imagine how they work when your simply replace names of countries involved.

You are saying it's right and proper when a Russian soldier executes a Ukrainian civilian putting up resistance? Or a civilian that looks like the guy that was putting up resistance?

Either you are a combatant, or you are a criminal. If you are a combatant, Geneva convention applies. If you are a criminal, system of justice applies. There isn't some sort of third subhuman category you can just execute willy-nilly.

Civilians can and do take up arms to defend their homes. They do not have uniforms just for such an occasion and Geneva convention recongises that.

> If you are a combatant, Geneva convention applies.

Only if you are wearing a uniform and otherwise abiding by the laws of war.

Look it up.

Edit: Read it yourself.

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/Article.xs...

Note that even resistance forces are required to wear insignia.

It doesn't have to be a fancy uniform, even an armband of a specific color will work.

What you cannot do is engage in hostilities while hiding among the civilian population.

And how do we know that the people locked up in Gitmo were not wearing an armband or something similar?

Oh, right, the United States government told us. How convenient.

Truth is, in many cases, those people weren't combatants at all. But when you're denied due process because of the presumption of being an "illegal combatant", it's kinda hard to prove otherwise.

> And how do we know that the people locked up in Gitmo were not wearing an armband or something similar?

> Oh, right, the United States government told us. How convenient.

Yes, the United States government has kept them prisoner for 20 years, at great inconvenience and expense, because they just want to be meanies. You bet.

> But when you're denied due process because of the presumption of being an "illegal combatant", it's kinda hard to prove otherwise.

"Due process" is a feature of United States civilian law.

Not international martial law.

> Yes, the United States government has kept them prisoner for 20 years, at great inconvenience and expense, because they just want to be meanies.

Well, no, they took them prisoner and held them there initially for a variety of bad reasons, and then they were kept there subsequently largely because of intrabranch squabbles, radicalization because of long unjust confinement, and foreign reluctance to help resolve the problem (in large part due to the preceding point) making it difficult to find a resolution to the problem created by the initial bad decisions.

(Anthropomorphizing the US government as if it were an individual with general consistence of interest is... not consistent with political reality, often, or on this point in particular.)

Every one of them is there for a "bad reason"? Not a genuine terrorist in the lot?

Sorry, you are not arguing this point in good faith.

If there are, why is the government fighting tooth and nail to prevent anything pertaining to those cases from ending up in civil courts?

Your "prisoners aren't entitled to due process" point doesn't matter - even if true, if we are the good guys, we should embrace the process that conclusively establishes guilt or innocence for everyone to see, not lock people up in special you-have-no-rights prisons.

> Yes, the United States government has kept them prisoner for 20 years, at great inconvenience and expense, because they just want to be meanies. You bet.

So there are no political prisoners in China?

The United States is not China.

It's not like these people were found in a battlefield. Most of them were kidnapped from their homes in air raids. It's pretty hard to argue that they didn't have a legal right to trial.

A good number were proffered up for cash to the US on a bounty system and were little more than tourists from other parts of the world with few local friends or contacts and ideal patsies for whatever stories local warlords spun about them.

"Tourists" don't generally travel to active war zones.

Sure they do. Folks who have families who live in war zones, for example, will almost certainly fit the definition. Also, I see you've never heard of Miles Routledge, in fact I think he's in Afghanistan right now on a shooting trip with the Taliban - and his next destination is the South Sudan. [1] I myself have been to more than a handful of spicy jurisdictions.

It's fine to say you wouldn't but let's not go projecting.

[1] https://nypost.com/2021/08/18/uk-student-miles-routledge-fli...

> Also, I see you've never heard of Miles Routledge, in fact I think he's in Afghanistan right now on a shooting trip with the Taliban

If "Miles Routledge" is on a "shooting trip with the Taliban", he deserves anything he gets.

And if you make a habit of visiting "spicy jurisdictions", you deserve anything you get.

I say this not out of animus for you or Routledge, but if you knowingly and intentionally engage in risky behavior, you don't get to whine when something goes wrong.

Edit: I smoke cigarettes, which I know to be risky behavior. If I get lung cancer, I won't be whining about it.

Similarly, if Routledge's Taliban buddies decide they don't like him any more, and take a notion to saw off his head on video (a rather more likely risk than him accidentally being sent to Gitmo, IMO), that's on him.

right, but the fact that you smoke cigarettes doesn't give the US the right to lock you up without charges. The problem isn't that these people got hurt, it's that they got illegally imprisoned for decades without charges or trials.

Smoking cigarettes exposes me to the risk of lung cancer.

Being buddies with the Taliban exposes you to the risk of them sawing off your head, or being taken prisoner as an unlawful combatant.

And no, imprisoning unlawful combatants indefinitely is not "illegal", neither under United States law nor under the international laws of war.

If you claim otherwise, I'm going to have to ask for a citation.

> I'm going to have to ask for a citation.

And it gets a downmod, rather than a citation. Hint: that means you lose.

You've completely missed the point. We as a society believe people have a presupposition of innocence. The state must prove guilt. You don't get throw into jail to await trial forever if you happen to be wandering the wrong part of town - and you shouldn't if you're wandering the wrong part of the globe. This is literally the bare minimum standard to which we hold ourselves.

And for very good reason. The states power should always be checked, at home or abroad.

This is especially important as these days wars don't end.

> And if you make a habit of visiting "spicy jurisdictions", you deserve anything you get.

So far what I've got is a broader perspective so thank you.

so in civilized countries, we have these things called trials where evidence can be weighed rather than kicking people up without charges for a few decades and speculating.

It is forbidden under the Geneva Conventions to put lawful combatants on trial.

Unlawful combatants are not entitled to a trial.

It is a grievous error to assume that civilian law applies in a military context.

It's wrong to assume that all of the several hundred prisoners from multiple countries were "unlawful combatants".

As stated, a large number were delivered to the US in exchange for bounty and were alleged to be working with terrorists, allegations that were taken at face value, not looked into for years, if ever, and often lacking evidence.

Attempting to slide out of this via a false binary (ie. either lawful or unlawful combantants) is simply sleazy.

That's so weird then that the US was putting them up for trials. Not all of them, only some of them - and not on any particular schedule. In fact 10 of them are awaiting trial at this very moment.

You can't have it both ways.

I'm not "having it both ways".

Unlawful combatants are not entitled to a trial. That doesn't mean you can't give them one if you feel like it.

You can basically do anything you want with them, including giving them a trial or even simply shooting them on the spot.

> You can basically do anything you want with them

Unless "you" accidentally transport them to the United States like any other prisoner of the US government, in which case they are entitled to legal due process. It's a very principled system that we should all feel great about.

“Like almost all the men sent there, he has never been charged with a crime.”

Perhaps I wasn't clear, I am saying that this is bothersome because he wasn't convicted or charged. It's my first sentence.

I just don't care about the art angle.