Airport insanity

[Bill Stewart]

At 02:20 AM 10/21/2004, James A. Donald wrote:
>Doubtless there are some innocents in Gautenamo - but the usual
>reason they are there is for being foreigners in Afghanistan in
>the middle of a war with no adequate explanation.

At 09:21 AM 10/22/2004, James A. Donald wrote:
 > J.A. Terranson
 > > No.  We are under attack by those DEFENDING THEMSELVES.
 > All of the terrorists came from countries that were
 > beneficiaries of an immense amount of US help.


James - Many, perhaps most, of the POWs at Gitmo weren't foreigners,
they were Afghans.  Many of the POWs at Gitmo probably were Al-Qaeda
or other organized paramilitary groups.  But many of them were
described by the US propagandists as "Taliban fighters" -
the military arm of the local central government who were
"legitimate" to the extent that any group of warlords
who are the current king of the hill are legitimate,
and not too many months before the invasion,
the US government was giving those same Taliban $43million
because they were so helpful in our War on Drugs.
And sure, they're a nasty bunch, but so are many of the
anti-communist military juntas the US supported over the years.

It wasn't like the US didn't know the Taliban were
tolerating anti-American terrorist groups at the time -
Clinton's Pentagon had bombed some of the camps in ~97
as well as the Sudan medical factory in response to
bin Laden's bombing of the US embassies in Africa.

Also, perhaps you don't realize this, but many countries
with central governments do allow foreigners to stay there,
whether as immigrants, tourists, guestworkers, businessmen,
students, or attendees of terrorist training camps like the
School of the Americas or the Osama bin Laden gang.
Countries without effective central governments are usually
more flexible about such things, and cultures that are
tribally organized with colonialist-drawn boundaries
are also less likely to be picky about it, though they may
be more picky about whose tribal land you're in.


----
Bill Stewart  bill.stewart at pobox.com