R.E.M. and Pearl Jam Call for Guantanamo Closure

The amount of self-righteous and xenophobic Americans on this thread alone is staggering.

Being an 'American citizen' grants neither superiority nor the right to abuse human rights. This is on a moral and legal level. If you start imprisoning suspects indefinitely without a trial, it advocates further abuses down the line. The majority of these suspects were kidnapped for their ransom. Calling them all 'barbarians' is arrogance in the extreme.

I highly doubt you patriotic nuts would like being imprisoned without a trial by an invading army. Show some empathy, or failing that, some goddamn common sense.

They forgot "Disco Duck" and "You're Having My Baby!"

JezzXv explains:

"As I said, war is ugly and sometimes you have to do ugly things. Unfortunately we do not have the technology to surgically go in and eliminate just the guilty individuals and unfortunately there are times that civilians will be killed. Life and war are not fair."

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I need no lectures on the ugliness of war. I saw it first-hand when I was in Vietnam. You say it's "unfortunate" that the USA isn't better able to avoid killing civilian non-combatants. That's a pretty wishy-washy term to use to excuse the FACT that many more thousands of Iraqi and Afghani civilians have been killed by the American invasion of those two nations than Americans killed by those 20 9/11 hi-jackers. "Unfortunate", indeed!

George Bush and his henchmen (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice...etc.) were so successful at whipping up the blood-lust of American "patriots", that those cheered on these bloody invasions rather than considering the consequences. Bush et al. were given carte Blanche by the cowards in Congress (BOTH Republicans AND Democrats) to, in essence, kill an ant with a sledgehammer.

If our "leaders" wanted to "destroy al qaeda", they could have done so (with a minimum of bloodshed) by deploying "Special Ops" teams to seek out and destroy the terrorist organization that planned and carried out the horrific attack on America. The Israeli special forces have shown us how to carry out such missions....surgically.

Instead, our "leaders" saw 9/11 as an opportunity to carry out their own horrific "foreign policies"...with the added bonus of rewarding 'friendly' corporate sponsors with billions of dollars worth of government contracts for "re-building" the resultant damage to the infrastructure of these two nations.

As you say, "War IS ugly"....and ought to be strenuously avoided except as a last resort after exhausting all other alternatives. This, btw, is precisely why our nation (like other nations) has a State Department.

Your cavalier attitude toward the deaths of non-Americans (AND of American soldiers duty-bound to follow orders) betrays a contempt for the lives of OTHERS, rather than love for those who died on 9/11. Is it any wonder that the rest of the world sees Americans as hypocrites? Is it any wonder that so many nations are intent on arming themselves to the teeth, lest America invade them next?

I should think our "leaders" would have learned some lessons from their past 'mistakes' (like the mistake I participated in, voluntarily, 40 years ago in Vietnam). I've certainly learned from mine....and I mourn for all of my comrades killed in that war. I mourn no less for the many thousands of Vietnamese killed during that long drawn-out fiasco.

As the poet said, "The death of any man diminishes me." I'm proud that I have learned to be a HUMAN first...and an AMERICAN secondarily. I look forward to a day when being human and being American are not mutually exclusive. It saddens me--and scares me--that I see little evidence that REASON will ultimately prevail over the mindless chauvinism that afflicts so many on this board.

The article's headline "R.E.M. and Pearl Jam Call for Guantanamo Closure" is like a celebrity coming out and saying "Stop Hitler, Now!".
They are in the process of closing the prison. So anything said now in protest of the camp is simply because they like to hear themselves speak.

Are you serious? Havent you ever stood up for what you believe in? I mean really stood up for something? If someone was trying to take a family member from you would you have the courage to stand up to that person? That is what this is about. Their belief system is allowed to grow ONLY because of a lack of education in their country. It is a flawed belief system. They believe that if you are not a devoute Muslim then you should either be converted or DIE. That is why they attack us and any one else that does not believe the same. So what should we do? Let them attack us and take the blame>>> Your right Osama, I should not have done so well with my country, and I should not be educating my women like I doo. I am sorry. I will stop so you stop killing people. ?? IS that the way you want us to respond? These people WILL NOT respond to logic. They HAVE NO logic to base it on. I have been over there. When a woman is thought to have sinned, they stone them. A guy I thought was a good guy told me that I need to beat my wife more often to keep her in line. I asked him how often he beat his wife, he said, "about every 3 or 4 days". This is normal for their culture. And though it happens in our culture, it is not normal, it is sick and punishable. There are so many examples of where we need to ACT on things. I mean we tried negotiating with Germand and Japan for years, in the mean time the Germans killed millions of Jews, and the Japanese killed MILLIONS of chinese and Russians. MILLIONS. Thinks about that number. Millions of people lost their lives because we wanted to TALK about our problems. Wake up man, pasafisim DOES NOT WORK IN THIS WORLD. Bottom line #1. Bad things happen when good people stand by and do nothing. Bottom Line #2. Uneducation or corrupt eductaion of the masses allows extreme and dangerous ideals to spread. Example of #2. I was stationed on a ship fighting pirates off the cost of Somolia. We intercepted comms from the pirates back to thier base. The guy was getting berated by his wife because he had not made any money yet and their 3 kids were starving. He stated that the money would be comming soon and that after a few more "business trips" he hoped he could return back to college. This guy was a college student who had to turn to piriting vessels in order to feed his family. Somolia's economic collapse and lack of education has led to thier situation. Famine, corruption. Bottom Line #3. They are protesting the wrong thing. We should not be trying to stop our govenment from stopping terrorisim. We should be pushing them to be more proactive in areas BEFORE the true disasters start. If we had spent 100 Million in afganistan after the russians left (we were spending billions in their defence already) we could have helped them build a school system that would have lead to the education of their country and would have led to the growth. Not the decay. And that would have prevented 9-11. If instead of just dumping money into contry after contry, we spend that money on actually building schools, and hospitals, and paying for their people to go to our schools then return to run their own country we could eliminate half the worlds problems in 20-30 years. And we could do it by just re-routing the money we are already sending them. Instead of sending the money to a leader who spends it on his new castle that only he gets to use, we send it to the contractor top build 10 new schools and we "hire" 10 new principals to get educated. Then we set them loose to run them the way they see fit. OPEN your eyes to the world and really see what is going on out there.

Steve Hartley
hartlesj@gmail.com

I'm reading some of these comments. I cant't believe some of what I'm reading. Un-American to keep the very people who want to kill you and your children locked up?
Are you people nuts or just plain stupid. It's un-American to leave troops that are asking for help in Afganastan on their own. It's un-American to apologize for tactics used to save democracies around the globe. It's un-American to deface the flag in protest, for that flag represents the very freedom that allows you to deface it. It's un-American to refuse someone the opportunity to invest in a business based on political views (NFL). It's un-American to call people who dissent from the government a mad mob. It's un-American for the government to hijack private enterprise. Thankfully, what is American is the freedom to be un-American. So go ahead artists your free to be un-American... FOR NOW.

Wow... judging by the comments, NO ONE except some of the artists themselves are against this?! In fact, 99% of the comments are just calling the artists unpatriotic whiners.

To those people: if someone sneaked into your house and took something personal of yours (a sweater you had knit, a favorite painting, even a handgun) and used it as an instrument of torture, violence, or harassment against another person without your knowledge or consent... wouldn't you feel just a little bit violated and upset, even if the victim "deserved it?"

And people are allowed to have a different point of view than you. Someone can be a pacifist without being "unamerican." I'm one of them, actually. One of the great things about this country is that we are allowed different opinions and beliefs.

And on pacifism: Peace by way of war is... Well, think about it. Having a bigger stick isn't peace; it's intimidation. And revenge is not the same thing as justice. We have such an anger problem in this nation. You see it on the freeways, etc. But bump it up to national level and throw some "patriotism" behind it and watch out...

I fail to see how this is any different from the was US Special Forces Psych Ops used Rock & Roll music to flush Manuel Noriega out during operation Just Cause? The real travesty here is that a sizable portion of what we call music in America is scary, nerve racking, and otherwise annoying, which is why it was chosen to torture the inmates. Believe me, Mozart's 40th would not have gotten the same effect. So what is the take away from this one? We need to rethink American Music.

TRUST ME BOY U DONT WANNA GO UP AGAINST OPRAH N TYLER...U CANT WIN.I NEVA WATCH ANY KIND OF PROGRAM, MOVIE ETC IF U GOT ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT...U A VERY PREJUDICE PERSON..IM BLACK N I SEE IT.. U JEALOUS OF UR OWN COLOR BOY..

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