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Would Turkey Be Justified in Kidnapping or Drone-Killing the Turkish Cleric in Pennsylvania?

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by glynch, Jul 19, 2016.

  1. glynch

    glynch Contributing Member

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    Interesting article by Glen Greenwald. I would say neither we nor Trukey should be doing this type of lawless stuff. https://theintercept.com/2016/07/18...e-killing-the-turkish-cleric-in-pennsylvania/
    *******


    Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan places the blame for this weekend’s failed coup attempt on an Islamic preacher and one-time ally, Fethullah Gulen (above), who now resides in Pennsylvania with a green card. Erdogan is demanding the U.S. extradite Gulen, citing prior extraditions by the Turkish government of terror suspects demanded by the U.S.: “Now we’re saying deliver this guy who’s on our terrorist list to us.” Erdogan has been requesting Gulen’s extradition from the U.S. for at least two years, on the ground that he has been subverting the Turkish government while harbored by the U.S. Thus far, the U.S. is refusing, with Secretary of State John Kerry demanding of Turkey: “Give us the evidence, show us the evidence. We need a solid legal foundation that meets the standard of extradition.”

    In light of the presence on U.S. soil of someone the Turkish government regards as a “terrorist” and a direct threat to its national security, would Turkey be justified in dispatching a weaponized drone over Pennsylvania to find and kill Gulen if the U.S. continues to refuse to turn him over, or sending covert operatives to kidnap him? That was the question posed yesterday by Col. Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor of Guantánamo’s military commissions who resigned in protest over the use of torture-obtained evidence:




    That question, of course, is raised by the fact that the U.S. has spent many years now doing exactly this: employing various means — including but not limited to drones — to abduct and kill people in multiple countries whom it has unilaterally decided (with no legal process) are “terrorists”
    or who otherwise are alleged to pose a threat to its national security. Since it cannot possibly be the case that the U.S. possesses legal rights that no other country can claim — right? — the question naturally arises whether Turkey would be entitled to abduct or kill someone it regards as a terrorist when the U.S. is harboring him and refuses to turn him over.

    The only viable objection to Turkey’s assertion of this authority would be to claim that the U.S. limits its operations to places where lawlessness prevails, something that is not true of Pennsylvania. But this is an inaccurate description of the U.S.’s asserted entitlement. In fact, after 9/11, the U.S. threatened Afghanistan with bombing and invasion unless the Taliban government immediately turned over Osama bin Laden, and the Taliban’s answer was strikingly similar to what the U.S. just told Turkey about Gulen:


    The ruling Taliban of Afghanistan today further complicated the status of Osama bin Laden and rejected the ultimatum of the United States that he and his lieutenants be handed over to answer for their suspected role in last week’s terrorist attacks in the United States.

    The Taliban’s ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, said at a news conference in Islamabad, “Our position in this regard is that if the Americans have evidence, they should produce it.” If they can prove their allegations, he said, “we are ready for a trial of Osama bin Laden.”

    Asked again whether Mr. bin Laden would be surrendered, the ambassador replied, “Without evidence, no.”

    The U.S. refused to provide any such evidence — “These demands are not open to negotiation or discussion,” said President George W. Bush at the time — and the U.S. bombing and invasion of Afghanistan began two weeks thereafter, and continues to this day, 15 years later. The justification there was not that the Taliban were incapable of arresting and extraditing bin Laden, but rather that they refused to do so without evidence of his guilt being provided and some legal/judicial action invoked.

    Nor are such U.S. actions against individual terror suspects confined to countries where lawlessness prevails. In 2003, the CIA kidnapped a cleric from the streets of Milan, Italy, and shipped him to Egypt to be tortured (CIA agents involved have been prosecuted in Italy, though the U.S. government has vehemently defended them). In 2004, the U.S. abducted a German citizen in Macedonia, flew him to Afghanistan, tortured and drugged him, then unceremoniously dumped him back on the street when it realized he was innocent; but the U.S. has refused ever since to compensate him or even apologize, leaving his life in complete shambles. The U.S. has repeatedly killed people in Pakistan with drones and other attacks, including strikes when it had no idea who it was killing, and also stormed a compound in Abbottabad — where the Pakistani government has full reign — in order to kill Osama bin Laden in 2010.

    U.S. drone kills of terror suspects (including its own citizens) are extremely popular among Americans, including (in the age of Obama) those who self-identify as liberal Democrats. Yet it’s virtually certain that Americans across the ideological spectrum would explode in nationalistic outrage if Turkey actually did the same thing in Pennsylvania; indeed, the consequences for Turkey if it dared to do so are hard to overstate.

    That’s American Exceptionalism in its purest embodiment: The U.S. is not subject to the same rules and laws as other nations, but instead is entitled to assert power and punishment that is unique to itself, grounded in its superior status. Indeed, so ingrained is this pathology that the mere suggestion that the U.S. should be subject to the same laws and rules as everyone else inevitably provokes indignant accusations that the person is guilty of the greatest sin: comparing the United States of America to the lesser, inferior governments and countries of the world.
     
  2. Cohete Rojo

    Cohete Rojo Contributing Member

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    Your article is **** as usual. The US, in cooperation with its allies, conducts drone strikes - hardly unilateral.
     
  3. larsv8

    larsv8 Contributing Member

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    LOL, what, are you serious?
     
  4. Cohete Rojo

    Cohete Rojo Contributing Member

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    Oh, bless your heart.
     
  5. dc rock

    dc rock Contributing Member

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  6. JuanValdez

    JuanValdez Contributing Member

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    The article isn't completely unfair. I think we do presume that, since we're leading the fight against terrorism for the whole world, we should give ourselves a little extra latitude in infringing on the sovereignty of other nations. That's not exactly a moral high ground.

    But, I object to a bunch of stuff in the article:

    * I don't think the US is claiming some legal authority to kill and capture in foreign countries. I think we declared a war and are executing the war, and wars generally do infringe illegally on the sovereignty of others. If they don't like it, they can fight us, and good luck. So, likewise, if Turkey wants to come assassinate this guy like we would assassinate him if the tables were turned, go ahead. But the US is going to react very strongly. So again, good luck.

    * I'm not sure what all the hidden agendas might be. But, I don't think we're actually sheltering the guy from prosecution. We're asking Turkey to follow the protocol and have him extradited in the normal fashion. Given that Erdogan is currently conducting a purge of all of his political enemies and this could be the start of the Erdogan dictatorship for all we know, I think it's reasonable we insist on doing it by the book on this one and not be complicit with whatever Erdogan is doing. I might be naive here, and if someone can demonstrate that we won't respect legitimate extradition requests, I'm ready to be educated.

    * We did not invade Afghanistan because they wouldn't extradite bin Laden. We invaded Afghanistan because it was ruled by the Taliban and the Taliban were hosting terrorists on purpose to attack the West. That we opened with some pretext of extradition does not mean that's the reason we invaded. It emphatically was not. This is revisionist history and I expect better from Greenwald.

    * The examples of kidnappings he cites in orderly countries were extraordinary renditions conducted by the Bush administration. I agree with him they were illegal and inappropriate. Obama put an end to rendition and has not killed or kidnapped anyone from friendly, orderly countries since he came to office (so far as I know, anyway). While Bush's kidnappings were wrong, we didn't have the backbone to prosecute him, and Italy and Germany didn't have either the military or perhaps moral fortitude to defy us. But, crimes we committed with impunity under Bush do not provide a legal justification for committing similar crimes against us. Now, you can claim some moral justification against the 'hypocrite Americans' who can dish it out but not take it. Go ahead, but it'll be a fight and the Americans are going to win. Sorry we're bigger than you. (Of course, the terrorism we face is, at least in part, this dynamic playing out -- foreigners who see the Americans trodding over everyone else with impunity, so they fight back the only way they can against an opponent who is so much stronger.)

    So, yeah, America's behavior in the war on terror has been a bit ugly. That's Greenwald's point, I suppose. He over-reaches, I think, in trying to make a good-for-the-goose-good-for-the-gander argument. Not everything the US has done has been proper, but if Turkey tried to do likewise to us, we'd put it down and not feel the least bit bad about it.
     
  7. larsv8

    larsv8 Contributing Member

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    So you are serious then?

    You believe our drone assassinations are a "group" effort and not the U.S. just completely playing by its own set of rules.
     
  8. Mr. Clutch

    Mr. Clutch Contributing Member

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    Turkey would if they could.

    Thankfully, judging by the way they are handling the aftermath of the coup, they can't.
     
  9. Mr. Clutch

    Mr. Clutch Contributing Member

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    I guess glynch is posting about turkey because he can't post about Venezuela.

    An interesting question is if Venezuela would be better off if the rumored US supported coup had been successful, or if they are better starving to death under a socialist dictatorship.
     
  10. Mr. Clutch

    Mr. Clutch Contributing Member

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  11. AroundTheWorld

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    Glen Greenwald is a moron, and so is glynch.

    There is no moral equivalency between the governments of Turkey and the USA.
     
  12. Cohete Rojo

    Cohete Rojo Contributing Member

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    I know you don't like Obama, but do you honestly believe he just points at random to a place on a map and says "bomb here", "kidnap someone there"? The US's allies may not be the most sophisticated or morally desirable, but they are the US's allies and the US works in conjunction with them.

    Case in point:

    [rQUOTEr]Suspected U.S. coalition strikes kill 56 civilians in IS-held Syrian city: monitor

    At least 56 civilians were killed on Tuesday in air strikes north of the besieged Islamic State-held city of Manbij in northern Syria, and residents said they believed the attack was carried out by U.S.-led warplanes, a monitoring group said.

    The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the dead included 11 children, and that dozens more people were wounded.

    The U.S.-backed Syria Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters, launched an offensive at the end of May to seize the last territory held by Islamic State (IS) insurgents on Syria's frontier with Turkey.

    Supported by U.S. coalition air strikes, the SDF has surrounded and fought their way into parts of the city, but Islamic State attacks still occur in some areas of the surrounding countryside.

    On Monday, 21 people were killed in raids also believed to have been conducted by U.S.-led coalition aircraft on Manbij's northern Hazawneh quarter.

    In a statement, rights watchdog Amnesty International said the U.S.-led coalition must do more to prevent civilian deaths.

    ...[/rQUOTEr]
     
  13. Dairy Ashford

    Dairy Ashford Member

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    If there's a Turkish cleric inciting violence over here we might be able to reign him in ourselves. I don't know if Pakistan -- switching countries because I think we engage well enough with Turkey to jointly address issues over there -- or other middle eastern countries have the logistical or even political cover to do that with their own terrorists, so hands in their pockets if we do something over there.
     
  14. DaDakota

    DaDakota If you want to know, just ask!

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    Jeez - going hard core Theocratic would be a disaster.

    DD
     
  15. larsv8

    larsv8 Contributing Member

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    No, I believe his intelligence community, whether internal or external gathers information on key individuals locations and orders strikes based on whether or not there is likely to be any international backlash. The standing of any local governments is more likely than not irrelevant to those decisions, depending on their power.
     
  16. Exiled

    Exiled Member

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    No, it will not be justified .it is going to be a meaningless action to do so when Gulen's political influence has been completely eliminated and public support demolished
     
  17. Bobbythegreat

    Bobbythegreat Member
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    What matters is that Turkey doesn't have the power to do it and be able to withstand the backlash. The US does.
     
  18. fchowd0311

    fchowd0311 Contributing Member

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    "Would if they could" - that'a the end of discussion right there.

    Let's face it. Name me one hegemony that would be more benevolent... Canada?

    What poster here is naive enough to believe that another state with the same military might and influence as the US would not abuse their new found powers to the extent that the U.S does and beyond?
     
  19. HR Dept

    HR Dept Contributing Member

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    Honestly, I'd bet that there already is kidnappings and interrogations here in the US sanctioned and performed by agents of foreign countries.
     
  20. Kevooooo

    Kevooooo Member

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    Where do we drone strike? Pakistan, Afghanistan, Arabian Peninsula....anywhere else?

    Don't we have the permission of those nations to do such? Aren't we at war? Obviously as an American I have a biased POV, but I don't see them as being the same thing.

    I don't see the difference between boots on the ground, manned airplanes, and drones. War is war. Who cares who or what we use to blow things/people up? Kinda like the use of a bomb to kill the Dallas shooter. What's the difference between that and a bullet in his head?
     

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