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Notes -
See this comment in response to this point.
Whatever one may think about universal rights in an abstract philosophical sense, the fact remains that the US government is not an all-powerful deity sitting above humanity in judgement thereof, but is a collection of finite human beings who live in a particular time and place and have only a limited capacity to impose their will on the world. When the US goes around the world trying to spread democracy and human rights by force, it has generally not been very successful. It's not inconsistent to condemn human rights abuses abroad while acknowledging that the scope of the US government and its legal system ought to be limited to its citizens only.
But, returning to earth, it seems that Bukele's policies are widely approved by the people of El Salvador. On what basis can the American government (or, still less, an American judge) deny them?
Legally - not just morally - the US government's legal system is not limited to its citizens. Non-US citizens have rights in the US and the US prosecutes people outside of its borders, US citizens and non-US citizens alike.
On the basis that they are cruel and immoral. Popularity is not a justification. Moreover, if something is popular in the US and unpopular in El Salvador, it's popular in the two places considered together, since the US has 50 times El Salvador's population. If that shouldn't imply that the US gets to decide what happens in El Salvador, neither should the popularity of any given policy in either country justify the mistreatment of any minority there that objects.
But more importantly, you are ignoring the fact that the US government is paying El Salvador to imprison people that it is unnecessarily sending to El Salvador. It can stop doing either of these things at any time, yet it refuses.
The fact that the US is not all powerful is not an excuse for neglecting all moral and legal responsibilities to anyone who isn't a US citizen. The US government is not even trying to undo its mistakes. It would be one thing if the US government were taking all reasonable steps to undo the harm it has done to the people it has sent to El Salvador. Instead, it is doing everything it can to achieve the opposite.
We have Trump and Bukele sitting in a room together, amicably, with Bukele telling the press he can't force Trump to take any his prisoners and Trump telling the press he can't force Bukele to release any of his prisoners. Obviously, between the two of them, there exists the power to bring the prisoners to the US. There is no bona fide attempt on either of their parts to solve the problem. Everything you have said are excuses for subjecting people to inhumane treatment, not actual justifications for it.
Do you think Bukele’s policies were wrong?
Yes
I think you are evil in that case. For decades ES was a dangerous place run by gangs. Bukele was able to change that so now the average person can live a normal life. People aren’t being murdered left and right. They aren’t being extorted.
It seems incontrovertible to me that life is better in ES for the average person due to Bukele’s policies. So it would seem the argument is either: (1) violating so called due process is so bad that we’d rather society be a complete disaster or (2) the very few (ie probably less than 0.1%) innocently caught in the net via the policies are worth more than having a functioning society. I think we already reject the Blackstone formula in practice and while I’m willing to tolerate some process to protect the innocent it isn’t infinite and particular facts may argue against.
Now Bukele over time may turn into a negative authoritarian and at that time if criticize him.
It's been three years. The emergency for which their rights were suspended is long over. Why can't they start giving these people trials to determine if they belong in prison? Why don't they have habeas corpus? Why do they need to experience such high levels of abuse while in prison?
How could you possibly know what that number is?
That time is now.
https://apnews.com/article/bukele-salvador-crackdown-price-gouging-7e99374c444a81a4009ec09d94857d25
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If the alleged gang members had been treated more humanely (e. g. at or above the Geneva-Convention standards for POWs, long-term plan for their release following the dismantlement of the gangs), one would have been able to make the argument that the Salvadoran Government's actions were justified.
The actual conditions to which the alleged gang members have been subjected would not have been justified even had they been convicted beyond any doubt in regular trials, and were definitely not justified given the looser standards of evidence allowed.
Ok, ES tries a different, more humane method, BUT, for every gang murder above the current base rate, one Humane Prisons Advocate gets executed. You first.
Would you accept this deal?
No. Your proposal is based on two assumptions which I reject:
the assumption that detaining gang members under the same standard as invading soldiers would significantly increase the murder rate, and
the assumption those arguing against human-rights violations are somehow responsible for anything that can be attributed to not committing them.
There are lines that one should not cross though the heavens fall, and those arguing against crossing those lines do not thereby assume culpability for the actions of others.
Zvi Mowshowitz:
MS-13 literally has a motto of "kill, steal, rape, control". Do you think they treat their sex slaves better than Bukele is treating them? When your choice is "do X, or state failure and warlords do X anyway", you need to be exceedingly-invested in not personally sinning, to a degree that I'd argue is selfish, to pick the latter. This is not to say one should not look for third options, or try to create them, but no, do not actually let the heavens fall.
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What bloodless cowardice! You won't even risk yourself in a hypothetical. And yes, yes, it's very easy to proclaim bold words about though the heavens fall... when they'll be falling on someone else.
Those lines SHOULD NOT BE CROSSED. What lines? Well, a google search and CNN indicate that it's "the rooms are spartan" and "the machismo-fueled murderous warlords are subjected to minor submission displays". Your unbounded concern for their heads being shaved is truly... something.
Consider that your first rejection dismissed. For the second, you are responsible for the outcomes of your actions - including advocacy. If you advocate for a policy, you bear some moral burden for it's results. And you're, by revealed preference, not willing to even pretend to bet your life that your actions to comfort the guilty won't fall ruinously on the innocent.
I want you to take sixty actual seconds and think about your life. Have you ever been punched in the face? Ever feared for your life by the actions of another? Known serious, frightening Maslow-bottom want? Have you ever actually been face-to-face with someone willing and able to deliver grievous harm? I implore you to consider the possibility that you're actually one of the most coddled, protected and privileged creatures that has ever existed on the face of this earth. Consider that employing your ideals, stringent and untethered even by the standards of the safest and most secure society ever built, may not actually be directly applicable to a different society that was subject to widespread warring-bands raider-ism within the last Macbook development cycle.
It was very easy for Sir Terry to hold such lofty ideals in the unsurpassed safety of post-war Britain. Now that country intimidates and jails people for tweets.
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Why? These gang members made ES a living hell for the people. Why do we have such empathy for evil people but effectively zero empathy for good people who had to endure the wrongs brought about by evil people?
ES is a relatively poor country. They tried for decades applying “human rights” and all it got them was a country run by gangs. Now the average person can actually live a normal decent life. And the rate of mistake on gang members is incredibly low (thankfully for ES the gang members decided to cover themselves in specific tats making their appearance obvious).
I just don’t see the moral argument that ES ought to treat these gang members okay.
I have empathy for the victims of the gangs; that's why I don't insist that detaining the alleged gang members at all was absolutely unjustifiable. However, once they are in custody, their not being subjected to inhumane conditions does not harm anyone, nor allow them to harm others; the same applies with captured enemy troops, thus the Geneva Conventions.
Which is why one could make the argument that they couldn't afford the normal standards of criminal trials. It does not have any relevance to how people are treated in custody.
The argument is that
They are human beings, made B'tzelem Elohim, and endowed with certain inalienable rights.
If you establish a category of 'people it is justifiable for the State to torture', you create the temptation for others to expand that category to include persons or groups whose existence they have long resented.
Except you miss the fact that jail was not historically able to stop these criminal organizations from operating in ES. The criminals simply controlled parts of the jail and easily communicated with the outside.
These new jails break the ability to communicate with the outside AND serve as strong deterrence (ie don’t want to go to a bad jail don’t be a bad hombre).
Making jail nicer fails on deterrence, fails on incapacitation, and fails on just desert.
Nice jail is fine for things like drunk driving or white collar crime where going to jail at all is terrible for the perp. But for gangs? They need tough hardened jails.
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the identification with evil is a recurring theme that surges periodically on social media, be it orcs in D&D, Bugs in starship troopers or Demons in Devil May Cry. At some point it becomes obvious that we don't share any more fundamental values that would enable coexistance.
I do not identify with the gang members. I do not even like them. However, I remember enough of the past to recognise certain patterns, and one of them is the grave danger in declaring certain human beings to no longer constitute moral patients.
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When the left identifies with orcs it's usually about the orcs being less evil than they are pictured.
When the right identifies with orcs it's usually about behaving exactly like the orcs do against the Others.
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