[alpos]

The specific people referenced in the post I was responding to were not US citizens and should not be expected to be granted legal rights equal to US citizens.

> Hicks was captured in Afghanistan in December 2001 by the Afghan Northern Alliance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hicks

>He was captured in March 2002 by Pakistani forces during a raid at Faisalabad, Pakistan. He was held in Islamabad for two months before being turned over the United States forces.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghassan_al-Sharbi

As I said, they were captured as enemy combatants, in a warzone. The circumstances of Sharbi's capture are much more questionable. But from the US's perspective, an ally turned him over as a captured enemy combatant.

It's all questionable and stupid, of course. But the question of their status at the time is relevant to the question of whether the US "vanishes" it's own citizens. These two were not citizens, so what happened to them does not support the case that the US is just as bad as China on that point.

No nation on Earth has a history of treating such captives as full citizens entitled to the same legal rights as it's own people. But maybe that's what we all would want. That's a fair point to argue, separately.

However, that is not the point the person I was responding to was making. Which is part of why I say the examples they offered were ineffective as support for their point.

You may find it helpful to practice re-reading and making sure you understand the case a post is making before responding to it.

You and I clearly agree that what the US did in Guantanamo was bad. You and I also agree that the US can, has, and may yet still violate the rights of it's own citizens as well as the rights of people who are not it's citizens, even in situations where it has signed treaties with those people's nations. And the US government should definitely be held accountable whenever it does something like that.

None of that changes the observation that the US's failure to give full citizen legal rights to Ghassan al Sharbi and David Matthew Hicks, people who were not US citizens, does not make a good supporting example to the case for the US being just as bad as China about "vanishing" it's own citizens.

You are, of course, free to offer concrete examples which would better make that case. That is essentially what I was opening the door for. But here you seem to be responding more to an emotion evoked by how I said something rather than the point I was actually making.