Here, from the Miami Herald, via How Appealing. Here is the link to the government’s brief not objecting to the NCAI letter.
An excerpt:
Pentagon prosecutors touched off a protest — and issued an apology this week — for likening the Seminole Indians in Spanish Florida to al Qaeda in documents defending Guantánamo’s military commissions.
Citing precedents, prosecutors reached back into the Indian Wars in arguments at an appeals panel in Washington D.C. Specifically, they invoked an 1818 military commission convened by Gen. Andrew Jackson after U.S. forces invaded then-Spanish Florida to stop black slaves from fleeing through a porous border — then executed two British men for helping the Seminole Indians.
Navy Capt. Edward S. White also wrote this in a prosecution brief:
“Not only was the Seminole belligerency unlawful, but, much like modern-day al Qaeda, the very way in which the Seminoles waged war against U.S. targets itself violate the customs and usages of war.”
A native American advocacy group complained to the military court. Defense lawyers for two Yemenis convicted of war crimes at Guantánamo countered that the behavior of Jackson, the future U.S. president now on the $20 bill, was no shining example of American military justice.
A politically ambitious Jackson, defense lawyers wrote, waged “an illegal war” that set fire to entire Indian villages “in a campaign of extermination.”
In the legal precedent, U.S. troops convicted two British traders, Alexander Arbuthnot and Robert Ambrister, for helping the Seminoles and escaped slaves and sentenced them to a whipping. Jackson, a slave owner, declared the punishment too soft. He had them executed.
Isn’t it a forgone conclusion that European Americans mistreated, murdered, enslaved, raped, and forced Native Americans (and anyone else whos skin wasn’t white) into submission. And to this day most of them (whites) try to find lies and excuses for their actions. They still try to make heroes out of their murdering leaders who perpetrated such atrocious acts upon the Indians. HIPOCRITES ALL!
I am also appalled by this. It actually makes me sick to my stomach. To take Andrew Jackson’s attempt at genocide and twist it into a defense of this nature is disgusting.
I am BTW an old white male. In defense of some minority of us.. there are a significant number of us whites with you, as there were a minority of whites with you during the “Indian Wars.” I keep trying to get more to see the truth.