A Pentagon lawyer equated Seminole resistance with modern-day al-Qaeda in a Guantánamo brief

Evidence

In arguing that Bahlul’s conviction be upheld, a Pentagon lawyer, navy captain Edward S. White, relied on a precedent from an 1818 tribunal. In his thirty-seven-page military commissions brief, Captain White wrote: “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.” — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the…, 504

Categorization

• XREF: Shows the Doctrine of Discovery lineage still employed to justify indefinite detention; a shocking through-line to ongoing US empire. — connects to: US empire’s conception of the Philippines as al-Qaeda territory targeted Filipino-Americans domestically; Imperial conceptions that tag homelands as al-Qaeda territory produce shared persecution; The US lost its costliest war to a few hundred Seminole guerrillas — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for…, 157
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the…, 504