It's remarkable that some of the same conservative voices who have so gleefully loved stuffing our prisons full of folk — from mass murderers to people caught too many times in possession — are terrified that even the most maximum-security prisons across the nation will somehow be inadequate to protect against the horrifying super-powers of 30-60 detainees from Guantanamo.
Though, to be fair, I doubt it's about actual fear, but about how much fear can be drummed up about it so as to move their base. It's not about fear on the part of GOP opposition, but about power derived from fear.
The Guantanamo Bay Debate Is Not About Power. It’s About Fear.
And it tells us a lot about the state of our democracy.
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It's a real shame. At this point though, we almost need to detain them indefinitely. We obviously can't try them and win, and if we release them, they'll almost certainly become anti American terrorists, rightfully so. Not to mention the goop we'll lose some of their fear mongering magic powers of control over the weak and senseless.
[goop we'll] -> [GOP will]
I'm not sure I agree, even if there's a finite chance that these guys will (with justification) turn to violence. The principles involved are non-trivial, and if we have to pay the cost of maintaining (or of having violated) those principles, well, hopefully a lessons will have been learned.
Stupid autocorrect! Thanks.
The best we can do is hope we learn from this. Maybe respect the Constitution? I would hope that the cost we have to pay doesn't involve innocent lives, or at least the lives of the general populace.
I realize I'm condensing the situation a lot, but phone typing is much harder. Sorry bout that.
+Ryan S I agree — but it's unclear that solving one injustice with another is a good course to take, either.
The issue is that we have two groups of people — folk who intelligence people believe have a strong chance of being bad actors, but which we can't prove[1] actually are, and folk who are (or were, at time of capture) probabably not serious threats, but who may have been radicalized by over a decade of harsh confinement.
This is all complicated by the mechanisms by which people in Gitmo were apprehended. These aren't necessarily people caught in the act of shooting at soldiers or planting bombs under schoolhouses. Some were rounded up in security or military actions and may have simply been a the wrong place at the wrong time (or were minor actors who were rounded up with major ones). Others were ratted out by people who may have been less than truthful in their accusations.
The problem with a lack of due process is that you can't have any confidence as to who is really guilty and who is not.
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[1] Military tribunals continue, at a snail's pace, for some of the individuals involved. The track record in actually proving folk are terrorists is not promising.