So with the order to close Gitmo, the question becomes, what to do with the folks being held there?
Republican lawmakers, who oppose Mr. Obama’s plan, found a talking point with political appeal. They said closing Guantánamo could allow dangerous terrorists to get off on legal technicalities and be released into quiet neighborhoods across the United States. If the detainees were convicted, the Republicans continued, American prisons housing terrorism suspects could become magnets for attacks.
[…] Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said, “As people start getting an indication that they’re going to Kansas, that they’re going to California, that they’re going to Illinois or to Michigan, people are going to say, ‘No, why would we want them here and put them in a general prison population and make our hometowns a target for terrorists?’ ”
Cool. We can’t try them because they are too dangerous to be potentially set free, and we can’t keep them in prison because that makes the prisons terrorist targets. Spiffy mess you’ve gotten us into, GOP. Stop your smirking and help figure out how to get us out of it, because you really don’t want to perpetuate the growing sense that the Party of Lincoln is actually the Party of Kafka.
(And, by the way, Rep. Hoekstra, nice fear-mongering there. Next time be sure and add the part where a terrorist with a hook for a hand is creeping up on the unsuspecting couple up at Lover’s Leap …)
The problem is, our legal system, though it tends to trust arresting and prosecuting authorities, does in fact require, y’know, proof of wrongdoing in order to convict. That’s overall a good thing, because I don’t think anyone actually wants the police picking up and holding folks because they might be a danger. (Well, probably there are people who feel that way, but they are, generally speaking, short-sighted gits who would be shocked, shocked, to discover that particular legal precedent might bite them or their loved ones in the ass some day.)
But, of course, you take ’em, you buy ’em, and most countries haven’t been enthused about taking the folks that, gosh, we made a mistake in picking them up, they’re probably innocent, back.
Honestly speaking? If we’ve decided they are not actually a danger, they should be given US citizen ship and a stipend for the next 20 years. If we can’t actually convict some of these folks of doing something wrong — on what basis do we argue that they are too dangerous to release?
I mean, we have lots of dangerous criminals in our country already. Many are behind jail. Others are not. We manage to survive as a society with not letting the police just lock away folks who the really, truly, honestly, absotively think are dangerous people to be out on the streets. That’s because we don’t give the police that power, and for very good, solid, historical reasons. The same pertains here.
Do I want a former Gitmo internee living next door to me? All things considered, probably not — but, y’know, it was my government that wrenched that person out of their old life without enough demonstrable proof to show he’d done something wrong enough to convict him. If they didn’t think that through at the time, then shame on them, and it’s up to our country as a whole to make it right.
Ummm…..one major flaw in the GOP thinking and that is that we have already convicted Terrorists and put them in prison. You know, back in the 90s with the first attack on the World Trade Center and nothing has come of them being in jail. And yeah, they were convicted in our courts using the full weight of the Constitution behind them, so it is just a GOP talking point and Fear Mongering that the useless press in this country will keep bouncing around in the mighty echo chamber.
We also have the 4 Uiger’s that were ordered realeased by the Courts months ago since they are innocent, but we won’t return them to China…becaue Bush was busy copying their Justice system, and we won’t release them into the U.S. because they would say what happened in Gitmo.