Guantanamo Quagmire

We have dug ourselves a hole (well, more like an abyss, really) and I see only one way climb out of it. The "it" is Guantanamo and the question is, "How do we right this wrong?"

The President last week stated, in essence, that since we don't have any laws to cover what we've done, we have to continue to hold these people until we create the laws to justify our actions. We are holding them not because of what they have done, but what they might do, and without any real reason to believe that they might do what we think they might do other than their religious beliefs or political ideology.

It's called "Preventative Incarceration" and it is illegal, immoral, and unethical. It defies logic and common sense. Where we were once the world's compass on the questions of human rights, we find ourselves as a perpetrator of the very rights violations we used to condemn others for. They have been generalized as "enemy combatants", and while some may be, some may not. They are suspects in potential future crimes, but are not necessarily guilty of anything yet other than being Muslim and/or in the wrong place at the wrong time being of the wrong color. It's Minority Report without the benefit of technological clairvoyance.

The arguments I've heard are that we must prosecute them or declare them prisoners of war. Obvioulsy, the problem with those two scenarios is that in the first case they may not have committed any crimes on our soil and in the second there's been no declaration of war. Let's go back a second: If no crime has been committed here, are they still subject to American laws? If a crime is committed against an American in, say Italy, the Italian courts and laws are applicable, and the punishment is meted out according to the standards of the country where the crime was committed. Take the caning of the kid in Singapore some years back. We were outraged that the court there would hand down that sort of sentence, but it was well within its rights to do so and the kid got the caning. Similarly, if a person from another country commits a crime here, he is subject to our laws and punishments.

Of course, that whole argument depends upon crimes that have actually occured.

The other solution is to declare them prisoners of war, which is difficult to do since there is no war for them to be prisoners of. Yes, I know, if it is looks, walks, and sounds like a duck, it's a duck. It sure looks like a war, but there has been no congressional declaration to make it official, so it's not actually a war. It's a "military action" which is in and of itself is illegal, immoral, and unethical.

So, basically what we have is a bunch of potential criminals who have yet to commit any crime who are prisoners of a non-war. Damn difficult to prosecute that in either case.

The deflective issue is whether to keep them in Cuba or move them to a supermax prison here. I say it's a deflective issue beacuse it's what the fighting is all about but that ignores the real problem which is that no matter where they are, what we have done and apparently are willing to continue to do is illegal. And we're going to "create the legal framework" as we go. The unmitigated audacity of that philosophy is mind-boggling.

One sub-deflective issue that has been thrown around is that moving them here will cost the taxpayers to house them. Uh, we already are paying to keep them in Cuba, so what's the difference?

The other sub-deflective issue is that we don't want them here beacuse of who they are (or rather, who they might be). We have an empty supermax prison which is far more suitable than the plywood and chicken wire camp in Cuba. To my way of thinking, if we want to make sure they can't escape, a concrete fortress in the middle of nowhere is preferable to a rickety old army base surrounded by an ocean in a county that already has issues with us.

So, what's the answer? I think that we need to turn the whole mess over to the World Court and let them decide the outcome and live by whatever rulings they hand down. This cannot come down to a situation of the police policing the police wherein we get to make up the rules as we go along. The questions here are too far-reaching, and the implications to dire for us to handle this alone. The American government is complicit in these illegal acts, and must be held accountable. The rest of the world will judge us, rightfully so, on what we do next. And rather than sanctimoniously create laws to cover our tracks, we need to let the World Court decide what the appropriate course should be.

Afterall, continuing to do something wrong will never make it right. And based upon the legal foundations by which this country has operated for the past 233 years, there is no "legal framework" that we can develop that will justify or codify our actions.