No

by Justin Barnes

Created on: August 18, 2007

Detaining prisoners without trial is quite simply, Un-American. I recently saw a news article where Dick Cheney contended that the Gitmo facility cannot be closed because if it were, the inmates there would have to be transported to other prisons within the continental U.S. In Cheney's words, being on U.S. soil would "give unlawful enemy combatants rights that they don't deserve". Now I don't have a lot of sympathy for terrorists, but this point of view is so wrong and amoral that I hardly know where to start in criticizing it.

First off, what exactly is an unlawful enemy combatant? Don't know? Then I'll tell you. It's a made up word that people are using to justify denying the basic principles of due process to terror suspects. In reality, the people being held at Gitmo are one of two things. They are either prisoners of war, who should be protected by the Geneva Convention, or they are criminal suspects, who should be protected by the principles of our domestic justice system. We may not sympathize with their cause, we may hate some of the things that they believe in, but hey, I'm not a big fan of the multitude of murderers, rapists, and child molesters who live in this country either. So we suspect that some of these people have conspired to murder innocent people. So what? That makes them no different than a lot of people who currently reside in our jails. Even Timothy McVeigh, Charles Manson, and Ted Bundy got a trial, and that's exactly how it should be unless we want to return to the days when you could have your neighbor denounced as a witch because your chickens stopped laying eggs.

So they attacked our soldiers with improvised devices? Big deal. Looks like Cheney has forgotten that sometimes when you invade a country, the people living there won't like it and might fight back. What difference does it make if they have official military uniforms or not? We're acting like their cause is so much worse than Germany's, Italy's, or Japan's in WWII. Yeah, WWII, remember, that time when a bunch of fascist dictators tried to take over the world.

On another point, lets keep in mind that the people being held in Gitmo are suspects; they haven't been convicted of anything. No doubt plenty of them are guilty of some pretty bad things and ought to be in prison somewhere, but what about the innocent ones? I can think of better ways of instilling good will towards America than falsely imprisoning someone for years at a time. Are we going to keep them there indefinitely, possibly for the rest of their lives? If not, we better implant some homing devices during one of those infamous "interrogation" sessions, because if they weren't terrorists before, they probably will be when they get out. I have to say I'd be pretty tempted if it happened to me and I like to think I'm a pretty reasonable and logical person.

And as far as the detainees holding valuable intelligence data that could save American lives, what could they possibly know that's so important? Most of them have been imprisoned for several years. What are they going to tell us, that Al-Qaeda is planning more attacks in the U.S.? That's not exactly news. Whatever operational plans that might have been relevant at the time of their capture are undoubtedly no longer valid. I mean seriously, if you knew that one of your terrorist buddies had been captured and was undergoing interrogation, you'd probably change up the plan a little bit right?

I would be hard pressed to think of anything more Un-American than what's going on in Cuba right now. We're talking about basic freedoms, the type of things that a democratic government is supposed to protect at all costs. These detentions aren't much different than what used to go on in Iraq under Saddam Hussein or in Russia under Stalin. The detainees may be killers, they may be terrorists, and who knows some may be innocent, but you can't deny that they are still human beings. What ever happened to all men being endowed with "certain unalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"? Maybe the Founding Fathers of our country we're only talking about people born in America, but somehow I kind of doubt it.

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