The Travesty of Guantanamo Bay
I've spent much of my time in this space discussing topics of some levity. Although I have touched on a few serious topics in past posts, I haven't done so in a little while, so I hope I can be excused for going back to the more sober topics for a day. The topic today, below the break, will be Guantanamo Bay prison.
This past Tuesday, July 9th, a federal court judge declined a court case by detainees at Guantanamo Bay prison, the prison opened by the US after 9/11/01 for detaining individuals captured as enemy combatants. The court didn't make a ruling on the case.
For several months the thirty eight detainees at the prison have attempted to conduct a hunger strike. They wanted to conduct this strike to protest their continued detention at this facility, a detention that has continued despite the fact many of them were previously assured they were to be released because they proved no substantive national security risk.
Those detainees have been force-fed since the start of their hunger strike. The court case was an attempt to seek to block the ability of the doctors at the prison from force-feeding them any longer.
There should be no quibbling about the fact that these detainees will starve to death.
Which is my first major problem with this issue. There is no good answer to this immediate issue. People have their pride and dignity. However, I find it to be an affront for any authority to sit by and pretend everything is okay while someone starves themselves to death when a future awaits them.
That of course gets right to the real problem, which is the cowardice, ignorance, and purely infuriating actions of the Congress in blocking efforts to try in civilian courts, lock up in federal penitentiaries, or otherwise release back to their home country, any of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
In the judge's opinion on the case, she noted that the president had the power to end the force-feeding of detainees at the prison. That is true. The president, as commander-in-chief, has the power to direct actions within the prison. President Obama could say that he is going to stop the force-feeding of the prisoners. But that would be the same as sentencing them to death. It is a near impossible choice.
This, all because Congress has members who are quick to scare up fright about the consequences.
So I'll be clear what I think. I think that the president is in a no-win situation at the moment; force-feed the detainees and keep them alive long enough to properly solve this issue, or let these people die. I think that Congress should get off its butt and do the right thing in this issue. That means letting those cleared to go back to their home country to go, and those who are left, which would mean they have evidence that can be legally used against them in a civilian court, be tried, and likely convicted, and serve their properly due prison term in one of our Supermax federal prisons.
Guantanamo Bay prison has been a source of great pain and controversy for this nation . An argument can be made that the prison has actually done more to incite antagonism and hatred towards the US than it has to keep us safe. It would certainly be easier to justify the prison's existence, and even the treatment of the detainees, if we as a nation had real moral conviction that we were locking up real terrorists who posed a threat based on actual legal evidence.
Sympathy for the detainees or not, this has to end. We NEED to close Guantanamo Bay, not just sit around hoping the problem goes away. Unfortunately the only ones who can solve the problem are the members of Congress... the very Congress that made it so difficult for anyone but them to solve the problem, and which has refrained from doing much work on anything of importance for several years now.
This past Tuesday, July 9th, a federal court judge declined a court case by detainees at Guantanamo Bay prison, the prison opened by the US after 9/11/01 for detaining individuals captured as enemy combatants. The court didn't make a ruling on the case.
For several months the thirty eight detainees at the prison have attempted to conduct a hunger strike. They wanted to conduct this strike to protest their continued detention at this facility, a detention that has continued despite the fact many of them were previously assured they were to be released because they proved no substantive national security risk.
Those detainees have been force-fed since the start of their hunger strike. The court case was an attempt to seek to block the ability of the doctors at the prison from force-feeding them any longer.
There should be no quibbling about the fact that these detainees will starve to death.
Which is my first major problem with this issue. There is no good answer to this immediate issue. People have their pride and dignity. However, I find it to be an affront for any authority to sit by and pretend everything is okay while someone starves themselves to death when a future awaits them.
That of course gets right to the real problem, which is the cowardice, ignorance, and purely infuriating actions of the Congress in blocking efforts to try in civilian courts, lock up in federal penitentiaries, or otherwise release back to their home country, any of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
In the judge's opinion on the case, she noted that the president had the power to end the force-feeding of detainees at the prison. That is true. The president, as commander-in-chief, has the power to direct actions within the prison. President Obama could say that he is going to stop the force-feeding of the prisoners. But that would be the same as sentencing them to death. It is a near impossible choice.
This, all because Congress has members who are quick to scare up fright about the consequences.
So I'll be clear what I think. I think that the president is in a no-win situation at the moment; force-feed the detainees and keep them alive long enough to properly solve this issue, or let these people die. I think that Congress should get off its butt and do the right thing in this issue. That means letting those cleared to go back to their home country to go, and those who are left, which would mean they have evidence that can be legally used against them in a civilian court, be tried, and likely convicted, and serve their properly due prison term in one of our Supermax federal prisons.
Guantanamo Bay prison has been a source of great pain and controversy for this nation . An argument can be made that the prison has actually done more to incite antagonism and hatred towards the US than it has to keep us safe. It would certainly be easier to justify the prison's existence, and even the treatment of the detainees, if we as a nation had real moral conviction that we were locking up real terrorists who posed a threat based on actual legal evidence.
Sympathy for the detainees or not, this has to end. We NEED to close Guantanamo Bay, not just sit around hoping the problem goes away. Unfortunately the only ones who can solve the problem are the members of Congress... the very Congress that made it so difficult for anyone but them to solve the problem, and which has refrained from doing much work on anything of importance for several years now.
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