WRITTEN BY A.C. SMITH AND JAMIE NEBEN
A.C. Smith
I’m jumping out of my skin, and I’m surprised that more people don’t feel the same way! A Guantanamo Bay detainee recently set foot on American soil (New York). This should never happen for a couple of different reasons. First of all, America is a place that these people believe is corrupted and where infidels live, so to bring them to the mainland is going to make them rise up against us even more. The Guantanamo prison was built as a state of the art facility, so to keep them in inferior prisons would make them hate us more.
Secondly, bringing the prisoners to American soil will give them extra rights that shouldn’t be provided to them. They were not representing a country when they were fighting against the United States, so should not be given the rights of a normal prisoner of war. If they actually belonged to a country, we could send them back. The countries where they came from don’t even want them back, or want to recognize them as their citizens. And let’s say they serve time in our prisons. What are we going to do with them when they’re released? So we have to keep them indefinitely until we believe they are not a threat anymore. And the best place to do that is Guantanamo.
Jamie Neben
Closing Gitmo is not only long overdue, but is in our best interest in terms of national security. The prison has become a symbol of injustice that aids the enemy to recruit people to fight against us. Our nation was founded on principles that ensure fairness. To hold prisoners for a few years already, and who knows how much longer, without due process is inconsistent with our values. Indeed, our Supreme Court has found those policies to be unconstitutional. Mind you me, I have no soft spot for bad people, and those found guilty should be punished accordingly. I don’t have any problem with the idea of holding detainees offshore. However, our approach was all wrong. By closing the prison we are sending a message to the world that we recognize that we failed to meet our own high standards, and we look to return to being the great nation that people expect us to be.
Ah, blissful is the tune of tyranny to the ear of ill-informed cowardice.
Among the King’s “repeated injuries and usurpations” that the Declaration of Independence “submitted to a candid world” were these: the deprivation of trial by jury and the transport of people “beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offenses.”
Guantanamo is not just about the people who are there. It’s about what we are and whether we are committed to our founding principles. The moment we accept that someone is a terrorist simply because the detaining officials, or the President, say so, is the moment we depart from the rule of law that was understood to be fundamental to the liberty of all individuals. It is the moment we concede that a peaceful protest against the actions of our government may be broken up, and its participants arrested, on the say so of that government that the protesters had terrorism on their minds. It is the moment that we must accept preemptive raids by the police on journalists ahead of important political events. It is the moment we abandon the inalienable right to liberty.
And this is not mere speculation. Do some research on the actions of the St. Paul police department ahead of the 2008 Republican National Convention.
I, for one, am far more fearful of my fellow citizens who would abandon the essential elements of freedom than I am of any terrorist. This country that I love and that I served is worth nothing if we decide that the rule of law is subject to the whim of the populace, a whim born of fear and revenge. As has been said before (by whom, I don’t know), it’s easy to defend our founding prinicples when things are going well. We are living in a time that tests our commitment, our courage. I only hope we don’t fail.
We cannot just hold someone and throw away the key without first giving them some trial. I personally don’t mind the idea of these people on American soil…they can enjoy their stay at one of our SuperMax prisons – most, if not all, of the real baddies will never get out. We as a country have certainly moved away from our founding principles in the case of Guantanamo Bay in so many ways. As much as we wish to get Medieval on them, there has to have been several documents of historical significance written since then that describe the rights of man (since I’m a computer-head, please don’t ask me to write a list of these) and I’m sure we are not holding up to those. Why does it matter that they don’t represent a country? All men are created equal.
As for those other documents of historical signifiance, there’s this: “Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere.” That’s from the 1941 State of the Union address, which also says:
“As men do not live by bread alone, they do not fight by armaments alone. Those who man our defenses, and those behind them who build our defenses, must have the stamina and the courage which come from unshakable belief in the manner of life which they are defending. The mighty action that we are calling for cannot be based on a disregard of all things worth fighting for.”