Not in My Backyard, a.k.a. the Convocation of the Gitmo Refuseniks

I've been following the latest round of political footballing over the closing of our Guantanamo Bay prison for terror suspects. I must say, I really have to laugh.

It's so pathetic. Bear in mind, I am no fan of former President George "Dubya" Bush's policies in this area, or in the war on terror area in general. In fact, I believe that the former Prez was a third-rate mind who was too easily swayed by those around him - particularly by neocons who wanted to use US foreign and national security policy to promote their own questionable agenda in the world. It was because of this, in my humble opinion, that we've been blowing valuable resources in Iraq for the last seven years, when we should have been focusing on where Al Qaeda REALLY was - namely in Afghanistan and the not-so-governed far-flung regions of Pakistan that border Afghanistan. But I digress...

Getting back to chez Gitmo, what really blows my mind is that whilst Dubya was still President, Democrats in both houses of Congress were leading the charge to close Guantanamo. Whilst Barack Obama was on the campaign trail, he said that he would do this, and his allies in the Democratic Party praised him whilst his rivals in the Republican party labeled him a weak sister in the war on terror.

But the world moves in complicated ways. Now that Candidate Obama has become President Obama, one of the things he has recently set about doing is to announce that indeed, he is going to have Gitmo closed. And what of the detainees? As many as possible that can be tried will be tried, proclaimed Obama, and whilst we will still use military commissions to do it, we'll do our best to ensure that the American principles of a fair trial are preserved. Detainees will have more latitude than is usual in military trials, in that they can choose their own lawyers and the use of hearsay evidence will be limited, as will the use of confessions allegedly extracted under torture. All this, said Obama, will help to strike a balance between ensuring that justice is done, but not at the expense of American principles, which were so badly used and abused under the Bush administration.

Mind you, Obama's decision to carry on the Bush administration's use of military commissions to try Gitmo detainees was treated with horror by Obama's usual allies on the left, and it won Obama some political capital from his critics on the right. One such critic on the right, whose name escapes me at the moment, commented that Obama appears to understand that the world of governing is much more complicated than is the world of the campaign trail. Quite true, that.

But the biggest kicker of all is yet to come. When asked, where would the Gitmo detainees go if the prison were to be closed, Obama proposed that they would be sent to the United States, to be kept in "supermax" prisons in various cities around the country, either to await trial or to be indefinitely detained if they could not be tried and are deemed too dangerous to release. And then, all hell broke loose.

On May 19 the New York times reported that Senate DEMOCRATS blocked the $90 million that Obama asked for to close Gitmo. Why? Because they don't want former Gitmo detainees coming to supermax prisons in THEIR areas. Not in my backyard!! And this gave Republicans the ammunition they needed to say see? Guantanamo should not be closed, because even our rivals across the aisle don't want the detainees anywhere near the US, and they certainly can't be released! Whoever coined the phrase "politics makes strange bedfellows" wasn't kidding.

Basically, you've got Senate whores on the left and the right united against the White House. Guantanamo is a stain on America's reputation in the world, say the Democrats, but we don't want the detainees here on US soil! Argh, anything but that! Change is great as long as it doesn't affect my life/my constituents! And the Republicans say, of course not, and since there's no place else to put them, we have to keep them where they are. Told ya so! Nyah-nyah!

Can I vomit now? Yep, I'll vomit now. As usual, Congress (in particular the Senate in this case) is playing politics when they should be thinking about the US's strength and reputation. But no, they're too damn busy thinking about how to make political hay so that they all can keep on pandering to their constituents, getting re-elected, and avoid ever actually getting real jobs. But I digress once again...

I actually think Obama's plan makes a lot of sense. Perfect sense actually. Guantanamo is a pox on our house - it's symbolic of the sacrifice of American principles of justice that the Bush administration made in the name of security. Get rid of Gitmo, and you get rid of a major political flash point.

Furthermore, I think the supermax prisons would make great homes for the detainees whilst they await trial, or if they cannot be tried, or if they are convicted. Supermax would cut off what terrorist scum crave the most - attention. The attention that makes people fear them. When you're in supermax, you're in isolation, cut off from the world 23 hours per day. Even your jailers are not allowed to speak to you. For those who are convicted of terrorist plots and acts, supermax is a very fitting punishment, a better punishment than death. No martyrdom. No fiery speeches. Instead, they'll be safely tucked away and forgotten. No one has ever broken out of a supermax. Once you go in, you don't come out.

Moreover, Obama is not proposing that the detainees be thrown in supermaxes forever, without mercy and without trial. In fact, these folks will receive a much better chance to defend themselves than their victims ever had. At least most of the detainees will have a chance to have a trial, whereas they ended their victims' lives without mercy and without trial.

But you see, politicians such as Senators and Representatives don't actually THINK. Instead, they just focus on what will get them re-elected, or get their party fellow-travelers more seats in each house, or how they can discredit political rivals/enemies, etc. It seems that the welfare of our country, and the principles for which our country is SUPPOSED to stand, matter less to these whores than does the welfare of themselves and their petty political squabbles. So President Obama has his work cut out for him. Hopefully he can sell his plan to the whores in a way that they will accept. In the meantime, I'll be vomiting.