January 27, 2009, "Closing Guantanamo" Necessary... Not Sufficient
The Grey Lady gives us this profile in snapshot of the Obama Administration's next Bush-created War-on-Terror detention headache, the nearly 600 men now being held beyond law at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. (Some background is available in my interview with Tina Foster of the International Justice Network, who is quoted in the Times piece).
The Times article does something fascinating-- it repeats Bush progaganda that everyone at Bagram was "captured on the battlefield"... and then notes that Ms. Foster has four clients, all of whom were moved there from outside of Afghanistan, but doesn't seem to highlight the obvious contradiction... just saying. In other words... here we go again. There seems no reason to believe that the defective process of packing Bagram (or the unnamed Pol-e-sharki, sometimes known as Guantanamo's Guantanamo, also in Afghanistan) was any less stupid than the defective process of packing GTMO.
Anyway... if anyone out there thinks that "closing Guantanamo" will somehow be hard just because they are too lazy, immature and stupid to know the difference between "terrorist" and "ACCUSED terrorist", there's really just no talking to you.
Anyway, that's my point: unless real, reliable evidence emerges, and fast, a prospect I believe is dubious to the point of non-existent, it will be necessary to conclude that, in fact, there are few if any "terrorists" at GTMO (I suppose that those like KSM and al-Shibh who insist that they are, can be screened by appropriate health professionals, and if determined in a proper court that they are confessing not out of mental illness, then they can duly plead guilty in said proper court, and seek their "martyrdom" that way). Accordingly, if we're not holding terrorists, and we're not properly holding POWs... then they've simply got to be released. Note again for those incapable of paying attention: they've got to be released not because we are being soft on terror, but because we have no basis to hold them. That's what our laws require. Not "permit": require.
And as hard as "closing GTMO" and then "closing Bagram" will be (both can be done with a mere stroke of a pen... Obama has got to realize that if he cured cancer, the common cold and baldness, established world peace, eliminated poverty and led the Cubs to a World Series title, the Republicans would still find some reason to attack him anyway as a soft-on-terror, tax and spend liberal elitist) ... the real political fire will commence when he undertakes what he is obliged to do by both treaty and decency: prosecute those responsible for violating our laws and Constitution, no matter how high ranking they may be.
The only way any of these things will happen, of course, is if "we the people" employ The President's own model of "community organizing" and pressure him to do the right thing, make sure we have his back when he does the hard stuff, and push push push for him to do it, Republicans and hate radio be damned. After all, as the President himself noted: he won, and that's the trump card.
So... it's up to us to make the President do the right thing. Starting yesterday.