Politicizing national security is something everyone is supposed to be against. Naturally, it’s impossible to avoid politicizing policies that you oppose and want to change, but no one really thinks it is in our interests to keep Guantanamo Bay’s prison open. The Republicans know we have to close it, and they know that the president (and John McCain) campaigned on closing it. But, they don’t care because they have polling data.
Armed with polling data that show a narrow majority of support for keeping the prison open and deep fear about the detainees, Republicans in Congress started laying plans even before the inauguration to make the debate over Guantánamo Bay a question of local community safety instead of one about national character and principles.
Talk radio and cable news hosts warned viewers that dangerous terrorists might end up in a neighborhood jail, with Sean Hannity of Fox News even broadcasting an online video from House Republican leaders that juxtaposed the security of the detainee camps with images of the twin towers in flames. And from California and Virginia to the small town of Hardin, Mont., Democratic lawmakers began fending off questions about whether they would admit terrorism suspects into their own communities.
It stands to reason that Republicans are a bit more scared of Muslims than the Democrats are. They don’t tend to live in the cities and the inner suburbs where most Muslims live. They don’t ride the bus with them and they don’t shop in their stores or eat in their restaurants. But even Republicans aren’t as scared of the detainees in Guantanamo as they profess to be. They want to benefit off cowardice.
Anyone who has ever taught a child to ride a bike knows how you deal with trepidation. You appeal to courage. You express confidence in the child’s abilities. And you shame them, if necessary, into overcoming their fear. Then you push them along and make them ride or fall. Only a fool would tell the child how dangerous bike-riding is and raise their anxiety level. When something must be done, you muster the courage to get it done. That is what leadership is all about.
The Republicans don’t know how to lead. And they want to make it as difficult as possible for Obama to lead. There are a lot of Democrats out there that are allowing themselves to be bullied. They ought to be ashamed of themselves. Gov. Ritter and Sens. Udall and Bennet of Colorado ought to make it crystal-clear that they welcome the detainees to the SuperMax prison in Florence. Anyone who wants to make an issue out of it should be invited to buy some Depends adult diapers. If the politicians in Colorado have no guts then the politicians in Montana should take advantage of the empty prison they have in Hardin. If Gov. Schweitzer and Sens. Baucus and Tester have no guts, then Gov. Rendell and Sens. Specter and Casey should invite the detainees to come to the great and courageous state of Pennsylvania. You can build a suitable prison right here in my hometown if everyone else is a goddamned coward.
I don’t care where you put them. Just put them somewhere and be done with it. And stop letting the Republicans push you around. People ultimately respect leaders that get them to overcome their fear and accomplish something. I don’t think a lot of soldiers appreciated serving in Patton’s Third Army at the time. But they wore that distinction as a badge of honor for the rest of their lives because of what they managed to accomplish.
It’s time to man-up. Failure to do so will lead people, including me, to believe there is something fundamentally cowardly about the Democratic Party. The Republicans, remember, are only pretending to be afraid.
Times like these I wish we still had some LBJ-style Democrats in Congress. His follies aside, the guy had spine and was an effective Senate majority leader. Now Reid on the other hand just seems weak to me. You won a huge election. Now act like it and keep your foot on the other guy’s neck.
The Republicans are great at spin and playing the village games. We should already have painted the Repubs as cowards on this issue. Our messaging sucks.
Well said. To even suggest that our Federal prisons are not capable of handling what ever challenge is delegated to them, is undermining the very fabric of our society. It suggests that this country is afraid to deal straight on with the issue. It is just crazy.
Without identifying them by name, point out the kinds of criminals who inhabit our federal prisons. This one was a cannibal, that one was a serial killer. We have a number of “terrorists” in prison now. Isn’t the infamous shoe bomber Richard Reid now in the ADX Florence Supermax prison in Colorado? Do people in Colorado have trouble sleeping at night with him behind bars there?
I don’t worry about Charley Manson getting out of prison here in California.
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In 2007, along with other medical and psychological experts, the two doctors conducted clinical interviews and diagnostic testing of 11 former detainees who gave first-hand accounts of having been tortured in US custody. None of these 11 men was charged with any crime.
Since 2005, PHR has documented the systematic use of psychological and physical torture by US personnel against detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Bagram airbase, and elsewhere in its groundbreaking reports, Break Them Down, Leave No Marks, and Broken Laws, Broken Lives. The Senate report confirms the use of abusive and illegal interrogation techniques documented in these PHR reports. These techniques include:
Physicians for Human Rights has repeatedly called for an end to the use of Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) interrogation tactics by US personnel, an end to the use of Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCT) teams.
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) is calling for the psychologists who justified, designed, and implemented torture for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Department of Defense (DoD), to lose their professional licenses and to face criminal prosecution.
Where have the former ‘enemy combatants’ gone after release?
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."This is really good, Booman. Perhaps you haven’t heard that the phrase “man up” has been changed to “emu up.”
I must be confused. Didn’t we WIN? Why aren’t the democrats out there just beating the hell out of the rethugs? Why are THEY running the conversation? Why is a whack job everywhere on every TV show spouting their lies? We the learned a while back that the media sure isn’t going to call out these nutjobs on their lies. I don’t get why THE PARTY THAT WON is so spineless.
All rethugs should be reminded on a daily basis:
9/11 HAPPENED ON YOUR WATCH. So STFU.
And what’s worse is Darth Cheney’s approval numbers are going UP. That’s scarey.
Are they spineless or do they really not give a shit about anything but marketing themselves into power by any slogans that work? That is the question. Maybe one of these days Boo will explain why Nader wasn’t right, at least when it comes to Congress and governors.
Nader wasn’t right because Republicans got power and look what they did with it. He was telling us they would do nothing different from what Clinton had done and what Gore would do. That was about the dumbest argument possible.
He was telling us that just electing Democrats would not bring the kind of changes we need. I think he was wrong about the presidency (at least in the case of Obama so far), but Congress, not so much. His point was not to elect Republicans, it was to break the 2-party hegemony. On that structural point he was right.
not really. you can’t break it.
I would probably agree with 99% of the criticism advocates of third-parties have with our government. But it doesn’t matter because third-parties are impossible.
I ‘d like to drive a Porsche, but I can’t afford it. Am I not going to drive as a result?
The only way to get a third-party is to adopt proportional representation. That requires a constitutional amendment that will never, ever be passed by Democratic and Republican office holders.
Even to waste breath on third-parties is pointless.
Did you notice how you sound just like Baucus on health care? Single payer is impossible, so talking about it is a waste of breath.
I take it your solution is to keep dreaming about Better Democrats until the country is so bankrupt and chaotic that constitutional amendments, like the Constitution itself, are no longer relevant nor impediments to change.
Baucus is right to a degree. He’s wrong to oppose single-payer personally and he is wrong to deny single-payer advocates a voice at the table. But he’s not wrong to pursue a policy that can pass.
The policy can’t pass because he and the rest of the bribe-takers won’t let it — won’t even let it be discussed. If he’s right, nobody is wrong.
You are so right. The Republicans are pretending to be afraid. The Democrats are afraid of everyone and everything.
i think that’s been the central lesson of the past 8 years, don’t you?
Ultimately, I don’t think it’s about housing the prisoners at all. It’s about taking away the figleaf of keeping prisoners from their legal rights. Once these prisoners are brought into the U.S. they will demand their habeas corpus rights, speedy trials, EVIDENCE for charges, damn, just being charged. Then it will be revealed that most of these people were held and tortured for no good reason. And along the way most any evidence that may exist will be thrown out because that torture stuff.
This will further embarrass the Republicans, and more to the point, embarrass the CIA/military.
I have no idea how the CIA/military get out of this without eventually releasing these guys to their countries of origin. The Republicans will get out of this by moving to the next stupid stunt.
First, congrats Booman, for getting right to the heart of the problem.
Second, I think you’re right Bob on both points
That is a hell of a problem for him & I wouldnt want to have to make that decision. The “right” thing to do – release them, is political suicide. The “prudent/pragmatic” thing is morally wrong & reduces our standing in the eyes of the world.
Well, it’s obviously about more than Republicans. The Dems are almost as bad. I think even some of the basically decent Dems believe that if the prisoners get a chance to prove their cases and Americans really see how we’ve been deceived and manipulated, the system could implode. We have a government almost entirely composed of conservatives in the sense that they are terrified of anything really changing in the power structure, no matter how much evil that structure enables.
The Supreme Court already granted habeas to the detainees, didn’t they?
That’s a bogus argument. It’s a stall at best. Keeping them in Cuba runs out the clock on actually delivering on their rights, but they have them.
The governor (I think) of Kansas was on the radio saying how the people of his state are afraid of having “terrorists” in any of the Federal prisons in Leavenworth because they are not secure enough. And the prisoners would have to be transported, which might let them escape, bla bla bla.
Here’s my proposal: If the pols and humans in a given state are so afraid of incarcerated prisoners, we should listen to them. Those prisons are full of murderers, torturers, rapists, domestic terrorists, bombers, marijuana smokers, and even worse. They really are scary. So the federal government should listen to the locals and shut down all federal prisons in Kansas, Colorado, and all the other states that are so fearful. And make sure they’re not subsidizing any state or local prisons there either. If the federal prisons are not secure enough to hold unindicted terrorists, they’re not safe enough to hold anybody.
Yes, the Democrats seem to be spineless and cowardly and unable to respond to Republican insanity.
Yes, there are many ignorant and fearful people in this land of ours who make no sense at all in the issue of where to house dangerous terrorists.
Yes the Republicans resemble more and more elements toxic to the welfare and well being of our republic.
Yes, America is becoming more and more like a monster out of control; imagine refusing to ban the manufacture of cluster bombs and torturing people to provide the justification to wage aggressive war against a nation that was no threat to us whatsoever.
The country is sick, perhaps, to the core of its very being. It needs courage, yes, and determination, certainly, but most of all, it requires awareness. It must look at itself honestly and truthfully. Let the investigations begin into this torture business while there is still time. Otherwise, we may all perish in the ocean of lies and deceit which presently engulfs us.
It is maddening how the media and the politicians are pretending to not know the true facts. They are being willfully obtuse. And it does indeed reveal an American sickness.
Evidently, even the Conservative Dems and Obama have to pretend that the Gitmo detainees are definitely dangerous terrorists and we’re supposed to forget the elephant in the room: that the vast majority of the so-called “worst of the worst” are absolutely innocent. That’s why Bush released most of these guys and the judges are ordering them released: there is a ridiculous lack of evidence against them.
After ‘catching’ around a 1000 people and labeling them terrorists we can look forward to what, 2 dozen Kangaroo trials and almost no actual court convictions?
But the Democrats think that admitting this fact makes them look weak. So they twist reality on its head to look strong . . .. . which ironically makes them look weak instead. . . . because it’s a huge sign of weakness.
And this weakness simply makes Dick Cheney and the torturers stronger.
The reason torture and Cheney are becoming popular again is because the Democrats are abandoning the battle field and not offering the logical and easy defense to these silly charges. Democrats waved the white flag of surrender before the battle even began so of course people have jumped on Dick’s side. No one likes losers like Harry Reid and the Democrats when they run away with their tail between their legs.
It’s disgusting because the Democrats have nothing to be scared about. They are not only cowards they are political retards. I know elementary school children that understand the politics of bullies and cowards better than these Democrats. If they stood up for themselves, even on a unpopular position, they would get more respect.
It’s maddening and sad. Until we stop supporting these cowards we will get more of the same.
We’re being invited to join in a penal-policy revolution.
You are supposed to connect the dots, and conclude that the sensible thing to do with the people in Guantanamo is shoot them.
And then, based on the discussion of how inadequate the security in the supermaxes are, take their inmates, and shoot them.
People on their own aren’t drawing the inference fast enough yet, and the GOP doesn’t have the balls — yet — to go there, but they will, because they have to.
And after that take the people who seem like they might become inmates and shoot them.
We’ve seen this movie before.
With the logical endpoint being:
“The people in charge aren’t going to protect you. They are going to let these killers come for you in your family…
You know that ‘Hunting License’ sticker you have?”
“Will no one rid us of these troublesome Liberals?”