Obama is doing a lot of things well, but he’s screwing up his detainee policy very badly. Dealing with the Gitmo detainees is just not something you can finesse and resolve without taking a political hit. I know Congress is not cooperating and that that makes it nearly impossible to disposition these cases in a just manner. I know that other countries’ willingness to take these detainees off our hands is limited, and that puts us in a real bind if we deem them too dangerous to release into our population and yet don’t feel we can convict them in a court of law. I understand that neither the people nor the Congress will casually accept any Gitmo detainees being released in America even if the administration deems them harmless.
But you can’t put someone on trial, see them acquitted of the charges against them, and then keep them detained anyway. Anyone who is put on trial should be on trial for their freedom. They win, they go free. Keep them in the witness protection program to keep an eye on them if you need to, but let them go.
I know that no solution is going to be pretty, but you can do a whole lot better than this. Keeping the country safe is critically important, but so is maintaining our commitment to principles of justice. You may pay a high political price for doing the right thing, but you just have to pay it.
Agreed in full. If any of these people are acquitted and still held — and held because they have a legitimate desire for revenge — the shame of remaining an American will be too much for me. There’s a lot of stuff I can shrug off, but that one crosses an unambiguous line between good and evil for me.
…but I gotta vent.
It seems the “news” we were “missing” yesterday includes Obama’s poll numbers in OH, why that means “we” can’t have health care (WTF? If you don’t have a job health care is further out of reach) and more from that mediocre bore, Sarah Palin. This topic doesn’t get discussed at all.
I’d rather have wall-to-wall MJ coverage, thankyaverymuch. I’d learn more.
I know the state of our media gets sorrier by the second…I’m just more disgusted today than usual.
Carry on.
/vent
.
There have been approximately 560,000 murders and 358 executions from 1967-1996
FBI’s Uniform Crime Report (UCR) & Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS).
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."I don’t remember who it was, but one conservative writer opined that people would come to regret their choice of Obama in the election. That day is here for me.
It’s embarrassing how bad he’s become.
Imagine that American citizens were imprisoned overseas, and being treated as unfairly as we are treating the detainees. This country would be going batshit nuclear– we’d be sending in F-16’s and neutron bombs.
Of course, you are right but what else do you expect from an evil empire?
Thanks BooMan. I also totally agree. Tough politics, but President Obama just has to suck it up. John Kennedy had the same problem with civil rights, but what is right is right.
What is he afraid of, some Willie Horton incident? It’s not Obama’s fault if a jury finds the people NOT GUILTY. Our criminal justice system does that all the time. We never blamed Gov. Pete Wilson or President Clinton when OJ was acquitted, give me a break.
The nightmare scenarios is releasing some Gitmo guy who then shoots up a mall in middle America, or is part of some 9/11 mass casualty event. Now, we all know that the experience of being imprisoned without charges in a foreign country could turn almost anyone into a terrorist, but most people aren’t smart enough to understand that in the heat of the moment.
But you know what? I think there is less than a 1% chance that anyone found NOT GUILTY by our justice system would then become the next Tim McVeigh or Osama Bin Laden. First you deport them upon acquittal, to Afghanistan if necessary (what will Karzai say, “no”?). Those found guilty spend many years in jail, then get deported.
Obama would finally get this monkey off our back and restore American principles. And you know what — even if an acquitted prisoner does something horrible one day, you simply state that you obeyed the US Constitution, and then you blame the Bush team for compromising the evidence or whatever happened in that case, and you move on. Giving up our principles for the slim chance that it will prevent a future crime is not worth it. This isn’t Minority Report, Obama.
Where in the Constitution does it state anything about keeping “the country safe”? Where in any oath of office is there anything at all about keeping corporations and private property and acreage safe? My history books taught me that the old patriots (read: insurgents, but I digress…) of the Revolutionary War times carping about keeping buildings safe from attack and hiding underneath bedcovers fearing when the next musket round would pierce their hallowed safety. They understood that during times of strife, “stuff happens.” All this nonsense about “keeping us safe” being a hallmark of American democracy has been made up out of whole cloth in this “post 9/11” world that you and your fearful Cohorts in Fear have conjured up in your fevered imaginations of superpowered brown Muslims coming out to get you and your womenfolk. All the oaths of office state that they will defend the Constitution, not the property of Goldman Sachs nor any other private corporate entities. This country likes to bully smaller, poorer countries, which makes the citizenry of those countries wish to attack this country. And because this country will not cease those activities (because those actions are in our corporate interests), people here will be harmed every once in a while by small-time warriors (i.e., “terrorists”). May the circle be unbroken.
Also, who are the “we” that would deem certain people too dangerous to release: you, His Holiness in the WH, or twelve IMPARTIAL jurors in a court of law? We already know that you, as judge, jury and executioner, feel that these people should be locked away forever with no due process. It just doesn’t bother you that that breaks one of the USA’s biggest tenets (Habeus Corpus). I think you talk a good game about liberties and freedom and the like, but when push comes to shove it really doesn’t matter if these people are innocent or not. So long as you’re safe and spared seeing the consequences of your glorious country’s beautifully bloody actions across the globe.
What you don’t know won’t hurt you. Isn’t that how it goes? If you sacrifice liberty for security, you deserve NEITHER.
I used to believe that the leadership of the Democratic party would be Obama’s most effective adversary, but now I believe that leadership is in the #2 spot, behind himself and his core group of people within his own administration itself.
I realize the problems needing to be dealt with are complex and that the people seeking to undermine real progress are extremely tenacious. But the ridiculous levels of equivocation, the failure to present strong, clear, and unambiguous positions on the big issues, and the failures to fully repudiate and stop engaging in Bush regime crimes against the constitution; this is where the Obama administration’s biggest enemy lies. It is right there. All they have to do is look in the mirror to see it.
My concern is that all the initiatives on the big issues that need to be attended to effectively will fail. This is certainly what the wingnuts in the GOP and the media are working toward, but that’s a given. My concern is that the Obama administration and the Democratic party itself will contribute so much themselves to these failures via their propensity for spinelessness in compromise, that in the end things will be worse than before.
Here in California, as a person impoverished by a catastrophic health event and now on the poorman’s disability, (for which, don’t get me wrong, I’m very grateful), the state portion of my meager benefits have already been cut been cut, just in these last several months, by a bit over 25%, or a bit less than 9% of the overall total. Yet, even though my health problems are serious, I’m one of the lucky ones. There are millions of people far worse off that I am who are being crushed by this stuff. And this trend won’t change if the feeble ‘in the name of bipartisanship’ positions and cave ins to the right by the Obama admin and the Dems does not change.
The very idea that ‘bipartisanship’ should be a valued goal right now with this GOP and the thugs who dominate it is, in my opinion, criminally negligent politics on the part of the president and the congressional blowhards and cowards whose first alleigance is always to their own ambition.