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.
