There are a lot of things that piss me off, but there’s really nothing that angers me like the politicians who defend the prison in Guantanamo Bay and oppose transferring even the innocent out of that indefinite extrajudicial detention facility. Part of it is that it offends me when my elected representatives behave like a bunch of bedwetting sissies who are afraid to put terrorist suspects in our maximum (Supermax) prisons. Part of it is that George W. Bush filled Guantanamo with a hodgepodge of people, some of whom were extraordinarily dangerous and some of whom were entirely guiltless. Part of it is that people were in some cases horribly mistreated at Gitmo. Part of it is that almost everyone agrees that creating Gitmo was a mistake, a major moral failing, a huge propaganda boon to America-haters, a failure of both our military and civilian criminal justice system, a major blow to our heritage and our international image, and one of Congress’s biggest fuck-ups on record.
But maybe the biggest problem is the same one that so angered me about Republican opposition to the 2009 economic stimulus bills. If you make an enormous blunder and create a huge mess, it’s your obligation to try to make it right. And if you’re not up to the task of helping to make it right, at least get out of the way and let others give it a shot. But to handcuff the president and refuse to let him even try to clean up your wreckage?
In any other area of life, how would you react to that kind of behavior?
