GUANTANAMO DILEMMA

The Up program with Steven Kornacki on MSNBC this morning was great. The topic was Guantanamo Prison internees. One of the guests, John Knefel, made the point about how Guantanamo turned our precious America Justice system up side down.   What he said was very simple. We are a country where we believe you are innocent until proven guilty. “Believe it or not”, that concept is as new to the world as is idea of voter equality both of which we introduced to the world with our Bill of Rights and Constitution.

In terms of Guantanamo, suddenly, we are willing to put ten innocent people in jail just to confine one guilty one. That was one of the evils of the Bush administration—one of the civil rights we were willing to give up. Our society houses an element of people who are not willing to suffer through what I call the “Dukakis Phenomenon”. The reference is to a weekend prisoner furlough program, which was in force in Massachusetts while Michael Dukakis was Governor; he was running for President and supported the program. They released Willie Horton, a convicted murderer, who committed other horrendous crimes, which served as the centerpiece of a devastating political ad. This same element of society stands ready to condemn anyone—but especially President Obama—willing to release people accused of terrorism because of the danger of that person committing an act of terror. They would set in the background waiting to attack politically if one of these people were to be involved in an “act of terror”.

In the above sentences, I was careful not to write “another” act of terror. Some of the prisoners are in Guantanamo and have been there for 11 years because there was a $5,000 reward offered by the Untied States to turn in suspicious people in Iraq. There is absolutely no evidence that they are guilty of committing an act of terror in the first place. In a war-torn, poverty-stricken nation, bounty hunting was an easy way to earn a “small fortune”. This happened time after time.

In addition to the fact that a free trail would reveal the shame of this program, they would release those not guilty of being enemy combatants simply because they were not guilty. However, if I intentionally wanted to radicalize an innocent person, that is teach them to hate America, I would put them in prison for 11 years. If they weren’t terrorist before they were arrested (captured) they would then have good reason to be terrorists. If we release them and they bomb or terrorize our embassies do we just shrug our shoulders and forgive them.

Who constitutes “this element” of society that is casting such a dangerous shadow over our treasured judicial system? It is my contention that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, Lindsey Graham and John McCain, Michael McCual and Peter King are not good for America. I think their behavior is innate, it reflects what is in their genes. They are Republicans. They are selfish. Their sense of personal safety overrules their sense of humanity. This is selfishness and not altruism. Sadly, their selfishness has created great danger or all of us. What is gloomy is that they cannot fundimentally change how they think; we can only hope they can learn. 

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