The Guantanamo Problem – Part 2

This series addresses the War on Terror. While my stances on both the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars are very clear, in this piece I will propose what to do with Guantanamo Bay and its prisoners.  In Part 1, I explained the history of Guantanamo for knowing its history is key to understanding what should be done with this military base.  In this piece,  I will dissect a recent editorial published in the local newspaper by the incumbent Congressman and then propose my solutions on how to handle Guantanamo Bay prisoners. Following this, no current discussion on terror would be complete without discussing the controversial body scanning and I will add my comments and solutions on airline safety. The last part will summarize border security and just how dangerous the war on terror is – not only to our soldiers who risk their lives everyday and avoiding financial ruin as a country, but also to our liberties as a free society.

Readers should be aware that the incumbent, Congressman Dent, in my congressional race sits on Homeland Security and is a rabid supporter of the Bush and Obama administrations’ War on Terror. While I do not question his motives to protect the American people, I do very much oppose his actions and ineffective solutions. Our country’s leaders have not only plunged our nation into expensive, preemptive, and unjust wars for the past decade, but have embarked on a vast extension of a modern-day police state. It is the duty of every citizen to question whether these new restraints over our lives are, in fact, beneficial. I view the infringement of civil liberties that are protected by our Constitution as not only illegal but unnecessary and immoral.

The original source has been moved to the Morning Call archives here, but a modified version is available on Politico. In quotation marks are quotes from the Congressman, followed by my comments explaining my logic.

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Dent:  “I can assure you firsthand that closing the facility is impractical at this time, and, if accomplished, would further weaken the security of our homeland.”

Dent is referring to only closing the prison, and while closing it overnight is obviously impractical, he fails to outline specifically WHY it is impractical, and WHY it would weaken security. During World War II, we kept German prisoners of war on our soil, and the ability of our military police to keep all prisoners secured in secluded location should be unquestioned.  He does refer to the $200 million price tag from the Obama administration for a new prison, but placing this into perspective, this is about the same cost as the oil burned in a single day by the Pentagon (395,000 in 2008) multiplied by the “fully-burdened” price of delivering it to Afghanistan ($400 a gallon).

Dent then wrote, “The government has already spent millions of dollars in state-of-the-art infrastructure and the guards are exceptionally professional. This is no Abu Ghraib and any attempt to characterize it as such is a blatant lie. The facility provides more freedom of movement than US-based maximum-security prisons and while Pennsylvanians struggle to feed their families, detainees get a daily 6,500-calorie diet and most have access to classes, sports, TV, and even video games.”

Many of the prisoners are charged with assisting the Al-Qaeda terrorists who attacked our country on 9/11. While I can understand providing the Koran for their religion and some freedom of movement, why are we providing them with video games and TV? While I find it hard to believe that Guantanamo is a vacation spot compared to Pennsylvania, does Dent not get the supreme irony of freely spending millions upon billions of dollars while some residents in our district struggling to feed their families?  Most of the prisoners left have been detained for over 6 years with no trial whatsoever. If they are guilty of crimes connected with 9/11, they should be tried on the evidence, not left indefinitely to rot in prison.

Dent also neatly tries to avoid mentioning that Guantanamo prisoners have been tortured in the past, and the reasons for holding “enemy combatants” off-shore in Guantanamo and the extraordinary rendition to other CIA bases was mainly so that torture could be used, such as the well-known waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and the British national Binyam Mohamed who was released and determined to be innocent of any crime after being extradited to a secret CIA prison in Morocco where his jailers mutilated his genitalia among many other forms of torture.

Dent: “We still find our military men and women capturing terrorists on the fields of battle. However, these fields are no longer limited to Iraq and Afghanistan. They include the coastlines of Yemen and Somalia, neighborhoods in Texas and Colorado, and the skies above Michigan. The administration may not want to call it a war on terror, but that’s what it is. Where, then, shall we hold these prisoners of war – these enemy combatants?”

Dent’s blurring of the terms “terrorists” and “prisoners of war” is highly misleading. The truth is that the current wars are being fought against mostly insurgent tribal Muslim rebels, and the United States is allied with their opposing Muslim tribe.  Terrorism is simply a tactic of war.  The United States – or any other nation – cannot ever win a war against a tactic, we can only win wars against defined enemies. For instance, civilians in Pakistan where homes and innocent lives have been mistakenly destroyed by Predator drones could also argue that this is also a form of terrorism instead of America’s unique, inhuman term “collateral damage.”

If the Canadians or Russians ever invaded our country and we fought back, would any resistance on our part still be construed as “terrorism”? Were the French actions of sabotage during WWII against the Nazis or the original Boston Tea Party with its tar-and-feathering also “acts of terrorism”? When the American Revolution against the British first started, the minutemen at Lexington and Concord chose to shoot at the British from the forest rather than formally lining up on a field of battle. The minutemen’s actions could also, in many ways, be viewed as a cowardly acts.

Americans must place themselves in the shoes of those we are attacking. Many who have joined the Taliban or Al-Qaeda have done so not because of a call to jihad by Bin Laden, but because their family members and friends have been killed.  Many are at war against the United States solely because we are over there, occupying their lands. It is highly unlikely that Osama Bin Laden would have been able to convince the 19 hijackers who killed nearly 3,000 Americans on 9/11 to commit suicide if American troops had not been stationed in the Holy Land of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and many more countries – and presently the US military has over 761 bases in 150 of the world’s 194 countries if you want to be exact.

As Congress has never declared war against any nation, including Afghanistan, Iraq, or Pakistan, as required by the Constitution (Article 1, Section 8), this does place our country into an awkward position.  My personal beliefs are:

• All Al-Qaeda charged with acts related to the 9/11 attacks or acts against American civilians not located in the war zones of Afghanistan, Iraq, or Pakistan, should be given a trial by jury.
• All tribal insurgents, Taliban, Al-Qaeda, etc. who attack American troops on foreign soil in whatever manner should be treated as prisoners of war and humanely detained by the military until the end of the wars’ hostilities. They should never be subjected to torture.
• The Bushian term Dent uses – “enemy combatants” – is childish conniving to thwart the rule of law by inventing new terms in order to torture and unlawfully detain individuals. The creation of military tribunals under the Military Commissions Act of 2006 are unnecessary.

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WHAT TO DO WITH GUANTANAMO’S PRISONERS???

1. I believe that the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, if charged with an act of aggression, including terrorism, against American civilians in connection with 9/11 or otherwise, should be given a trial by jury. These are criminal acts and should be treated as such. If there is no evidence to place them on trial, they should be released in accordance with our law – we will already have detained most of them for the better part of a decade. There is nothing to fear by giving these individuals constitutional protections since if abiding by the Constitution is good enough for me, it will have to be good enough for an alleged criminal and terrorist, no matter how much I myself hold terrorist acts in utter disdain.

2. I believe all prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, if charged with an act of aggression, including terrorism, against the American military or military contractors following 9/11 on foreign soil should be held as prisoners of war until the end of hostilities. If there is a case where an act of aggression may NOT have been committed against the military, a hearing can be held by the military to determine if there is enough evidence to continue holding the prisoner of war, but sentencing, capital punishment, or additional punishment should NOT be the subject of any such hearings. They should be treated humanely and not subjected to torture under ANY circumstances.

3. As outlined in Part 1, for historical reasons Guantanamo Bay clearly belongs to Cuba so once again, my stance is to support the closure of the entire military base, including the prison.

4. Those detained under #1 can be moved to a secluded location in the United States where they can be imprisoned and given their trial by jury. (Obviously, I do recognize that finding an impartial jury may be difficult, so details surrounding jury selection are a valid point for debate.)

5. Those detained under #2 above can be either be imprisoned by the military police in the United States or moved back into prisons in the occupied countries. Again, the United States is responsible to never torture and safely detain these prisoners of war.

6. To further elucidate the position of the United States’s “war on terror,” Congress should hold an up or down vote on the wars and also clearly specify the enemy and how victory is to be achieved. This is owed to the American people.  While I would vote against either war, I would support issuing letters of marque and reprisal, as outlined in my Afghanistan War plank, to address Al-Qaeda specifically.

America used to believe that individuals were innocent until proven guilty by jury in a court of law, no matter how heinous the crime.

America used to believe that torture is to be condemned as the actions of uncivilized brutes, and is unbecoming the most highly advanced society on earth.

America used to believe that without a warrant and probable cause, the government has no right or ability to search you as stated in the Fourth Amendment. As seen by the recent backdoor re-authorization of the PATRIOT Act, Congress and the President are out of touch with protecting individual rights.

If America does not return to our roots in the rule of law, history teaches dark days are ahead. We must reject the actions of so-called representatives in Congress and replace them with those who believe in the rule of law and will abide by their oaths to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

For reference, here are links to my Iraq War and Afghanistan War planks.

For the Republic and the Constitution,

Jake Towne

March 10, 2010

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