I mentioned in the previous entry that I don’t think modern Americans have the same self-image of nobility that previous generations did. According to David Kurtz over at Talking Points Memo, we don’t have as much courage, either. Here are some numbers for you to consider the next time you see one of those over-the-top political attack ads trying to convince you there is no alternative to maintaining our own American gulag at Guantanamo:
Number of Gitmo detainees that the GOP hopes to keep off mainland U.S. soil with its “Keep Terrorists Out Of America Act”: roughly 250.
Number of Axis POWs detained in camps on the U.S. mainland at the end of WWII: roughly 425,000.
Axis POWs. That would be Nazi and Japanese soldiers captured abroad and shipped here, to our soil, to sit out the war inside American borders. Well-trained, fully indoctrinated fascists who would’ve loved to slit American throats for their Fuhrer and their Emperor. And yet we managed to keep them locked up, didn’t we?
I’ve got a prison only a couple miles from my house, and I’m sure it’s full of serial killers, gangsters, rapists, murderers, white supremacists, and paranoid militia types, but I’ve never lost one wink of sleep because of it. So why is the thought of 250 suspected terrorists — suspected, mind you, still not proven in many cases — locked down inside a mainland military prison or even a civilian Supermax facility so scary? We’ve already got terrorists locked up in our mainland prisons. The Blind Shiek and Timothy McVeigh come immediately to mind. (Okay, McVeigh is dead, but you see my point.)
Al Qaeda is not composed of immortal, superpowered, super-intelligent boogeymen, and behaving as if it is only gives them power over us. I, for one, am sick of being scared, or, more accurately, of politicians and talk-radio personalities telling me I ought to be. Gitmo is a PR disaster and must be closed if America is to regain the moral high ground in our struggles. If you’re that worried about the Gitmo detainees causing trouble, just turn them out with the regular prison population. I’m sure all those gangsters and militia types I mentioned earlier will be happy to keep an eye on them for us…
Wow…look at you go with the political posts. Starting to read like my blog. 😉
I’m with you on this irrational fear about putting prisoners in one jail versus another jail. I figure we either trust our prisons or we don’t. And if we do, then we should be able to put any prisoner in any one of them (accounting for different security levels and such).
Here’s my beef with Gitmo: if we agree that these folks need to remain in prison, and they’re already in prison in Gitmo, then why are we moving them in the first place? Because of past atrocities at Gitmo? If that’s the case, then reform Gitmo and end whatever atrocities are still going on.
Is it just for the symbolism? If so, then I’d like to know how many tax dollars are being used to move prisoners from one perfectly good prison to another.
“look at you go with the political posts”
What can I say, I was in a mood… 🙂
Re: Gitmo, of course it’s all about symbolism. But unlike the previous president and his people, I think symbols are important. By placing our “detainees” on the shores of another country where US law doesn’t apply, by refusing to grant them POW status and/or give them trials, we’ve created the appearance that we’re playing outside the rules and that we were trying to do something sneaky that we wouldn’t want to sully our own shores with. There may or may not be any truth to that impression, but we’ve made it all too easy for even sympathetic nations to suspect something dirty is going on. And that’s not good for us, IMO.
I’m convinced our war against the jihadists requires us to look like we’re the good guys, that we’re the on the side of civilization. Gitmo doesn’t send that signal; it’s become a tactical and diplomatic liability, and is therefore worth the tax dollars to shut it down.
In my opinion, anyway.