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Monday, January 03, 2005There is apparently talk about moving some of the Gitmo prisoners to prisons in their own countries that are built and monitored by the U.S. but run by the "host countries." Instapundit has doubts; this American fellow doesn't see so much of a problem. The problem? The likely host countries have such lousy track records on human rights that suddenly Gitmo is looking like Club Med.Instapundit calls the plan dodgy, and indeed it is. But sometimes a little dodginess is called for. Keeping a clear conscience is a good thing and one hopes that our leaders will stick to policies that do not leaving them tossing and turning at night in fear of perdition. Still, giving a fair shot to people who are intent upon killing us seems to me to be a little too evenhanded. The big mistake we seem to make is to confuse where human rights and government intersect. Government cannot give or grant universal human rights. It would be like granting sunshine and rain. They are, and that's that. All government can do is - in the affirmative - secure those rights and - in the negative - avoid infringing upon them. Our particular government was set up to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and to our posterity. Resident aliens involved in the bombing of our cities were not mentioned as entitled to our protections. It's not that they don't merit the universal human rights we celebrate. They do, by definition. It's just not the job of the United States government to assure those rights. It is, on the other hand, very much the job of the United States government to provide for the common defense of the several states. It is strange that George W. Bush gets this while some of our courts do not. Perhaps it's too plainly written; were it flickering in the shadows of a subordinate clause in a later amendment rather than being stated outright in the introduction to the document it might draw their attention. As it stands, there are screeching advocates and goofy courts that sometimes think the president's first job in the war on terror is not to defend the land and secure the liberty of the citizenry, but rather to make sure that non-citizens hell-bent on destroying us are assured the full rights of U.S. citizens. It is not clear if this includes the right to be incinerated in your office by Arab Muslims who for reasons of sensitivity can't be asked why they're in flight school if they don't intend to become pilots. It seemingly does include everything else. At this point, if the State Department plan becomes reality the screeching advocates will have only themselves to blame. Guantanamo is the only prison on the island of Cuba where anything resembling human rights even gets a mention. But in spite of our efforts to establish relatively humane prisons for people committed to our murder, we only catch hell. Apologies if I've missed it, but I don't recall any big campaigns by Amnesty for the Saudis, Yemenis, Syrians or anyone else to look at Guantanamo as the minimum standard they ought to reach for. So what's the fuss about sending a Saudi to a Saudi prison? If it's good enough for a Saudi shoplifter, why isn't it good enough for someone committed to the mass murder of Americans? Bottom line: Being a fairminded fellow who believes in universal human rights as a goal, not just a position paper, I hope we can hold the prisoners in Guantanamo and keep them in a system where the stupid kids have a chance of being weeded out and dealt with rather than tossed in with the worst of the worst. Hope that we will be able to hold on to the prisoners to ensure that they are treated as prisoners, not animals, because if even 1% deserve the distinction a good society will try to make it. Hope that we hang on to them so that standards of law and justice, even if at lower benchmarks than we use for our citizenry, are applied in lieu of the arbitrary and fickle systems that pop up in the more barbaric nations. But if our society is to meet even the lower bar set at Guantanamo, it must first survive. If the human rights groups and sensational journalists want to take a breather and focus on how a democracy can reasonably deal with those committed to its destruction, respecting their humanity but not their cause, there's room for dialogue. Too often, though, these groups seem less concerned about the prisoners than about knocking Bush, the U.S. and the war on terror. Too often, their interest seems to lie not in finding a way to protect everyone's rights, including the rights of U.S. citizens to live in relative safety, but rather to scoring points off the only governments that take the trouble to listen to them, lest fundraising or readership trail off. I'm sure the Bush administration does not relish the thought of either the hassle or the expense of lifetime detentions whether here or elsewhere and would welcome reasonable alternatives. But it also does not relish a replay of 9/11, and we've learned that sufficiently determined people can do such things and worse if given the necessary time, money and freedom of movement. In such circumstances, Bush must first protect the citizens he serves while seeking the best means possible to keep serious threats to our lives and liberty at bay. If the advocacy groups make it untenable for him to do so under U.S. auspices, turning over the job to governments less committed to human rights than ours may look and feel bad, but it is his obligation to do so for the protection of our society. 
posted by gbarto at 1:46 AM |
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