St. Augustine famously said, “Lord, give me chastity and continence, but not yet.” The modern European equivalent is ‘let the prisoners of Guantanamo go, but don’t send them to us’. VOA reports:
After years of criticizing the camp, European countries must now consider whether to take in ex-inmates – a prospect that may present legal and security challenges. European countries have largely hailed U.S. President Barack Obama’s decision to shut down the Guantanamo Bay detention camp within a year.
Now comes the hard part. Will any of the countries take in ex-Guantanamo inmates? To be sure, Washington must first make that request – and experts suggest that would not come before months of negotiations. …
In an interview this week on French radio, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said France would consider taking terror suspects into France on a case-by-case basis. But he said, Guantanamo must first be shut – and its inmates must request to be sent to France. So far, he said, only one detainee has done so.
Other European countries, including the Netherlands and Denmark, appear much more reluctant to take in detainees. In the case of Germany, the question has divided the government, with the country’s foreign minister suggesting Germany could take 20 ex-prisoners, but its interior minister ruled out the prospect.
How about sending them back to their countries of origin? No can do, say the Europeans. Because those countries don’t meet the European standards of human rights. How about billeting them with the Code Pink people then? No, you can bet that’s not going to work either.
Long Live Pol Pot! Long Live Castro! Long Mao Tse Tung! But that’s for you, not for us.
Send ‘em to Chicago. Obama’s got a community organized there already to accept them.
Release ‘em to Johnny Sutton…he can gather the necessary evidence to prosecute the US service men and women who stood guard.
America is about to abandon An Integral Part of OEF.
In his last news conference Pres Bush kinda blew his top and pointed this out, saying that people were willing to criticize Gitmo but none of them wanted to accept the prisoners from there.
So Phillp Nolan is gonna have some company.
We are in this shit because of the constant, unending caterwauling of the Europeans. I could care less what they think, but unfortunately our chattering classes do care what the Europeans think.
Baahhh! I’m tired of this. The One is in charge now. What I rationally think is of no import, as I’m sure the rest of us here have pondered about now.
I still wonder why trials in the field and summary execution are not practiced. Done right its done. Criminal combatant? Guilty as charged? Okay, getting info from the dead is difficult, but catch and release is inhumane, just remember the tale of that whale?
Strap parachutes to them, put ‘em on a C-130 and shove ‘em out the door over the geographic center of Europe.
Turn ‘em loose in the Florida Everglades and let the alligators and Burmese pythons (a new invasive species) at the top of the food chain fight over them.
Let’s see. These guys were following a Saudi who incited them to kill Americans. Many of them are probably Saudis themselves. The Saudis are co-religionists who will know how the detainees expect to be treated. Anyone see where this is going? They’re overfed, underexercised and filled with venom. I say put ‘em in a Hercules 130, fly them to the middle of the desert with a bottle of water each and tell them “welcome home.” Allah will get them safely out of the desert — or won’t. F
Question: If US soldiers surprise an unarmed enemy combatant in a foxhole and there’s an AK-47 in the foxhole but he claims another guy was firing it, not him, what “crime” could he be charged with under US laws and an Obama regime? Remember, you have to prove the charge.
Answer: Misdemeaner loitering. And his lawyers could easily get him acquitted because he wasn’t given his Miranda rights.
Welcome to the Bizarro war where soldiers will be put on trial and terrorists set free.
Are they trying to turn our military into a police force or something like the FBI? It sure looks like it. Given that, would any of you if you were young guys again sign up for a combat MOS given what we have coming at us from the Justice Department?
Me. I wouldn’t.
At this point, all I can say is that my fellow foolish citizens voted for this and they will get it to the full. And we are going to get hit again. When we do, I’ll just calmly go about my life and remind people of the choice they made in November of 2008.
To Bart Hall in Kansas: Please check out #100 on Invisible Man thread and if possible craft a reply. Thanks.
The Rhinoceros apologizes for this interruption.
7. JMH: That sounds good to me, except for the parachute part.
OT:
Go, get out [to US, Australia, Canada, Israel]. My parents left my grandparents behind in Berlin and brought me to safety in England. Now I want you to leave so that my grandchildren will be safe
The Corner liked to this 2005 piece yesterday. While not directly related to prisoners, it captures perfectly the European approach to law and war. It is also hilarious. http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2005/03/another-european-war.html
Why isn’t the perfect solution to this rendition? It meets the two most important Euro criteria:
1. It closes Gitmo, thus achieving an important milestone in their self-esteem (“See, we’re still powerful!”)
2. It pushes the issue into the shadow world, which every sophisticated Euro can acknowledge with a wink and a nod at UN conferences, while maintaining official ignorance.
It also achieves the primary need of the US, which is to keep these guys off the terror market.
L3
@9. F: Sounds good to me, except for the water bottle bit.
RE: summary execution/pushing the Gitmo jihadis into the shadows
In the dark hearts of us warmongers, this seems like a great idea. Battlefield executions save us the trouble of “detaining” these unrepentant murderers, and prevent national embarrasments when the Left wins public court cases and gets them released. But… we lose valuable intelligence, our soldiers will essentially be ordered to shoot unarmed men, and we don’t offer any incentive to the jihadis to surrender voluntarily.
When we close Gitmo, it would be unwise to simply disappear these guys and claim official ignorance of their whereabouts. I would cite Alan Dershowitz (yeah, that guy) speaking on a slightly different subject:
“Democracy requires accountability and transparency, especially when extraordinary steps are taken. Most important, it requires compliance with the rule of law. And such compliance is impossible when an extraordinary technique, such as torture [or rendition], operates outside of the law.”
The law of the United States, as twisted and misshapen as it may have become, has withstood the burdens of Atlas throughout the centuries. Come on guys, what’s different about the U.S.? Why have we been so successful, while the rest of the world has been so unstable?
I would posit that American civil society and religious tradition does play a large role, but we also have a system of law unique in human history. If official government policy becomes operating in the shadows and beyond accountability… even if our motives are as pure as the driven snow, we will inevitably weaken the very thing that has made the U.S. so successful.
Why not knock them out, tag them like migrating water fowl, fly them to the wild provinces of Pakistan, track their movements to Taliban/AlQaeda training facilities and then drop JDAMs on their positions?
My intuition says: Ask Israel to take them, then give each a $25,000 ATM card on an Israeli bank. Release them on the understanding that once they leave Israel, they are on their own. Sure, many will launder the ATM card for one less traceable, but I feel some will say, “Gee! I have it better in Israel under Zionists than I did at home.” If any country knows how to deal with bad guys walking around the streets, it’s Israel. Of course, I have a hard time telling whether I’m thinking “out of the box” or just out of my mind.
Untimately, if the released terrorists go on to kill more Americans, that won’t really bother the Europeans or the oh so enlightened members of the transnational left who now lead us. As long as the terrorists (sorry, misguided muslim detainees) kill people in flyover country, they won’t be at all bothered.
There will be another 9/11 and soon the way things are going. When that happens, I expect that the same people whose policies allowed it to happen will find a way to blame Bush.
Put ‘em in my backyard me and the boys could use some terminal ballistics studies.
Johnny Sutton has just learned that they were all shot in the butt.
Indictments of US soldiers to follow, stay tuned.
Bush (clarifying his Legacy) says, I didn’t know that, or I would have turned ‘em over to Johnny long ago.
#2 outta my league:
You may be joking but:
The Supreme Court of Canada has just dropped a unanimous decision to the effect that the disciplinary records and employment history of the police may be demanded by the defence lawyers in any criminal trial.
The police are effectively on trial as well.
Perhaps the complaint files and disciplinary records of the defence lawyers also might be made public, the files on the judge with the Judicial Council, as well.
Since the police now have to get naked, why not everybody else?
But we know why, do we not.
(I apologize if this appears slightly off-topic but it seems to me to be a parallel issue, since your new president looks to be headed down the Canadian socialist highway to hell.)
Let’s take a page out of Castro’s book, and do a Mariel Boatlift on them. Send every frickin’ one of the detainees by illicit boat to whatever hidden coves European waters have, and give each of them a stack of Euros and a Eurailpass.
The political elites of our time indulge in voyeuristic morality. It is easy to take a high moral stance when the personal cost for doing so is zero. But when it entails an actual impact on their lifestyle or political viability the outward veneer will be discarded in an instant. And this extends to the “celebrities” of our time, many of them actors–by definition people who pretend to be people who they aren’t.
I am not a fan of his later works, but Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night had many gems of wisdom embedded in it, my favorite being “We are who we pretend to be–so be very, very careful who you pretend to be.”
Send them to New England,Washington DC and hmmmmm, Chicago!
But, really,#19′s,Novanglus’s idea of tagging, following and bombing them would be a nice episode of 24.
Tuduri
So far I’m liking Novanglus’s idea best, especially the JDAM part (I like to watch explosions). Tuduri has some good suggestions too. But please, let’s not forget our allies in the Netherlands.
Bad news for John Murtha’s district: many GITMO detainees will be soon transferred there early next year.
Good news: By order of the governor, hunting season will commence immediately after the detainees’ arrival. It will last indefinitely with “no limit on the number taken.”
Buckets,
I suppose I may be off base here. I thought a courts martial or article 15 type of hearing with full accounting of and for the details of the charge, the review and the decision was considered when ordering a summary execution in the field. It is a quick and dirty style of justice but justice none the less. I have since been reminded that military courts are not considered to be impartial, and under the conventions that now hold sway would be illegal for a lack of being impartial and somehow, therefore unfair.
However the tribunals in Gitmo are arguably more than fair and justices have more than bent over backwards to be impartial. The Claims made by the current administration and legal NGO’s would seek to undermine the standing and authority of the entire system of military justice when dealing with illegal combatants and detainees from around the globe. It puts out of reach the penalty of death for the violent and impossible to rehabilitate. It puts at risk the very standards of justice and that also seek to protect and defend the people and the constitution of the US.
I will submit that the intelligence gathering capabilities of the nation are enhanced by folks who stand to survive and live as freemen, but that is not the case with the blood lust that so many within Al Qaeda and so many (or so I hear reported) now within Hamas. The people who would torture, maim and kill American Soldiers or IDF troops or Civilians do not deserve to breath, have no redeeming virtue and I believe that allowing them to live places all our lives in jeopardy. These evil ones entertain all the redeeming graces of Gacey or other serial murderers and serial rapists. The lifestyle they lead of drugs and debautchery has led them to a place where they are no longer human. The truly humane thing to do is to end their lives.
Such is the temprament of the people who planned and executed the bombing of the golden mosque, the London train bombings, the bombings in Spain, Bali, the USS Cole and of course the multiple strikes on 9/11/2009. Unless there is undertaken a real and effective enhancement of the intelligence gathering capabilities of the US spy agency’s we will find ourselves again just as we were on 9/12/2001. I do not mean the toys, i refer to the real live assets in those places where we were blind on 9/10/2001, and active agents willing to do the commander in chief’s lawful bidding to the best of their abilities. I have yet to see where that has in fact been the case. I cannot believe that overnight the administration of President Obama can make up for lost time and lack of effort.
I apologize to the many honest professionals who have stepped up and gone beyond since and before 9/11, for any criticism of the Intel community will paint your actions as well. President Obama, if you want to get to the point where Gitmo is not needed, you better put effort into the gathering of information more than the effort to defend the rights of the indefensible, the unclean and the inhuman.