Song of the Day: "My President Is Black" by Joung Jeezy

Can we take a second to talk about this ridiculous national debate over the closure of Guantanamo Bay??

But first, I do need to say: oh sweet, sweet God—Barack Obama is my President!!! I am unspeakably, unshakably happy, and since the morning of the inauguration have been constantly pinching myself because it’s too damn to good to be true.

To begin with, I love his decision to close Guantanamo Bay. Personally, I think the US shot itself in the foot there—you can’t claim to be the steadfast purveyors of sweet liberty across the globe while holding a few hundred people in permanent legal limbo on half-assed technicalities. Oh, and constantly torturing them. That hardly makes us look better than the bastards we are fighting, does it?

But whether or not we agree with how/why/what purpose Gitmo has served, it is going to close. And when it does, the 250 or so remaining inmates are to be moved. The big question, apparently, is: where? Foxnews is asking “Do you want terrorists in YOUR backyard?” (spoiler alert: the loyal readers of Foxnews DO NOT) and more than one Republican Senator is suggesting that since Nancy Pelosi wants Gitmo shut down so badly, we should hold the detainees in her district-- on Alcatraz.

Apparently, these geniuses have never been to Alcatraz. It’s not a prison, it’s a tourist trap. You’d have better luck housing detainees in the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. That jackassery notwithstanding, everyone seems to be panicking and no one seems to know what to do with the Gitmo prisoners.

My question is: what the fuck difference does it make? Do we not have a whole scad of maximum security facilities? Do we not have military prisons with crazy security measures already in place? These detainees are not friggin made of explosives—they will not detonate and take out 50 city blocks if they touch the good ol’ American Heartland. They will simply spend 23 hours a day locked in a different cell (I know, it sounds downright insane when you put it like that). So stick them in Leavenworth. Put them in Rikers, or San Quentin. Put them in the Pleasant Valley Maximum Security State Prison. As long as they’re locked up and well guarded, what difference does it make?

A second, slightly stickier question: why are people so afraid of justice actually being done in these cases? When I say “hell yes bring them onto US soil, put them on trial for their crimes, and let’s get on with our lives” people react as if I’ve just pissed on the American flag—as if they are not pissing on the entire concept of human decency and fairness by denying someone’s freedom and giving them no legal recourse to challenge their detention.

This is unbelievably simple, people: if there is credible evidence that someone has engaged in criminal activities, it should be no problem getting a conviction and punishing them. If there is no evidence against them, you let them go-- you have to. I don’t see why this is such a contentious issue, and no amount of fear-mongering from the Right is going to convince me otherwise.

To that end, I know what someone is going to say: “We can’t let them go because they will revert to terrorism”, which is a stupid, as well as an incorrect, argument. It’s no more a legal means of action than saying “we can’t let people out of the drunk tank because they will maybe one day drink again.” People advocating this reactionary position generally point to Pentagon estimates that 61 of the more than 500 detainees released from Gitmo have resumed the fight against the United States.

Firstly, that figure was immediately contested by a zillion sources because, according to the Pentagon, “returning to terrorism” includes such mundane acts as publicly making negative comments about the US. As if you had been imprisoned, sleep deprived, and psychologically fucked for half a decade without a shred of evidence, you wouldn’t be mad too. (And I won’t even get into how many of these detainees were turned over in the first place by destitute tribesmen for the reward money with no evidence given nor asked for by a CIA that cared more about looking busy after 9/11 than finding actual bad guys.)

The Pentagon then revamped their data and made a new figure of 18 detainees who have for sure (re)joined Al Qaeda, though they won’t release more than a few names. Fair enough, but 18 out of more than 500 is slightly over 3%. Not exactly a frightening or stunning rate of recidivism considering that convicted felons in the US return to crime roughly 60% of the time.

This is a sham, people. Locking random Arabs up indefinitely makes us no safer on a daily basis, and it makes us look like gigantic pricks. Can we please just let actual, legal, decent justice be done? I’m sick of David Hicks-style farces, and I’m ready to punish the fuckers who we can prove have done bad things, and apologize to those we’ve fucked out of paranoia.

Am I the only person who thinks that this is the absolute right thing to do?