XDA

In a second (in a month) editorial, urging Congress to close down Guantánamo Bay detention facilities for captured terrorists, today in the NYT, there is this series of thoughts:

[The California lady legislator's] bill would close Gitmo in a year and the detainees would be screened by real courts. Those who are truly illegal combatants would be sent to military or civilian jails in the United States, to be tried under time-tested American rules of justice, or sent to an international tribunal. Some would be returned to their native lands for trial, if warranted. The rest would be set free, as they should have been long ago.

The Guantánamo camp was created on a myth — that the American judicial system could not handle prisoners of “the war against terror.” It was built on a lie — that the hundreds of detainees at Gitmo are all dangerous terrorists. And it was organized around a fiction — that Mr. Bush had the power to create this rogue system in the first place.

The detention of the illegal combatants we capture is not punishment for their illegal actions, nor is it pre-trial detention. It is protective custody--we are protecting our soldiers in the field from being killed by the guys we capture. Once you have this elementary and indeed simple fact in mind, the editorials of the NYT on this subject instantly seem the fatuous ravings they are.

We don't screen the status of captured soldiers and spies or the war criminality of their actions in "real courts," we do that in military tribunals. Our Supreme Court has always said that it's OK to do so. If we sent the ones we want punished to an international tribunal, their only sure punishment would be death from old age before the tribunal could complete its task. I have no real problem with sending war criminals back to their country of origin for final disposition of the case (usually by a scimitar to the neck) but isn't the NYT on record against extraordinary rendition? Let the rest go? Are they completely stark raving mad at NYT? I guess the question kind of answers itself.

The American judicial system is not the proper place for trials of war criminals because our rules of discovery are completely incompatible with the gathering of military intelligence during a conflict. Myth? The guys in Gitmo are mainly dangerous terrorists and the ones that weren't have already been released (and some have returned to the battlefield against us). Lie? The President is the Commander-in-Chief under the Constitution and the rest of the rules were passed by our elected representatives in Congress. Rogue?

We don't have to determine their status; we don't have to try them--we just have to keep them off the battlefield or kill them. We're at war. Killing the enemy (or holding them in prison camps for the duration) is how you win at war.

And would you please stop with the puerile non-honorific of 'Mr.' before our President's name. You guys are worse than grade schoolers.

Labels: Guantanamo Bay Detention