Closing Gitmo

The Congressional Democrats are both right and wrong in their plans to shut down the US government's holding pen for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Closing down Gitmo (military slang for the naval base on the Commie island) makes a lot of sense. The international left has made the base a symbol of imperialism by alleging that it violates international law and human rights. Shutting it down and transferring the prisoners there, most of whom are foreign nationals, back to their homelands would give us a cheap propaganda victory in the war on terror.

Now many of the terror suspects would be sent back to countries like Pakistan and Egypt where they would be tortured and probably killed by the local secret police. Yes, this would be tragic but these men are fanatics who want to kill us and blow up our cities. I can't think of anything more just than turning the self proclaimed champions of Islam over to the tender mercies of Islamic law.

Closing Gitmo and shipping the suspects home would also earn us points in Europe where the human rights lobby has condemned the fact that some of the terrorists are citizens of European nations. These people demand that the fanatical killers be released onto their streets let them have the Islamic nuts. See how much respect the terrorists have for the rights of European citizens.

Unfortunately the Democrats want to take the sensible action of closing Gitmo but they want to bring the terror suspects back to the US for trial in the US Federal Court system. This makes little or no sense it is unclear that the Gitmo prisoners have committed any crime under US law or if the US courts have any sort of jurisdiction over them. This means that the terror suspects could be brought to US soil and then ordered released by the courts.

Once on US soil it might be impossible for the US government to deport the terror suspects because they could claim asylum. After all most of them would be tortured and killed by their own governments if they returned to their homelands so they could seek asylum as political prisoners.

The Democrats could bring terrorists onto US soil and have them set free to wreck havoc in the name of respecting human rights. Or more precisely in the name of scoring points with the Far Left and its apologists in the media.

What should the US do with Islamic terrorists it captures on the battlefield? The best solution would be to quietly turn them over to allied governments particularly Islamic governments which will try these Islamic criminals under Islamic law. Yes, most of them would be tortured and killed by their fellow Muslims but they wouldn't be a threat to us anymore. That's the policy we're pursuing in Iraq right now and it should be our policy on all fronts. This policy involves common sense and respect of other cultures things that are in very short supply in Washington these days.

Another solution might be to rewrite international law to give the terror suspects a legal status they aren't traditional prisoners of war but they aren't criminals either. Maybe an international tribunal should be set up to try them not the European kangaroo court in the Hague which will simply sentence them to time in a country club pen but a real tribunal tribunal like the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes trial after World War II. This tribunal would have the power to lock the terror suspects up for life in a tough hell hole prison like the Russian gulag or sentence them to hang for their crimes. The Europeans wouldn't like it but if we insisted the tribunal try terror suspects according to Islamic law I'm sure the Muslim countries would go along. The tribunal would sit in some Islamic country like Pakistan or Egypt and be administered by that nation's government.
Since no American president would have the guts to challenge the international court system and Europe I doubt this will happen. So the best we can hope for is that the terrorists continue to languish at Guantanamo while the military turns all the terrorists it captures over to our allies. A problematic stop gap solution that will at least be better than foisting terror suspects on our Court system.