Change
I just read this story: Obama Issues Directive to Shut Down Guantánamo.
I had to stop reading a couple of times to wipe my eyes. We’ve strayed so far from the path these last 8 years, it brings tears to my eyes when our president does something as simple as uphold the Constitution.
Read the last part of Section One of the 14th Amendment, and tell me with a straight face that extraordinary rendition, secret prisons, and indefinite imprisonment are ideals we should embrace. Here, I’ll quote the entire section for you, so you can see there is even a distinction between the rights of a citizen of the U.S. and the more broad “any person.”
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
I’m with you, but am still concerned over a lot of the unanswered questions surrounding such a closure. Hopefully they can make wise decisions about what to do with the people who have been imprisoned there.
They’ll be reviewing each individual and deciding whether to release, prosecute, or transfer them to a prison here in the States. I don’t think anyone expects every person imprisoned there to be innocent, but nor is every single person guilty. Some people are there under the most tenuous bits of evidence, like say, wearing a Casio watch.
Here in the US, even those accused of the most heinous crimes can expect some standard of treatment: the right to an attorney, the right to appear in court to defend themselves, and the right to appeal a judgment against them. Given the number of old judgments that have been overturned with new DNA evidence in the past 10 years, there is a good reason for all this.
Secret prisons, secret evidence, and secret trials do not protect us, and only serve to make us more like those we claim to be against.
Okay, I’m stepping off the soapbox and going back outside to scoop dog poop. :-)