Why GITMO must go
In a lot of US-Blogs the guys there still discuss a lot Guantanamo Bay; maybe I am a bit late in commenting that. The topic remains important.
Just as a reminder: Bill Clinton, former US-president (and, for some Europeans, still *the* President) said recently that the US military camp should either be cleaned up or abandoned.
Well, not everybody in the US thinks that way.
Some bloggers point out that it is very likely that Mr. Clinton made his remark mostly to back Senator Durbin who dropped some really silly words about GITMO being as bad as Stalin’s Gulags and Hitler’s Concentration Camps (in the meantime he apologized).
Probably they are right with the fact but wrong with the conclusion. Senator Durbin’s view is as inappropriate as any attempt to justify it. Nevertheless Mr. Clinton’s motivation is one thing, the view he expresses another.
There are other bloggers who employ arguments such as: the guys in GITMO are worse than just criminals, they are lawless terrorists and we should not care what happens to them. I rephrased the words I found a bit, the tone usually is a bit stronger. Others go so far to offer T-shirts like “I love Gitmo”.
These arguments miss an essential point.
It may be true that the people imprisoned in GITMO are the scum of the world. But we do not know, we have just been told. And even if we think we know we have no right of keeping them there. Because this is the basic right of everybody, even a murderer: to be brought to justice by an independent court, not by the government. If then they are sentenced to a lifelong imprisonment: fine. They shall have it.
The fact (or rather the assumption) that they have done wrong and that we expect them to be the bad guys changes nothing. That bad people do bad things is no justification for the good people doing bad things. Otherwise we cannot tell who the good and who the bad guys are. To put it a bit stronger: the good guys have to especially good in the face of evil.
The guys being imprisoned in GITMO should be brought to court as fast as possible.