Lucia

de Vernai

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June 16, 2008

Guantanamo Detainees: You Wonder Why They Hate Us?

The security measures and draconian methods used at Guantanamo Bay may prove to be yet more futile, if not counterproductive, strategies in the war on terror. The prisoners held on suspicion of terrorist involvement may have the cases against them dismissed since the Supreme Court ruled earlier this week that the inmates have the right to challenge their imprisonment in U.S. courts.

While this is not the first time that the Court has turned against the Bush Administration’s wartime practices, it is the latest to bring the American people face-to-face with the possible repercussions of the un-American treatment of Guantanamo detainees.

Hypothetically, if these prisoners were to bring their case to a U.S. court and receive a judgment in their favor, they would be free to walk out of the courtrooms and into grocery stores, neighborhood parks and malls. If the very thought of that makes you want to hide your wife and children and sit on the porch with a Glock – ask yourself why.

Because they hate Americans, America and educated women? Two out of those three? Well, either way, you’re probably right. Probably. Since none of us mere mortals with no security badges have seen these men, heard their testimonies or have any certainty as to how those stories were obtained, all we rely on is the government insisting that they’re bad guys. Mind you, that’s the same government that swore there are weapons of mass destruction where we only found malnourished goats, so maybe getting a positive I.D. on the situation should get a second opinion.

But don’t worry – if the old guard of American heroes like John McCain and Attorney General Michael Muskasey can help it, the turban-clad boogeyman won’t be coming. Disobeying the law for political purposes has been done before, and you can bet it will be done again.

The majority opinion, which read, “Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system they are reconciled within the framework of the law" will find its way into ninth-grade history textbooks in a decade or two. Antonin Scalia’s dissent to the opinion, which he claims “will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed”, will become the automatic headline-producing battle cry of Republicans.

Commentators outraged at the idea of Americans living up to American standards of justice fail to address the fact that the intense hatred, aggression and disgust with which the detainees threaten us with didn’t lessen every day of every week of every month of every year at Guantanamo. If they didn’t have a good reason to hate America before, the solitary confinement and documented human rights abuses probably gave them one.
 

The blatant way in which politicians trumpet their intention to disregard the highest court in the land, or threaten a constitutional amendment to go around it, has done a great harm to the country. In not showing any mercy, denying fair treatment and forsaking transparency to the detainees at Guantanamo, the government has shown that the closely held principles of freedom, justice and independence that need protection from the Muslim extremists suffer the greatest threat from our own politicians.

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