Sometimes to win a losing argument you just have to stop making sense. In the case of some Republicans and the prison at Guantanamo Bay playing "crazy" seems to be the best bet. Nothing like playing Chicken Little Hawk with your head cut off, throwing your beaks up to the sky, screaming, "The terrorists are coming! The terrorists are coming!" Of course, they're "coming" to a maximum security prison in rural Illinois where they will be housed until they face trial. And they will be in prison on US soil, the same soil that currently holds more than 300 terrorists, international and domestic. The same soil where since 2001, 195 terrorists have been tried and convicted. This is a been there, done that situation. But I guess, scream now, scream again is more apropos for some Republicans.
Yesterday we took a look at some statements GOP House Leader Rep. John Boehner has made in regards to the President trying to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay by moving some detainees to a maximum security prison in Thomson, Ill. Boehner said something along the lines of, "Once again, the Obama Administration has put the interests of liberal special interest groups before the safety and security of the American people."
And White House Press Secy. Robert Gibbs called his words, in essence, "crazy."
Fortunately, there are many who are unafflicted by "The Crazy" and are doing their darnest to fight back against all the screaming and hair-pulling with stone-cold-facts and reasoning.
Like The American Prospect's TAPPED blogger Adam Serwer:
Astonishingly, although the differences between Bush policy circa-2008 and Obama policy now, the right is still gripped with hysteria over the decision to move Gitmo detainees to the United States. Despite the fact that the vast majority of Gitmo detainees have been released without charge or conviction and have not taken up arms against the United States, conservatives still assume every individual at Guantanamo Bay to be a terrorist. As a result, this National Review editorial calls the legal rulings that found many of the last administration's policies unconstitutional and extended rights to Gitmo detainees "pro-terrorist," and warns that the Obama administration is filled with human rights activists who will force more "pro-terrorist" policy.
The right's reaction to Obama national security policy has been as deranged as everything else the administration has done--they don't actually see the policy here, the degree to which things they defended during the Bush administration are being preserved, for them Obama is a radical secret Muslim terrorist sympathizer and all conclusions flow from this first premise.
In the National Review's editorial "Gitmo By The Lake" that Serwer references, the magazine goes for the alarmist claims that federal judges will release terrorism suspects onto American soil. It goes on and on about "activist" judges who are bent on freeing terrorists and how the Obama Administration is full of "pro-terrorist" sympatheziers. (Not surprising considering the odd demand of some senators wanting a list of all Department of Justice employees with any ties to activist groups or law firms who fought for detainee rights.) The article doesn't offer names or proof or evidence, only fear that some judge somewhere will reinact some third-rate episode of Law & Order and start releasing prisoners on technicalities.
From the National Review Online:
Other judges have been hesitant to hold that their power to review detention rulings implies a power to order detainees released, much less released in the United States, in defiance of statutory proscription.
Once the terrorists are already in the country, though, that hesitancy will vanish. Anyone who doubts that has not been watching the courts’ pro-terrorist decisions over the last eight years, to say nothing of such rulings as the 9th Circuit’s recent directive that California release over 40,000 convicted inmates in order to relieve the supposed overcrowding in the state’s prisons. Indeed, the Obama administration has already floated the idea of releasing Gitmo detainees in the U.S. — and providing public welfare payments to support them — as an example for other countries to follow.
I don't know how to break it to NRO, but terrorists are already in our country and in our prisons, more than 300 of them. And we've tried 195 terrorism suspects and convicted them since 2001 -- here -- in the United States. It's happened. And you know what? Activist judges didn't set them free to roam our streets and eat our young. Right wingers are arguing with a future that has already happened, hunderds of times over. Terrorists are being tried in our courts now, from potential suicide bombers to Somali pirates, yet they're not targeting them for their ire. It is only the mythical Guantanamo detainee who is somehow "different" from all the terrorism suspects we've encountered. And there's no room for rational thought. As Serwer pointed out in his piece, the Bush Administration released hundreds of detainees without charge back to their home countries, without trials. Yet where was the National Review and other right wingers then? Where were all the Republican outbursts? If Gitmo is full of the so-called "worst of the worst" why do we keep releasing people without charge? Why were there so many errors? Why are there at least 116 detainees now slated to be released without trial or charge because our own military has found that no wrong doing was committed?
Where was the outrage?
Keeping Gitmo open at any cost appears to be the only aim for these fairweather critics who suddenly find so much wrong with the Obama Administration, but had nothing to say when the Bush-Cheney Administration was releasing detainees and trying terrorists in our courts. It's just false hysteria. It's just a big dose of "The Crazy," as right wingers use fear and misinformation to try to dupe the public.
This post originally appeared on New Security Action. New Security Action is a new organization dedicated to fighting for a progressive, smart national security policy. We are fighting to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Follow us on twitter at twitter.com/nsaction.