The US has been fighting two wars---the 'war against terror' and the ancient 'war on drugs' ---forever, with no end in sight for each. Each of these has accumulated hundreds of thousands of casualties---deaths, maiming, shattered lives, and an endless supply of forever prisoners, languishing in Guantanamo and in prisons all over the US.
Here's an immodest proposal to deal with the prisoner problem: free them. No wait, I'm semi-serious here. Just because I flashed on this solution during a recent visit with my old friend insomnia doesn't mean it is totally crazy. In fact I think it could be a 'win-win' both for Obama, (assuming he wants to deal with these problems, an assumption not backed by available evidence).
If Obama simply used his presidential power to send all Guantanamo prisoners back to their home countries and used his presidential pardon power to commute the sentences of all federal non-violent drug offenders, the firestorm of publicity and controversy which would explode over the latter would provide cover for the former. The Guantanamo release would scarcely be noticed while the public would have a useful discussion about drug laws. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of federal prisoners would be allowed to return home to their families and rebuild what remains of their lives.
Both releases would put a stop to the continuing injustice of holding these people. Most of the Guantanamo prisoners have already been cleared for release, and only cowardice keeps them locked up in inhuman conditions. They have been cleared because there was no reason to have captured and imprisoned them in the first place. They are not being released because the US does not want to send them back to their home countries, Yemen in particular. Why? Because there are active terrorist groups there and the thinking must be that the newly released prisoners would quickly join these groups. The fact that keeping them as forever prisoners helps recruit plenty of terrorist wanna-be's doesn't seem to figure in this reasoning, but it should. The impact of having a few dozen released prisoners joining terrorist groups in their home countries will be negligible when balanced against the numbers of new recruits motivated by their endless imprisonment.
Meanwhile, everyone in the US would be focused on the release of the federal drug prisoners. They too are captives of a stupid endless war, serving amped up sentences required by laws cooked up to win elections. It will also help resolve the simmering problem caused by state legalization of marijuana, something still in violation of federal law by setting the stage for Obama to call on Congress to change the federal laws which currently forbid this; to instruct the FDA & DEA to pay attention to the scientific evidence and reconsider delisting marijuana as a schedule 1 drug; and to order his justice department to halt all marijuana prosecutions until Congress changes the law.
So, the scales of justice rebalanced, lives restored, harms reduced. Aside from this plan being impossible, what's wrong with it?
(Cross-posted at Possible Experience)