The Fallacious Gitmo Argument
Posted: Tuesday, May 05, 2009
by Terry Mitchell
http://commenterry.blogs.com
Many of those who oppose President Obama's decision to shut down our detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and relocate its inmates to prisons inside the U.S. are using the wrong argument. In fact, it doesn't make any sense. They claim that U.S. citizens would be endangered by such a move, due to the fact that these prisoners might escape and commit acts of terrorism.
Even if some of the accused terrorists were to escape, are we supposed to believe that they would be more dangerous than those hardened criminals? Funny, I don't hear any of the "save our Gitmo" crowd warning of the danger that people like Charles Manson, David Berkowitz, Terry Nichols, Ted Kaczynski, and Dennis Rader might pose at their present penal venues and demanding that they be sent to offshore prisons. How come? Because they are making a fallacious argument and they know it.
It is nothing more than a red herring, a distraction until they can think of a legitimate case to make for their point of view. They just know that shutting down Gitmo is bad, so they have to say something. For now, they are stuck with having to say, "Well, …, um, …, a, …, the terrorist suspects might escape!" Yeah, that's the ticket!
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Top-level comments on this article: (2 total)Terry,I thought the reason for Gitmo was that, as a military detention facility, it is not subject to the same rules of law as our stateside system. The detainees are being treated as captured combatants. If they close Gitmo and run the prisoners through our criminal system, some will go free for lack of evidence or because the rules of criminal law weren't followed. I'm not saying it's right necessarily. Some of them probably should go free. I'm just saying I don't think it's an escape concern as much as an attempt to operate in a military mode rather than a criminal justice mode.SteveSteve, although I don't necessarily agree with it, your argument is a much better one than that of claiming the terrot suspects are an escape threat. Curiously, there are many are who actually hanging their hats on that argument
While researching in your article on taxes on inherited property, I read your commentary on Gitmo, and must say I really thought it was one of the more logical pieces I have read on this awful mess. Thanks and my appreciationJohn, thanks for reading and commenting. I'm glad you liked the article.
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