The right wing lobbyist group Move America Forward is kicking off its “keep Gitmo open” campaign tomorrow at the press club:
A Press Conference is scheduled in Washington DC to reveal the ad for the press. We will hear from 9/11 families, Gold star families and others who are united by President Obama‘s order to have Gitmo closed in one year.
It is dangerous and irresponsible to bring terrorists to American soil, place them in a justice system that they frankly do not deserve the advantages of, and put American lives at risk.
Obviously, there are already convicted terrorists imprisoned on American soil. But It’s hard to understand the absolute contempt for the law and American system of justice that this kind of argument reveals. MAF doesn’t actually believe in the presumption of innocence: anyone at Gitmo is automatically guilty regardless of whether they’ve been convicted, and therefore they don’t deserve a fair trial. Imagine this argument taken to its logical conclusion: people who are accused by the American government of doing bad things don’t deserve a fair trial. They’re arguing that heinous nature of a crime is itself justification for indefinite imprisonment without due process.
American prisons hold some truly heinous people: murderers, child molesters, rapists. Why not deny anyone accused of such acts the presumption of innocence as well? Since, in MAF’s view, an accusation is as good as a conviction, what’s the point of having a trial? Why do accused child murders allowed the presumption of innocence if terrorists aren’t? Isn’t what they do just as ugly, if not more so?
It seems impossible to argue that punishing people for being accused of crime is in the interests of justice, and so MAF doesn’t. The appeal is emotional: Families are hurt, the accused are bad guys. There is no interest in justice, only emotional satisfaction through relief or revenge. It doesn’t matter whether the accused are actually guilty. MAF is entirely uninterested in culpability, for them the satisfaction of the aggrieved comes before the rule of law. Think about what a legal system organized under such principles would look like.
I’d also like to believe that MAF thinks they’re standing on some kind of principle here. But the argument for keeping Gitmo open is about as transparent as the argument against the stimulus: Republicans are attacking Obama where they believe him to be vulnerable. The consequences don’t actually matter. But MAF is probably being as misguided here as their allies are in Congress. Obama met with the families of terrorism victims, including those affected by the U.S.S. Cole bombing, not long after dropping the charges against Abd el Rahim al-Nashiri, who is accused of masterminding them. (The administration dropped the charges in order to prevent military commissions from going forward, al-Nashiri has not been released.) According to one report, Obama “left the attendees feeling impressed, if not universally sold on his plans.” Other accounts came to similar conclusions.
— A. Serwer
