You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney. You have the right to blow up American airplanes.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be-bomber of an American airplane on Christmas Day, is being treated like he held up a candy store. As Charles Krauthammer said so well in his recent column, this is nuts!
I agree with Krauthammer that Abdulmutallab should be in military custody. He should be treated as an enemy combatant and he should be detained and interrogated by the U.S. military in Guantanamo.
The Obama administration should leave the Guantanamo prison open for business as long as al-Qaeda is in business.
“This is a fanatical religious sect dedicated to establishing the most oppressive medieval theocracy,” Krauthammer writes in his column. “And therefore committed to unending war with America not just because it is infidel but because it represents modernity with its individual liberty, social equality (especially for woman) and profound tolerance (religious, sexual, philosophical). You going to change that by evacuating Guantanamo?”
Of course not.
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I’m puzzled by the reasoning in the conclusion of this post. Your position seems to be that the fanaticism of Al Qaeda will not be stopped by closing Guantanamo. Does that mean that the fanaticism WILL be stopped by maintaining Guantanamo? If that’s the case, how do you account for the fact that Al Qaeda continues to exist after eight years of a fully functional Guantanamo?
Let me put it another way: I agree that AQ will continue to be around with or without Guantanamo, I just don’t understand how that fact makes the place important to keep. There are plenty of hard-headed reasons to close the prison – it’s expensive, it’s a public relations disaster, it’s a legal mess.
Besides, no serious person really believes that closing the prison will make the enemy lay down their arms; mostly the idea is that it’s the just thing to do. Perhaps you disagree, and think it is unjust to close the prison. But that would be a different kind of argument from the one that you are making.
So what you are saying is that America should be more like Iran?