GITMO

Here is the problem I have with GITMO beyond torture and due process, which to me are issues which should trump all others but which I recognize as questions of value (I'm happy to argue them as such, but in another post because I realize that people dig their heels in on such topics).

Here's the simple, practical problem with GITMO: we have been told over and over again that the reason we need to keep prisoners at GITMO is because if we let them go they will just attack them again, ergo closing GITMO would put us in greater danger than we are already in. The problem with that is that thinking is that in opening GITMO, denying due process, and violating every tenant of freedom and justice that we claim to stand for, we have engendered so much hatred that we have created thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of *new* terrorists who hate us and want to destroy us. GITMO has made us less safe, not more: less safe by an exponential factor. If we were to close GITMO today and release everybody there, they would only be a drop in the bucket.

With that in mind the best thing the next president could do with the GITMO detention facility is close it down. Maybe there are a couple of high-profile Al Queda leaders we want to actually put on trial for real, but let the rest of them go. It really won't put us in any more danger, and the good will we would engender from it world wide would be worth so much more. We'd start to regain our status in the world and take away one of the terrorists greatest recruitment tools.