POLITICS - The Gitmo Scare

"Closing Gitmo: We have nothing to fear but fear-mongering itself" Opinion, Philadelphia Daily News

AS WE THINK of the military personnel who lost their lives for this country, thoughts of war cannot be far behind. We've been thinking of war - not in Iraq or Afghanistan, but in London during the blitz of World War II.

With that city under siege with sustained bombings - the Nazis bombed the city 57 consecutive nights, killing over 20,000 in the city - the British went about their daily business, if not always with calm, then certainly with resolve, and with a commitment to that old-fashioned idea: civil defense. Contrast that image with today's panicked Americans prepping their bomb shelters in the event that a few hundred suspected terrorists are transferred from Guantanamo to maximum-security prisons in the United States. That's the image that Gitmo-mongerers - Democrats and Republicans alike - are embroidering in response to President Obama's request for money to close the detention center. Congress rejected his request for $81 million last week.

If you believe everyone from Dick Cheney to Harry Reid, the detainees - there are 50 approved for transfer, with more whose fates must be determined - all have swine flu and pockets full of anthrax ready to infect our population by mere contact with our atmosphere. And while Reid may have sounded just foolish by claiming that you can't transfer prisoners without releasing them, Cheney has sounded like Rudy Giuliani's more-unbalanced brother by claiming that Obama is compromising the safety of Americans by closing Guantanamo - especially when he doesn't mention that the Bush administration actually released mote than 500 Gitmo detainees.

Guantanamo is not just a prison for suspected terrorists - three of whom have actually been convicted over the last seven years. It's a prison that is keeping American ideals of justice and the rule of law behind bars. Closing this symbol of our compromised ideals is an important action that symbolizes our rejection of all that happened there - including enhanced interrogation and lack of due process. As Obama has pointed out, Guantanamo was more effective as a terrorist recruitment tool than as a prison.

The Obama administration does need to outline a plan for all the detainees, and we'd like to see an accounting of why such an effort has a price tag of $81 million.

But if our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are being fought to preserve and spread the notion of democracy, how can we ask our soldiers to believe in what they're fighting for if we don't believe it ourselves? (And if we don't believe that our own prisons are secure, why have we become the world leader in putting people behind bars?)

In a speech on Guantanamo last week, Obama acknowledged the "extremist ideology that threatens our people." The extremist ideology that worries us is not so much from the Middle East as from Washington.