The biggest impediment to moving any Guantanamo detainees to American soil has little to do with the law or the Geneva Conventions or, candidly, national security. It has, instead, everything to do with familiar, mundane (Not In My Back Yard) NIMBY scenarios and old-fashioned, disingenuous politics.
Consider the comments of these three, Exhibit A pandering Congressional pols: Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., and Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb.
· “Well, I don’t think you can convince the American people that you can bring the people from Gitmo to their states, and they will be safe,” declaimed Shelby.
· “I don’t know why it is better to have somebody in a so-called ‘supermax’ facility in, say, Colorado than it is to keep them in Guantanamo,” opined Kyl.
· “I think they need to be kept elsewhere, wherever that is,” prattled Nelson.
Ironically, one of the upsides of leading the world in incarcerations is that along the way, we’ve learned how to build a pretty good “supermax.” That’s where the terrorist likes of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Zacharias Moussaoui are: the Colorado “supermax” lockdown. They’re not going anywhere but to an occasional shower stall. Charlie Manson has a better chance of tying some sheets together and slipping back into the populace than “supermaxed” terrorists have of escaping.
Not only is the “supermax” super safe, it is the anti-Gitmo, which is critically important. In other words, it won’t be an ongoing source of jihadi pep rallies and a geopolitical nightmare for the U.S. And it won’t be a reminder to the rest of the world that America still occupies a sliver of the sovereign island of Cuba, which can’t be helpful.
The three NIMBY senators know it, but would rather pander to their constituents’ unfounded fears. And let’s not forget who set the alarmist predicate on this one: former Vice President Dick Cheney. “To bring the worst of the worst terrorists inside the United States would be cause for great danger and regret in the years to come,” apocalyptically warned the erstwhile Darth Veeper.