Why not hold terrorists right here in Ga.?
Now here’s the point that perplexes me. Members of Congress are acting as if Gitmo detainees are some evil combination of Chuck Norris and Harry Houdini, likely to escape into the countryside and wreak havoc. According to them, Americans are terrified to have Gitmo inmates imprisoned anywhere near them.
“Communities are going to be upset about this,” Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky warned Gates. “This is a very important issue and it deals with public safety, as we all know. We haven’t been attacked against since 9/11. We like that, and we’d like for that record to continue.”
Gates said he understood.
“I fully expect to have 535 pieces of legislation before this is over saying ‘not in my district, not in my state,’” he told McConnell. “We’ll just have to deal with that when the time comes.”
Gates wasn’t kidding. As of last week, 14 resolutions had been introduced in the House seeking to bar detainees from being held in a dozen states, including Colorado, home of the federal “supermax” prison.
The Senate is on record as well, voting 94-3 in 2007 to oppose bringing Gitmo inmates here because of the danger they supposedly pose to national security.
“It is safer for American citizens if captured members of al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations are not housed on American soil where they could more easily carry out their mission to kill innocent civilians,” the resolution said.
Two of the three “nay” votes came from Vermont senators, suggesting the Green Mountain State hasn’t entirely lost the spirit of Ethan Allen. But to hear Congress, the rest of the country has gone soft.
Personally, I have a hard time believing that we have really come to this, that Americans are truly terrified as easily as some of our leaders claim to believe. Do we really fear that our enemies are some sort of terrorist supermen who cannot be safely held in federal high-security prisons?
Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, home of both a federal penitentiary and a high-security military prison at Fort Leavenworth, claims to think so.
“Please not at Leavenworth,” Brownback told Gates at the hearing. “This is a hot topic in my state.”
Now, I’ve been to Fort Leavenworth, and I expect Brownback has as well. The idea that Gitmo detainees could escape from there is frankly implausible. Furthermore, I’d wager that every federal and state high-security prison in the country holds inmates who are much more dangerous to public safety than the Gitmo detainees. For starters, I’d name Brian Nichols, the man who killed four people while in custody at the Fulton County Courthouse.
In fact, I’d bet that if released into the general American prison population, most of the “fearsome” Gitmo detainees wouldn’t last the day.
But even here in Georgia, our leaders act as if we’re shaking in our boots. U.S. Rep. Phil Gingrey, Republican from Marietta, has sponsored a resolution adding Georgia to the list of states terrified of Gitmo prisoners. The legislation, HR 817, is co-sponsored by the six other members of our Republican delegation.
“No question —- it’s a ‘not-in-my-backyard’ resolution,” Gingrey told me. “We do fear that even with lots of guards and parapets and razor wire at our prisons, these guys are SO bad —- remember Daniel Pearl and David Berg —- what in the world would they do if they somehow got out?”
The better option, he said, is to keep the prisoners at Gitmo, where escape would be impossible.
Personally, I’d be tickled pink if Osama bin Laden himself were imprisoned right up the street at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, just 3.1 miles from my home, according to Google. Throw them all in there —- Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the whole bunch of them. If you’ve seen the place, you know they wouldn’t be going anywhere they weren’t supposed to be going.
But the problem is, there’s too much political gain to be had by telling the American people they ought to be scared, very scared, by the mere presence of such men on American soil.
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