Simple Solutions: Gitmo
I’m back again to solve the world’s problems in my inimitable style. What do we do with the Gitmo detainees if we can’t keep them in Gitmo anymore? Set them free? Send them home? Let them loose inside America?
We do this. Each one gets a pacemaker. If it doesn’t receive a certain coded signal at an irregular interval, it zaps the heart. If it does receive a different coded signal, it zaps the heart. If it contacts gaseous oxygen or nitrogen, it zaps the heart. If it is electrically disrupted, it explodes and/or releases a toxin into the tissues. It has a battery life of six months, and can only be recharged in a particular way, or it zaps the heart. If the battery dies, something nasty happens. You get the idea. This pacemaker constantly transmits a GPS signal that can be read by satellite and the local cell tower system. The GPS coordinates can be read off the internet.
Having installed these pacemakers, the detainees are released into the general population of the United States.
A reward is to be paid to anyone turning in one of these pacemakers to their local law enforcement agency, no questions asked.
Problem solved.
May 27th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
You forgot Jon Stewart’s solution: move them to conventional prisons and give them fair trials. Just how is that too simplistic?
May 27th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
I’m not positive we have jurisdiction. We caught them on the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan. It could be argued that no civilian US court has the authority to pass judgment. Military tribunals seem to be out of fashion. It’s too late for summary execution. I seem to recall that the rules of evidence would effectively give away top secret information, rendering it difficult to impossible to catch the next bad guys.
Assume we did give them trials. Some get convicted and get locked in a room with no windows for the rest of their lives. Others get set free. And we’re back to the same problem. Some of them, we know are too dangerous to leave running around, but we couldn’t get a conviction, either because we can’t produce evidence without endangering more than the value of the conviction, or because the jury just plain won’t convict due to their own political beliefs, or because the prosecutor’s an idiot, or the case gets thrown out on a civil rights basis, or whatever. What do we do with those guys?
Answer: explosive pacemakers.
(Side note: you must realize I’m not being entirely serious, right?)
May 29th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Well, I’d think that trials could be finagled so that secrets are disclosed only to people with proper clearance. Of course, since that’s a set of sticky wickets, I might still complain if that’s actually done.
As for being “back to the same problem,” might I point out that it will be greatly reduced in size? And the people who get out won’t necessarily be dangerous, especially if we placate them with a proper trial. (Are you assuming everyone at Guantanamo was supposed to be there?)
To address the not-being-serious part: sure. But some rhetorical questions (okay, yours wasn’t in question form, but work with me) are a little like prisoners being held without trials. It’s not really that we couldn’t deliver a verdict, but that we’re not comfortable with either potential outcome.
And since there’s no chance we’ll actually implement your solution, here’s how it can be exploited: A gang of surgeons follows the GPS coordinates and abducts one or more ex-GBs. They anesthetize them and operate in an argon-filled balloon to remove the pacemakers. Then the abductees are patched up and dropped off.
Or, more simply, the former prisoners could be shot and have their hearts ripped out. Neither of these is a pretty picture.
May 29th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Actually, the prisoners being tracked down and murdered by random citizens who suffer no legal consequences was considered a perk, not a flaw.
But seriously, I consider the Gitmo detainees to be prisoners of war. My understanding is that you don’t let POWs go until the war is over. You’re not inserting them into the legal system; you’re keeping them out of the way and relatively harmless until the war effort allows you time to deal with them. And I don’t think the war’s over yet.
May 30th, 2009 at 1:51 am
Okay, that makes a little more sense. So President Obama put himself in a bind by promising to disband Guantanamo without saying something about ending the war. (Or maybe he did say something, I dunno.) (Also, how else are wars ended besides one side winning and the other side losing?)
Also, in response to your joking comment about promoting widespread murder, my reaction is to be comically aghast and berate you until you are sincerely embarrassed about the original comment.