If only we had gone "black flag" from the start.
"What do you do with the people who are there?"
Op For blog
By Lt Col P
A very good question, when it comes as a riposte to the utterance, "Guantanamo should be closed!"
This is the subject of an interesting article in today's WaPo, my quaint and amusing local paper. Innocuously titled, "U.S. Faces Obstacles To Freeing Detainees," the article points out that many of the Europeans that clamor loudest for the closure of our detention camp also balk at having their nationals and legal residents returned to them. Ha! I bet they do.
I have a very good idea of what we should do with them, but I'll keep it to myself.
Frankly, this is the sort of policy waffling that is making it impossible for the West to form an effective coalition to fight the war. Old Europe wants it both ways: skewer the U.S. for snatching dangerous people and putting them in a nice little place where they can be carefully watched and perhaps interrogated for tidbits of information, but then pull a thanks-but-no-thanks when the U.S. says in effect, "OK, you take them." As the Canadian defense minister pointed out, the same impulse is at work in the NATO force in Afghanistan: France, Germany and Spain can get credit for having large contingents there, but they can also finesse their way out of offensive operations, at a time when we need every trigger-puller we can get out on the line.
And they ask me why I drink. |
