Thanks for this piece on Guantanamo.
Here is an argument on the other side. "Ranting Professors."
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WHO KNEW THE RED CROSS HAD SUCH A PITHY SENSE OF HUMOR? Everywhere you looked today there was coverage of the International Red Cross's complaints about the US continued detention of Al Queda and Taliban detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The problem with this is two-fold. First, the complaint centers on the fact that since they are to be held until the cessation of hostilities, their detention is open-ended. The Red Cross is using this as yet another opportunity to complain that the detainees have still not been given lawyers or been charged.
Every single time this comes up the media simply repeats the complaint without question, argument, or dispute. They have not been charged or given lawyers because they are not in the criminal justice system, their detention isn't punitive, anymore then was the detention of German prisoners during World War II. They are being held because if they were released, they'd jump back in the game and try and kill more Americans. But wait, you ask, if that's the case, why the reluctance to call them "prisoners of war"?
I'm no lawyer, but in purely practical terms they are being treated as prisoners of war. To call them prisoners of war, however, grants them a legitimacy that is simply unthinkable, for it concedes that their vision of what war is -- the targeting of non-combatants, the elimination of a brightline between combatants and non-combatants that has existed for thousands of years -- is fine by us. It would mean that we would be giving to people worthy only of the label "killers" the honor of being called "soldier." That cannot happen.
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