Closing Guantanamo

TW: Have quoted Mr. Calabresi previously, I typically do not care for him. This entry is interesting in that he advocates something I would agree with, closing Guantanamo, but with a much different twist. Given that even folks like Calabresi are advocating the closure one can safely assume it will be closed much sooner rather than later.

Calabresi's stance is basically that while creating a Gulag maybe constitutional and a Gulag was initially needed post 9/11, the Gulag's usefullness has run out hence it should be closed. There in rests the rub, personally I believe our Constitution is sufficiently robust to exclude the creation of Gulags and furthermore creating Gulags were, are and shall ever more (lets hope) be unneccessary. Mr. Calabresi and his ilk within the Bush Administration certainly felt otherwise. He truly seems non-pulsed by the notion of an American Gulag merely realistic that cost in lost reputation to the US internationally outweighs the benefits. He acknowledges in his last sentence that compromising the rule of law violates our own principles yet earlier attempts to argue that Guantanamo was needed. Outrageous.

From Calabresi:
"Obama should announce the immediate closing of Guantanamo in his inaugural address. The base there made sense as a brief holding pen in the early days of the War on Terror and the war in Afghanistan, but it has long since outlived its usefulness. We cannot win the War on Terror without winning the battle for global public opinion just as we could not have won the Cold War without winning the battle for global public opinion. Terrorists who have committed crimes should be detained and tried in the same way that other violent criminals are detained and tried. That means moving them to the mainland United States and holding them in a very secure federal prison possibly in solitary confinement. Our federal trial courts are conviction machines, and there is no need for a separate prison or system of military commissions to try terrorists for crimes.
The Bush Administration has argued rightly that the War on Terror is a war and not just a law enforcement problem. I agree with that. Prisoners of war can be detained without trial until the war in question ends. The problem is that the War on Terror could easily go on for thirty years, unlike World War II, and it is unfair, unjust, and frankly un-American to detain prisoners for that long without a trial. It is also unnecessary. Federal trial courts can handle these cases perfectly well with some accommodation for the use of classified evidence. It has been seven years since 9/11. Detention of prisoners of war is justifiable for maybe five years but not indefinitely. It is time to try these folks and then to punish those who are found to be guilty. The Bush Administration believed war crimes should be punished by military tribunals as was done when the Nuremburg Trials punished leading Nazis. The problem with that is that it means setting up a dual system of justice: one with civil liberties for Americans who commit crimes and a second class system of justice where the rules are sharply different for terrorists. This approach may or may not be constitutional, but it is certainly unwise. We cannot and will not win the battle for global opinion in the War on Terror if we are seen as suspending the rule of law and offering a second class system of justice to terrorists who we have caught. Such a second class system of justice would be called a Gulag, and its existence would do far more harm to our ability to win the War on Terror than would the acquittal of a few detained terrorists by American courts. One of the principles America stands for in the War on Terror is a belief in the Rule of Law. We compromise that belief whenever we suspend the Rule of Law as to suspected terrorists by using different rules and procedures as to them from the ones we use as to American criminals. "
http://www.politico.com/arena/perm/Steven_G__Calabresi_BF137191-6650-482A-AD30-15694927673E.html