Guantanamo and Liberals

As a political dork, I've become addicted to the banter of Slate's weekly gabfest podcast.

However, the usually on-point Jacob Weisberg disappointed me last week by throwing his hands up in the air in a very DC pundit way by stating that, because Democrats and liberals have no substantive anti-terror policies of their own, we just need to accept the Bush administration's radical actions as the inevitable reality of American life for the foreseeable future. He added that liberals have only complaints to offer, and no better way.

My biggest beef with this-- beside the a) defeatist attitude of letting Bush do what he wants, and b) the refusal to acknowledge the political reality of public support for Democratic positions that the moderator kept trying to point out-- is how backwards he actually has it.

Liberals' complaints about Guantanamo Bay is that President Bush has no policies or ideas for the prison... and we dirty liberals are the ones fighting for a coherent policy. The White House position on Guantanamo has always been 'these people are evildoers, we're going to keep them forever without trials, and you're unpatriotic for asking us about this'. If the indefinite detention of hundreds and hundreds of people, some potentially innocent, with no trials or greater benefit is a serious policy, then I'm the king of England.

There's never been any differentiation between the few serious terrorist leaders we've caught and the people we swept up randomly or by accident or the random people Afghanis sold to us for the rewards. The President has never been able to point to any actionable intelligence gained by the torture of prisoners at the prison (or elsewhere either, to expand the point). Many prisoners have been sent home with no explanation by our government of why they were there in the first place. All attempts to move toward a serious criminal/military trial system for the prisoners so we can begin processing them and move on have been rebuffed. Etc etc.

Is that what people like Mr. Weisberg and other 'serious' liberals consider good U.S. policy?

Gitmo critics have always been clear that those in the prison need to be processed properly. They should be put on trial (a real trial-- in a military court, or otherwise) or released.

If the administration has no evidence whatsoever that these people were/are terrorists, then they should be sent home or to another country which will take them. And if the government has evidence that all these prisoners were serious terrorists, then they will have zero problem whatsoever prosecuting a successful guilty sentence for them in an honest court, after which they will be moved to the Supermax, the Hague, or elsewhere to serve their sentences.

These are not crazy suggestions. They are, in fact, Mr. Weisberg, coherent policy proposals.

[PS- As for the wiretapping issue? Get the goddamn warrants. Don't trust Bush and Gonzales with the Constitution. Restore oversight to the law(s). It's not that complicated.]