Close Guantanamo?

With the approaching inauguration of President-Elect Obama there is increasing talk of closing Guantanamo Bay. As a military mom, nothing riles me more than that topic. So Guantanamo is closed, what then? Do we simply let the detainees go or do we bring them back to the U.S. for “trial?”

Men who were captured on the battlefield probably didn’t get their Miranda rights read to them, which means in a U.S. criminal trial, they win. They probably didn’t have access to high powered attorneys during their stay at Guantanamo, so I guess that means, they win again. The media would be falling all over themselves playing the angle of the poor detainees who were denied "their rights” and suffered greatly under the Bush Administration. There would be an outpouring of sympathy for the enemy. Day in and day out, the media would bring the plight of the detainees before us and make us feel guilty for their "mistreatment."

To most of us that sounds ridiculous but I bet that’s exactly how it would play out. How could anyone in their right mind possibly consider bringing some of America’s worst enemy combatants, those who have murdered our servicemen, to the U.S. for a criminal trial? If we bring them here and are unsuccessful at prosecuting them, would that mean we held them illegally for the past 5 years? Do we then become liable to compensate them for the "injustice" they suffered at our hands? Sounds absurd? No not really.

Maybe we should just send them home. But what happens then? They are free to pick up arms and resume their calling, to kill the infidel and in case we have forgotten, that's us, that's our soldiers, that's our families. We must be insane if we think the bad guys will go home and suddenly feel remorse and grow a conscience. Or perhaps we’ll think they learned their lesson and will be nice to us now.

I take granting any kind of lenience to these men as a direct a assault against all America's service men and women and their families. Do we have so little understanding of all they have done and all they have endured, that we would side with the enemy and disregard and soldier?

Only those who are the very worst enemies of the U.S. still remain at Guantanamo. We sure don’t need to be extending them American rights, and we most certainly don’t need our own government replenishing the battlefield with ruthless killers. Maybe some decisions just shouldn’t be made by politicians. But this is just one mom's opinion.