Terrorists in American Jails?

Foreign terrorists in American jails? How dangerous is that? To listen to the opportunistic right wingers, you’d think American prisons were way too easy to break out of to take a chance incarcerating foreign terrorists in them.

Can someone please explain to them that there are already more than 300 terrorists in American prisons – 200+ foreigners, 100+ domestic terrorists. (Yes, America has produced a few terrorists of its own!) Take a look at the actual facilities in which we would keep them. No one in the world has better super high security prisons than we do. I won’t join those who insult our prison system.

The other big battle cry is that foreign terrorists don’t deserve a fair trial. For starters, we’ve convicted 190+ terrorists already – in our own judicial system. A fair trial is not the same thing as a free pass.

Second, we put these people in prison in Guantanamo because we had some evidence that they had committed a crime. We haven’t proved it yet. Do we somehow have the magical vision that allows us to determine guilt or innocence of foreigners without a trial, to the point that we’re willing to kill people or incarcerate them until they die?

If we have that vision for foreigners, why can’t we just use it domestically, too? Think of the money we could save if we just took a quick look at hearsay evidence and decided to execute the accused based on statements of a snitch who got paid a bounty for turning in that person?

Is that what America has become? Is that the America hundreds of thousands of our sons and daughters died to protect?

One phrase I keep hearing from my right-of-center friends is “slippery slope.” They use it to describe the change President Obama has in mind for policies like health care, rules governing CEOs of businesses that get government bailouts, allowing gays and lesbians to serve in the military and teach in schools, talking with other governments about things we disagree on, and on and on.

Well, this is one slippery slope that seems quite real to me. When we decide to convict anyone without fair trial, we give away one of the most basic freedoms upon which this country was founded. That’s not OK with me.

Just imagine if some other country decided to take that approach with Americans who appear to have committed a crime overseas? If we do it ourselves, that is something we can look forward to. A very slippery slope indeed.

JM