If I didn't know better, I'd say that this was the setup to a very special, nationwide episode of Punk'd. Sadly, this is real, and it's every bit as stupid as it sounds. As you may remember, one of President Barack Obama's campaign talking points was that he was going to close the Democrats' Mount Doom, the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp, or in less syllabic form, Gitmo. Of course, closing down the detention camp - in which 245 enemy combatants are currently detained - is one thing, and figuring out what to do with those enemy combatants if they're found not guilty is another. Then again, as Attorney General EricNation of Cowards Holder said, shutting down the safest place to temporarily hold enemy combatants for the time being is not an easy process.
With that background in mind, have the duct tape handy, as your brain might explode. National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair announced that not only would detainees be released into the population, they might be given government money to hopefully start leading lives that don't involve shooting or blowing up Americans overseas - or domestically, for that matter. As he quipped, If we are to release them in the United States
we need some sort of assistance for them to start a new life. ... You can't just put them on the street.
See, it's people like Mr. Blair and Mr. Obama who make me just love government. Government is so awesome, because it never runs out of exciting and new ways to waste the money that its subjects earned. Just think about all the wonderful things that our money can go to. It could help fund pig odor research in Iowa, as the Spendulus Prime money did, or it could help down-on-their-luck former detainees buy ... whatever ex-detainees on welfare would buy. With a choice like that, I hope all my paycheck goes to the valiant scientists trying to unravel the cosmic mysteries of pig manure.
All this just makes me ponder a question that goes one level deeper than we can't just put them on the street: Why does the government feel a responsibility for providing for people who are released from Gitmo? Furthermore, why do they have to be released at all? According to an internal review ordered by the president, Gitmo Bay is in compliance with the terms of the Geneva Conventions; the report did recommend allowing prisoners to have more personal time to socialize, among other things, so it wasn't as if the report was some kind of puff-piece. If it's completely imperative that Gitmo be shut down, wouldn't it make more sense if we let detainees' respective countries of origin handle their disposition - as opposed to just [putting] them on the street? Sounds like that'd be a less expensive option, as well as one that didn't involve paying people to live in a country that they were accused of trying to destroy.
See, I'm still not totally convinced that this isn't the setup for a joke. Maybe this is all a big joke, and my tax dollars aren't going to subsidize the lifestyles of the not-so-rich and infamous. It just seems way too obvious that combining two bad ideas into one über-bad idea - letting people captured on the battlefield roam around on American soil and giving said detainees a regular welfare check - would not result in what is termed by legal experts as a good idea. Then again, it's an old saying that common sense isn't common enough. Especially not in Washington D.C., where it is needed the most.
Jesse Hathaway is a senior studying English. Send him an e-mail at jh309105@ohiou.edu.
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Opinion
Jesse Hathaway
