Roll Out the Welcome Mat!!!

The Passing Scene Cafe would personally like to welcome the detainees from the military prison facility at Guantanamo Bay to the Thompson Correctional Center, located in northwestern Illinois.

The northwestern part of the state of Illinois happens to be solidly Republican, which confirms a suspicion I have had about the wingnuts on the political Left who have agitated for the closure of the facility at Guantanamo Bay and the transfer of its detainees to United States soil: Liberals really wanted the detainees to be transferred to "red" states and/or precincts. They had no interest at all in the detainees being held in, say, Madison, San Francisco, Boston, or the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. This seems to jibe well with their "I really want all these nice things but I don't want to bear the cost or foot the bill---I want YOU to do it!" mentality.

Detainees Coming to Illinois

Jennifer Rubin - 12.15.2009 - 8:45 AM

Apparently, the Obami have not turned a new leaf after all. No, they’re still playing to the netroot crowd and treating the war on terror as if it were about something other than the security of Americans and the defeat of murderous foes. As leaked documents over the weekend indicated, the administration wants to acquire and upgrade the Thomson Correctional Center, located 150 miles northwest of Chicago, and transfer Guantanamo detainees there. They’ll have to spend hundreds of millions to duplicate the secure facility and accommodations already in place in Guantanamo. And — this is key — Congress will have to vote to allow detainees to be housed there. Republicans, especially Rep. Mark Kirk, who is running for the Senate, is raising the red flag, saying it’s an unnecessary risk.

But, as others have pointed out, the Democrats’ delight over the spending spree needed to upgrade the facility is oddly misplaced:

This exorbitant “injection” of funds would be necessary because TCC is not ready to accommodate international jihadists, who are prone to riot, savagely attack their custodians, attempt escape, and plot terror attacks while in U.S. prisons. The jail would have to be hardened before it could become the new Gitmo. So even if financial considerations were the first-order priority here — and they should not be — the administration’s plan would be inexcusably wasteful. Gitmo has already been hardened, at a cost of tens of millions of taxpayer dollars. It is now a state-of-the-art, Geneva Conventions-compliant detention center. It makes no sense to sink those expenditures down a black hole, spending another fortune on a project that won’t generate sustainable growth. Illinois found that out when it built TCC in the first place.

And we risk more than that. Federal court judges will gain jurisdiction over the detainees and will be empowered to release them and/or entertain their claims to enjoy the full array of privileges enjoyed by ordinary prisoners. When you add in the risk that detainees will commit acts of violence, spread jihadist propaganda, and create targets for other terrorists, one has to wonder, once again, why?

The answer, or a partial answer, comes from a noxious speech on human rights given yesterday by Hillary Clinton. In the eyes of the Obami, you see, we’re human-rights violators and miscreants and must atone for our sins by putting our own citizens at risk and tying our hands in extracting information that might in the future save lives. In detailing the four elements of the Obami’s human-rights approach, No. 1 on the list was this:

First, a commitment to human rights starts with universal standards and with holding everyone accountable to those standards, including ourselves. On his second full day in office, President Obama issued an executive order prohibiting the use of torture or official cruelty by any U.S. official and ordered the closure of Guantanamo Bay. …

We know that all governments and all leaders sometimes fall short. So there have to be internal mechanisms of accountability when rights are violated. Often the toughest test for governments, which is essential to the protection of human rights, is absorbing and accepting criticism. And here too, we should lead by example. In the last six decades we have done this – imperfectly at times but with significant outcomes – from making amends for the internment of our own Japanese American citizens in World War II, to establishing legal recourse for victims of discrimination in the Jim Crow South, to passing hate crimes legislation to include attacks against gays and lesbians. When injustice anywhere is ignored, justice everywhere is denied. Acknowledging and remedying mistakes does not make us weaker, it reaffirms the strength of our principles and institutions.

We’re now in the game of hobbling ourselves and, indeed, putting ourselves in greater peril. The Obami, in all their sanctimonious glory, will rise above the mundane concerns for safety and security and throw overboard our own judicial history and precedents. This is nothing more than an exercise in moral preening. We’ll impress our European friends and the academic Left. For the enemy is us. And the Obami are on the case.

Congress need not buy into this insanity. It has the power of the purse and should put an end to the Obama team’s misguided and dangerous gambits. If not, there are elections next year, and the voters can make their voices heard.