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Explain to me how this works

Let's say I am a "cop on the beat". I go from call to call, and on occasion I as a police officer am called upon to apprehend and detain someone in the course of daily duties.

When that happens, I take the accused back to the holding cell, where they are processed into the legal system. They might post bond, they might sit overnight but eventually they see a judge, who with the help of their attorney and the District Attorneys office, will determine where the accused will go from here.

So let's say that some well meaning citizenry has complained that the holding cells are incompatible with human rights. In a craven attempt to curry favor with the voting public, the City Council so decrees that the holding cells should be closed and in a blaze of camera flash - it is done!

Ok. Fine. I'm just a cop. I do my job. I get up and go to work the same way I did before this happened, right?

The problem is, what "job" do I do? Should I arrest anyone? If I do, where do I take them? What happens when they go there? You need a place to hold people as they are processed. If you close it, what do you do to the rest of the system? You take away the jail, you take away the process and without the process, there is no "system".

So now the President has "so decreed" that Guantanamo and all the "secret CIA" jails are to be closed, "In the interest of Human Rights".

I think its fine to want to close Guantanamo, but the question is, what do you do with those folks who get captured in the effort of fighting terrorism? If you don't have anywhere to take them, where do they go? If you are not going to capture them and you don't have any facilities for processing them, what do with them?

Here's the 10 billion dollar question:

"If you're a soldier in the field and you have to choose to capture a combatant (for which there are no longer any facilities or systems to hold or process prisoners, and the very act of capturing prisoners which may very well put you personally at risk of legal entanglements) or kill the combatant, which will end the issue outright. So what do you "choose" to do?"

Yeah... Me too.

The funny thing is that this whole "close Guantanamo" thing was done in the interest of protecting human rights, but in reality, something else might just have occurred. You know, the older I get, the more I'm convinced that the "law of unintended consequences" is as absolute as the law of gravity.

Update: I'm gently reminded of this scene from "A Bridge Too Far" for somewhat related reasons:

Posted @ January 22, 2009 09:48 AM | Current Affairs

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