Hey There, How You Doin’?

Newsflash: over 20% of Gitmo detainees have been cleared of all charges but cannot be released because… no one knows where to send them.

Here’s an idea: since they were taken against their wills by Americans and held in an American institution without reason (as evidenced by the innocent verdict), then it is incumbent upon Americans to find them a safe home…. in America. The irony, of course, is that if these folks didn’t want to blow up Americans before they were kidnapped, they sure do now. Something about reaping what you sow occurs to me now.

Meanwhile, EK Hornbeck sends us this article of conservative writer John O’Sullivan’s take on the need to “hold detainees indefinitely.” This particular phrase leaped out at me:

“The unpalatable truth is that terrorists fighting an indefinite war have to be detained indefinitely. That is the only way to protect ordinary Afghans, U.S. and Canadian troops fighting there, and ultimately our own cities from attack.”

Do you see the problem with this bit? It’s that O’Sullivan, like so many of his ilk, naturally assumes that Afghans fighting in Afghanistan against armed foreign soldiers who have arrived as an invading force are terrorists. Is that really the case?