Law Students

No April Fools Here: This is the Last Month of Classes for Me!

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One thing I won?t miss is the herd mentality at Santa Clara when it comes to liberal causes. Several times a semester, it seems like everyone is wearing a different colored ribbon signifying the new cause célèbre of the week. Today, everyone was wearing an orange colored band on their arm like we were going to have a school wide paint ball competition or something. Why? It was Amnesty International ?Close Guantanamo? Day. Whatever.

I?ve never understood why Guantanamo Bay has become a symbol for all that is wrong in America. Gitmo is home to the worst of the worst prisoners scooped up by coalition forces in the war on terror, including 6 prisoners charged with key roles in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I wrote about this 3 years ago when Amnesty International stupidly equated Gitmo with the Gulag. I noted that no one has died in Gitmo, and the ?[p]risoners are allowed to grow beards, are given Korans, prayer beads, meals that are consistent with Islamic law, an Islamic law, an Islamic military chaplain assigned to minister the prisoners??

Looking at Amnesty Int?l?s vapid web page on the subject, their biggest gripe seems to be that Gitmo prisoners are denied trials. Some background info (from Wiki): Since the beginning of the war in Afghanistan, 775 detainees have been brought to Gitmo and 420 of which have been released. Of the remaining 355, a quarter of them have been released but their host countries won?t accept them.

These prisoners do receive hearings (which is why so many have been released), and Navy JAGs play a critical role in facilitating these hearings and making sure prisoner consistent with the Military Commissions Act/ Detainee Treatment Act as well as investigating alleged prisoner abuses. Since the Hamdan case, it?s still unclear what the Constitutional requirements of these hearings are, and critics of Gitmo accuse the new hearings of being a sham.

I can understand why people would be upset if we were holding people indefinitely without a trial, but that?s not what we?re doing. Most of the people we send there are released, and the deficiencies of the legal process for the detainees is getting freaking Supreme Court review and the constitutional requirements for these hearings are increasing, though it is of course it is a slow, imperfect process.

So I understand why people aren?t thrilled with everything that happens at Gitmo, but I really don?t understand why the suspected terrorists being held there get there own arm band and gets to be the cause of week. I could spend 500 words listing the causes NOT represented at school, including a failure to have any arm bands and signs for victims of terrorism. The students, professors and staff wearing the Orange arm bands today were not merely arguing to just increase due process rights for enemy combatants but to in fact shut down the prison and release the enemy combatants all together. The solidarity of wearing arm bands and waving signs in support of suspected terrorists is actually kind of disturbing and the kind of brain washed, knee jerk anti-Americanism that I won?t miss any time soon.

P.S.:

(And to anticipate comments: I know those wearing the orange arm bands would say that supporting legal rights for detainees is inherently American. I agree. Remember though that this is a campaign to abolish holding suspected terrorists ALLTOGETHER, not just an increase of legal rights in their holding places. Look again at the Amnesty Int?l site and blog; it?s dedicated to the destruction of Gitmo, not its improvement of legal sufficiency. Why don't the liberal groups on campus ever advocate for the destruction of terrorism, racial preferences, government hand outs or any other evil thing? Advocating that America does not have a right to even (potentially) constitutionally hold those who would destroy Her, is, I would argue, Anti-American.)

Full post as published by SoapBox Law on April 02, 2008 (boomark / email).