The US government has ruled that many Gitmo detainees are no threat and have been trying to repatriate them but their home countries (which are not always the countries they were taken from) resist. That is stupid and wrong, just like taking them in the first place. But you can't just wish that inconvenient fact away.
I get that this is a nightmarish horrific injustice. But that shouldn't allow us to lose all rationality and start living in a fantasy world. Ordering the US Navy to abandon the facility won't help Gitmo detainees: they're run out of food and water and they'll still be thousands of miles from their families with no way to get home.
>Because those countries generally don't want them back. Or because they don't want to go back.
Then house them at Guantanamo in homes with telephones and the internet, instead of like people who have been accused and convicted of a crime. If we don't want them, why do we hold them incommunicado in a prison?
If government has ruled that detainees are no threat, why are they still treated as if they are, shackled even when alone and watching television? It costs $2MM per year per detainee to keep them in Gitmo. Wouldn't it be much more cost-effective to provide some relocation assistance? I get that repatriation isn't always possible but can it really be true that less than 200 people can't get at least temporary visas somewhere else? That's less than the capacity of a single trans-oceanic flight. It seems silly (and apparently very expensive) to me to perpetuate the farce, and wringing our hands and talking about rationality while letting people rot in prison just because they can't be repatriated without exploring other options seems either equally silly, or not to be the real reason they remain there.
why are they still treated as if they are, shackled even when alone and watching television?
Because the government is stupid and evil and because treating the detainees fairly is politically impossible. Everytime an idiot congressman visits Gitmo and sees humane treatment, he can pitch a fit about how the administration is soft on terror. That helps him politically because most voters hear Gitmo and think 'Osama's best buddies'. That political constraint puts a ceiling on how well the Gitmo detainees can be treated.
This is obviously horribly immoral. That being said, I don't know how to fix that problem.
The real problem here is that most Americans, especially most red-state Americans, believe that Gitmo detainees are dangerous monsters rather than just a bunch of guest workers who were in the wrong place at the wrong time plus a few low-ranking fighters. If you fixed this problem, Gitmo would cease to be an issue because there'd be no political benefit to opposing humane treatment or settlement in the US.
Wouldn't it be much more cost-effective to provide some relocation assistance?
Sure. Where would you relocate them to? I mean, the government has been trying but most countries are not interested in taking these people, even though most of them have done precisely nothing wrong.
without exploring other options
I'd love better options. Can you suggest any?
Seriously, all the options I see suck and are unjust. If you have any suggestions I really, honestly, would love to hear them. But I haven't seen any yet.
The real problem here is that most Americans, especially most red-state Americans, believe that Gitmo detainees are dangerous monsters...
You must live on a coast, if not actually inside the Beltway. I live in a Red State, and no one here gives a shit about terrorism or any other militarist bugaboo anymore (this includes my Fox-News-on-ten-hours-a-day grandparents). There was a poll about bombing Syria; you might have seen it? All the "outrage" we see when completely closing Guantanamo is discussed is fake anyway: shills who have a commercial interest in increasing fear in a USA that is not only safer than it's ever been, but is in the running for the safest nation in recorded history. They need to update the script, though. The defense industry has gone to that same well too many times: nobody believes the bullshit anymore. Perhaps for their purposes it's enough if politicians believe that voters believe the bullshit.
Do you mean have the US Navy take the detainees with them?
If so, then the question is: where? You can't take them into the US because Congress has made that illegal. You can't take them into other countries because those countries won't let you. So where do they go?
Take them to the US anyway, then by the time the Supreme court rules on the matter (and it may go either way) it will be too late - there is putting that genie back.
It is hardly less legal than the spying program or plenty of other things the president has done.
It is the very least the US government can do as a token of reparation for the huge injustice that was/is Guantanamo.
No governor wants to be pegged with "letting a flood of foreign terrorists" settle in their state.
I seem to recall there was a similar issue with Iraqi refugees during the last war. To get that to work you would have to expect far too many people to fall politically on their swords, and then the refugees have an almost impossible time actually assimilating because doubtless they'll be put onto some sort of watchlist as if they were a felon or pedophile, and employers would refuse to hire them, and no one would rent to them, and credit would be impossible to get, etc.
Although I agree we should at least be trying. We seem to have given up as a nation on even accepting the possibility of a productive solution that doesn't just involve having them all die then pretending like it never happened.
The US government has ruled that many Gitmo detainees are no threat and have been trying to repatriate them but their home countries (which are not always the countries they were taken from) resist. That is stupid and wrong, just like taking them in the first place. But you can't just wish that inconvenient fact away.
I get that this is a nightmarish horrific injustice. But that shouldn't allow us to lose all rationality and start living in a fantasy world. Ordering the US Navy to abandon the facility won't help Gitmo detainees: they're run out of food and water and they'll still be thousands of miles from their families with no way to get home.