Weigel and Guantanamo

In his questions for the presidential candidates (“America and the World,” Sept. 17, Denver Catholic Register), columnist George Weigel references the Guantanamo detainees. Do the candidates, he asks, agree with the Supreme Court that “foreign terrorists now held abroad have the same constitutional rights as American citizens imprisoned… in the U.S. ?”  I submit the question rests on faulty premises.

First, the court has ruled only that detainees have the right of habeas corpus, not all constitutional rights.

Second, we mustn’t assume every detainee is a terrorist.  The point of habeas is to compel the government to justify a person’s confinement—which it has been essentially unwilling or unable to do for six years. Of the original 775 detainees, two have been convicted. Their lenient sentences suggest they aren’t dangerous.  Four men sent home to Britain were simply set free. Defense Department figures reveal 86 percent of detainees were captured by Afghan or Pakistani forces, at a time when we paid bounties for “suspects.”  One was 13 years old, another 75.

Third, Guantanamo is not “abroad” in a juridical sense.  The U.S. holds it under a perpetual lease.  The prison operates within the military chain of command.  There are indications it was erected to circumvent the courts, i.e., our government wanted free rein to confine people indefinitely. Guantanamo is no more “abroad” than the Canal Zone, where a current presidential candidate was born.  Does his birthplace disqualify him because the Constitution requires the president to be “natural born”?

It troubles me that Weigel ignores this injustice. What about the Gospel injunction to minister to prisoners?

Paul Daw
Boulder