A Modest Gitmo Send-off

Repatriating Guantanamo detainees remains a troubling predicament on many levels. The expense of closing down their current home and finding a new one on the continental United States is prohibitive. It is also politically radioactive, as even the most liberal, tolerant, kindly disposed, and forgiving souls do not want detainees in their communities, prison bars not being enough of a separator. Sending them to their country of origin or declared affiliation is compounded by two difficulties. First, many nations have proven much more disposed to criticize the Guantanamo operation than to assist in dismantling it. They don't want these detainees on their turf, either. Second, we have a nagging fear that sending these people to certain countries may only speed their return to declared and undeclared battlefields where they may be more inclined than ever to spill American blood. What to do?

Take a lesson from American Street Cop 101. Transfer these people to a U.S. embassy or consulate in a Middle Eastern country likely to have spawned them. Clean them up, feed and water them to the point of satiety or languor, take a picture with a U.S. military officer shaking hands and smiling broadly. Then walk them out the gate, hand them some American greenbacks, and be heard thanking them in English and in their own language for "all your help." Wave goodbye and shut the gate.

The innocuous among these liberated detainees will be staggered but will amble off and set themselves to picking up the pieces of their lives. They will move on. The haters and hooligans will seek out their like-minded compatriots to return to the struggle. Only their reputations will have been indelibly changed. Word will travel that they are in the employ of the Americans. Who will trust them?

The more professional of the cutthroat classes so treated will size up the situation and ask for a deal. They will quickly calculate that sudden release with the trappings of being in good graces with the Americans marks them for, shall we say, negative scrutiny among their former colleagues. It should be just like a crook arrested by police only to be returned to the street a couple of hours later with money in his pocket and a fond pat on the back by a plainclothes detective everyone in the neighborhood recognizes as a cop. The crook may have kept silent and refused to rat out his buddies. But he knows no one will trust him 100% after this little bit of street theater.

- Nick Catrantzos