Cheney and the supporters of keeping Guantanamo open do not want American soil polluted with the presence of these prisoners. For them, it's an emotional response: to them, these are the worst of the worst and it is an insult to allow them onto mainland American soil.

I support Obama in closing Gitmo and bringing these guys to the mainland and locking them away while we figure out what to do with them. But I can also understand the revulsion felt by the protesters: It would be akin to the revulsion we felt with Mahmoud Ahmadenijad (or whatever his name is) and his visit to New York at the invitation of a university to speak and debate. I was irritated that this man who so openly opposes America and advocates a second Holocaust be allowed on our soil. We allowed it to happen, none the less. However, for a large segment of our population, the inmates at Gitmo are forever associated with 9/11 and Al Qaeda, and they will never accept such people being on our homeland again.

Maybe in some cases it's an emotional response, but I don't feel as charitable as you do about all the people saying "Not In My Backyard!" I think in at least some cases it's a calculated response. It's easy for the people raising a fuss to look tough and appeal to their base by saying they don't want any former Gitmo detainees in their state, even though such an argument isn't helpful. Gitmo is such a smear on our national reputation that it needs to be closed, and the dangerous people housed there need to be put somewhere. The politicians who are raising a stink about it know that can't change it, but they think it makes them look macho and principled (instead of selfish) if they raise said stink.

Part of the emotion in the response, I think, is this:

It is somehow much easier to view the terrorists as being of some other species than our own. Even if it means that we irrationally attribute superhuman powers to them, it's still more reassuring than imagining that any ordinary human being on the planet has within themselves all the resources needed to commit terrorism or other heinous acts.

So we cling to the reassuring labels and keep them on "Super Villain Island" rather than contemplate the disturbing possibility that people not so very different from ourselves might do such horrible things.

We need for them to be exotic and different because it scares us too much if they're not.

I wonder. For every actual al Qaeda operative in Gitmo, how many were just unemployed young men angry that we bombed the hell out of their country? You can't lump those two kinds of people into the same catch-all title of terrorist. I mean, obviously you can, because the American people largely do, but that doesn't make it correct.

Honestly, right now, stop what you're doing and write to your state rep and beg them to bring them into your neck of the woods. All of you do it right now.

Done? Great. Now tell me if your democratic reps have enough hair on their balls to take your suggestion.

sigmond:

Honestly, right now, stop what you're doing and write to your state rep and beg them to bring them into your neck of the woods. All of you do it right now.

Done? Great. Now tell me if your democratic reps have enough hair on their balls to take your suggestion.

Actually, this Michigan Democrat suggested that the detainees should be housed in a former state prison in his district, and he's trying to gain support for the idea. And I didn't even have to write to him first.

Your turn. Find me a Republican who's volunteering to take the detainees.

Sorry, I've been bouncing from one overseas post to another for the last seven years. My neck of the woods would do you no good.

But as one of the guys who bombed the hell out of their country, the question is of slightly more than academic interest to me. My point stands; we cannot put everyone we happen to not like under the same catch-all label. It's sloppy, to say the least.