Basic questions
Mary Shepherd
Monday, May 7, 2007
RACHAEL KRUEGER’S well-written op-ed effectively conveyed her concern for the Guantanamo detainees and for the legality of detaining them. She failed, however, to present another aspect of the issue about the detainees.
Another aspect is that she (and we) should want to know answers to the appropriate and classic questions of who, what, where and when? For example, who is Jaumah Al-Dossari besides “a 33 year-old father of a 10-year-old daughter?” Appealing to our emotions because he has a daughter hardly is intelligent grounds for his discharge. Most of us are members of a family, even brutal wife-beaters such as Mr. Mayes, the husband and father described in WAW’s Dec. 1, 1906, editorial (also in today’s Gazette). Who was Al-Dossari with when he was captured? Was he in the company of friends of Americans or of American enemies? Also, what was he doing when he was captured? Was he an innocent bystander or was he participating in actions hostile to Americans? Where was Al-Dossari? These questions are appropriate because we Americans have enemies whose goals in life are to destroy our freedom and us. The last thing we want is to release our enemies so they can continue trying to obliterate us.
We should set our bleeding hearts aside and seek the facts about the detainees. We also need to know that the U.S. Constitution was written for us, “the people of the United States,” not the people of another nation. Then we will know if keeping the detainees at Guantanamo will (as written in the Preamble to the Constitution) “insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”