Absinthe & Cookies (a bit bitter, a bit sweet)

If we bring those people to the US and let them go a lot of people will die.

Let me get this straight:

I write a comprehensive, coherent follow-up with multiple sources, addressing one of your specific questions from the last post directly, fairly, and thoroughly, and what I get back from you is, "If we bring those people to the US and let them go a lot of people will die?"

And that's going to happen because . . . ?

And I said that's exactly what we should do, um, where . . . ?

See, because I keep reading this comment, and I keep thinking one of us needs to put down the pipe. And I'm thinking, I'm thinking it's not me who needs to do that.

Because your comment made no sense whatsoever.

If they are allowed to stay in the US it will become common knowledge in China that getting across the border to Afghanistan and being picked up as a suspected terrorist is a ticket to the US. If you want an idea of how many Chinese will try to make the trek to the Afghan border think about how many Cubans try to get to the US every year and multiply by 100 (that's how many more people live in China than Cuba). The Chinese will respond by stepping up patrols of the border area and will capture most of those who are trying to escape. They will be killed on the spot or sent to the Chinese GULAG where they will be worked to death on a starvation diet. Or they will make it across to Afghanistan where the Afghan authorities will pick them up and send them back to China (see the bit about the GULAG). Or maybe they'll die of starvation or dehydration on the trip like some Mexicans do trying to get into the US. Or maybe they'll find an American patrol and get shot because they do too good a job of trying to look like terrorists.

Of course the Chinese may pull a Castro on us and empty out their maximum security prisons and insane asylums and cattle prod them to the border.

But hey, what's the difference as long as we can do the "compassionate" thing and feel good about ourselves. Consequences come in the future, that warm glow of self-righteousness is something we can feel right now.

BTY, it will do no good to say that these will be let in to the US and no other. People the world over are used to governments saying one thing and doing another. People will read our deeds, not our words. The fact is that the publicity that this is getting might just have a lot of folks in China thinking that Gitmo is better than were they are. We might wind up having to give them back just to prove that the Afghan border isn’t the magic portal to freedom.

Now I have to go. I scored some primo rocks earlier and I want to get high while I watch the House rerun.

Oh, and if you don't want them to stay at Camp X-Ray and you don't want to send them back to China and no other country in the world will take them, just what do you want to do with them? Every physical object, even a person, has to BE somewhere. Where do you want them to BE?

I dunno, Daniel. Cuba is a whole lot closer to the US than the western border of China is. There are a lot of easier ways to get into the US than through the western border of China, which goes through some rather difficult terrain, is the the middle of the world's largest landmass, is on the other side of the world from America, and so on. All Cubans have to do is float across 90 miles of tropical water and they're in Key West.

As for what we should do with the two Uyghur fellows, I say we send them to Daniel's house. He can keep an eye on those boys, make sure they don't get into trouble, etc. It's okay, we trust you Daniel.

For the record re: what I want to do--well, if this dots all the legal i's and crosses all the legal t's:

The proper response, given the courts' appropriate deference to the political branches here, would be for Congress to pass and the President to sign a private bill granting these two at least temporary conditional residency in the US. It's not common but nor is it hardly unheard-of.

--from the last post, by a commenter named "Dave J." Thank you, Dave J.! Voice of reason that thou art.

Failing that, ideally some other country would agree to grant them asylum. Then again, maybe that's not ideal. Maybe that's just making someone else clean up our mess, because we're the ones who picked them up in the first place.

I don't pretend to have a quick fail-safe solution on this, at all. I just wasn't seeing where we were going from two innocent locked-up guys to "a lot of people would die."

And I do think Andrea's right that there have to be easier ways out of China than that. Sheesh.

If we show the Chinese people that crossing the Afghan border will get them a trip to the US (on a nice warm US Air Force plane, much more comfortable than a leaky boat) more will try. It will not matter even a microscopic amount if the law says "those two and no more" all some persecuted minority in China will see is that it is possible to turn detention by the US military in Afghanistan into a life in freedom in the US and more will try.

If you want them in the US then grease two terrorists in Iraq who are about the same size as the two in Gitmo. Then claim that the innocent two committed suicide. Ship their effects (but not the bodies) back to China and put the real guys in the witness protection program after telling them that if word of who they really are gets out that they'll be sent back.

The chance that the Chinese government would allow the story to get out and about in China in the first place is negligible. These are persecuted provincial minorities - not tech savvy urban students. It's not like they're going to be reading about the story online and it will never see print in the state newspapers.

For those tech savvy urban students who may know about this story...well, they most definitely have easier ways to get to the US than to cross mountains, impersonate terrorists and spend a few years in prison.

"The chance that the Chinese government would allow the story to get out and about in China in the first place is negligible."

Do you not realise that even the smallest Chinese farming village has internet connections? Do you not realise that even the smallest Chinese farming village has children away at school, in the military, working in the larger cities. The communication between families in the rural areas and their city kin is constant. That is how people in the cities get fresh produce and how people in the country get electronic gizmos like computers.

This does not even take in to account the fact that short wave radios are common in the rural areas and there are plenty of Chinese expat groups who will be only too glad to trumpet the information.

The days when even the most totalliarian government could keep the lid on information are long over.

Ilyka, I'm glad you're here. You're covering my guest-blogging slack AND giving me interesting info to read (like what habeas corpus really means)! ;-)