If you were a Uighur independence militant from Xinjiang province, wouldn't you rather be in Bermuda, or even mid-Pacific Palau, than in the Guantanamo Bay prison? As Sarah Palin would say, you betcha.
It's good news for the unfortunate and hard-to-place Uighurs of Guantanamo that balmy Bermuda is taking four of them off the hands of Barack Obama and the Pentagon. Palau (in return for what?) is agreeing to take 13 more, apparently, though this is said to be "temporary" help to the U.S., and a permanent home still must be found for these young China-minority Muslim men.
Helpful as these developments are for the Obama administration toward its goal of closing the infamous prison on Cuba's shore by January, they point up the politically inspired hypocrisy of America in urging other nations to give refuge to Guantanamo prisoners while acting hysterically hostile to the idea of letting a single one of them set foot on our sacred soil -- even when they would be confined in Supermax prisons from which no hard-core terrorist or any other prison ever has escaped. Ever.
It's been so easy for politicians -- first Republicans in Congress, then Democrats stampeded by the GOP and the far right -- to exploit or cower before the knee-jerk issue of letting "terrorists" come within U.S. borders. Voters don't stop to think about the fact that federal prisons already house some infamous terrorists, including Sheikh Abu Omar and Zacarias Moussaoui. It's simply a NIMBY reaction, easily driven home by Republicans desperately hunting for an issue.
So far, congressional Democrats have Obama, too, running scared on this issue and unwilling simply to issue executive orders transferring the Guantanamo prisoners to mainland federal facilities. (Or, as I've written before, the men could be housed on Guam, in American Samoa or in the U.S. Virgin Islands in prisons to be built.)
The Uighurs are a particularly easy case for admission to the U.S. Found not to be "unlawful combatants," whatever that means, they pose no terror threat to this country, though they are concededly Muslim militants and worth keeping under suspicion. Their capture in Afghanistan years ago indicates that they quite possibly were training for a campaign against China. China may have cause to despise and fear them, but it is throwing its neo-superpower weight around by threatening any country considering taking the Uighurs. China wants them back, but you can imagine what a future they'd face there and what a betrayal it would be for Obama to hand them over to Beijing.
There is a fairly large Uighur community on the U.S. East Coast that has been vocal in its support for the Guantanamo Uighurs and its willingness to keep an eye on them if released locally. These public-spirited Uighurs have been ignored.
Best off of the 17 Guantanamo Uighurs are those who arrived in Bermuda today. They'll be granted guest worker status. They won't be very free to travel off the small British-affiliated island, but let's face it, Bermuda is a desirable place to live. They must be awfully happy today.
As for those to join the temporarily hospitable Palauans, less joy should be forthcoming. Palau is a poor, terribly humid little country, threatened with eventual extinction as waves rise with global warming. But any old port in a storm, as the saying goes. This storm appears likely to rage for a long, long time.