Press frenzy, Congressional hearings, Whitehouse damage control

Over the past week, the Armed Services Committee of the Senate, headed by Pennsylvania Republican Senator Arlan Specter, has been holding hearings on the legality of indefinite detention by US Armed Forces. President Clinton was quoted as saying "clean up Guantanamo or shut it down." Vice President Dick Cheney and chief political advisor to the President Karl Rove, in a predictable response, went on the warpath, accusing liberals of being "soft" and sympathetic to terrorists. Yet President Bush and Attorney General Gonzales attempted be conciliatory, saying that Guantanamo was "under review." (This "good cop, bad cop" method for dealing with opponents has been perfected by the Bush administration.)

Meanwhile, the pages of US newspapers filled with op-eds against Guantanamo, including this by Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post:

The flap over Guantanamo proves, thankfully, that we're simply not a country with the stomach to run a secret prison system in which people are held indefinitely and subjected to frequent harsh interrogation, with no way to prove their innocence. That's out of the Axis of Evil playbook.

[...]

As for the administration's weakness at planning for the endgame: Exactly how long does it intend to hold these people? Five years? Ten? Twenty?

"Until the end of hostilities" is not an acceptable answer. It would make sense in a conventional war, but not in this bizarre, asymmetrical conflict that's more a battle of ideas and religion and visions of paradise than a war between two clear, definable sides. It could last decades, like the Cold War. And when will we even know it's over? How will we ever be certain that terrorism -- which is a tactic, not a sovereign nation -- has been finally vanquished?

It goes against America's grain to hold people indefinitely in prison without proving, in a court of law, that they have committed some crime. The whole thing just smells.

Like a fish left out in the Guantanamo sun.