Prisoners of War

Guantanamo is only an issue because of Bush Derangement Syndrome. Imagine Roosevelt Derangement Syndrome sufferers filing Habeas Corpus briefs for German and Japanese POWs in the 1940’s. Being an illegal combatant doesn’t change a terrorist's POW status but the BDS afflicted claim they should be given lawyers and entered into the American judicial system. James Taranto points out:

Legitimate prisoners of war enjoy no such rights. The primary purpose of holding enemy combatants during wartime is not punitive but preventive--to keep them off the battlefield. No one disputes that a country at war can hold POWs without charge for the duration of hostilities. Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the majority in Hamdan, reaffirmed the government's authority to do the same with the unlawful combatants at Guantanamo.

The left really hasn’t thought through the alternative, less humane method of keeping combatants off the battlefield. They also need to think about the effect of extending constitutional privileges to detainees. Taranto has:

In the long run, it could also imperil the civil liberties of Americans. Leniency toward detainees is on the table today only because al Qaeda has so far failed to strike America since 9/11. If it succeeded again, public pressure for harsher measures would be hard for politicians to resist. And if enemy combatants had been transferred to the criminal justice system, those measures would be much more likely to diminish the rights of citizens who have nothing to do with terrorism.

Apparently a symptom of BDS is myopia.