Peter Hoekstra was so excited to hear the news that he had to let out a quick Tweet about it: “Yes!Dem House leader says closing Gitmo no longer a priority!Progress but need to stay focused on it.”

Oh his official congressional web site, Hoekstra wrote,

“It was a mistake for the president to make closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility a priority of his administration, and the majority leader’s announcement today confirms it. After a strong effort by concerned citizens, congressional Democrats are finally backing off their flawed plans to bring Gitmo’s terrorist detainees to America’s shores, especially Michigan.

The administration and congressional Democrats quietly backed away from their plans to bring terrorists to New York City for trials because they realized the potential consequences, and they have now on the record announced that closing Gitmo is not a priority. I am glad that they have started to back away from the plan and acknowledged that reality doesn’t match their rhetoric.”

The Democratic congressional leadership appears to have abandoned the effort to close the prisons of Guantanamo Bay, and to allow people to remain imprisoned there without trial, or only through a kangaroo court military tribunal system designed to gain convictions through extreme circumvention of fair trial procedures. Why is Peter Hoekstra celebrating that?

Representative Hoekstra suggests that he’s trying to protect Michigan residents from terrorists, but there’s little evidence that Michigan is in real danger of terrorist attack, or that keeping the prisons of Guantanamo open would provide much protection, even if there were a significant terrorist threat to Michigan. Hoekstra says he’s working to prevent “terrorists” from coming to the United States, but the people he’s trying to prevent from coming to the USA to face trial haven’t been convicted of terrorism. They’ve only been accused of criminal activity – some related to specific acts of terrorism, some not.

The accused haven’t been proved to be guilty, but they’re being punished as if they are guilty. That’s not the American way. The Constitution of the United States guarantees everyone under the jurisdiction of the USA, wherever they are, whether they are citizens or not, the right to a fair and speedy jury trial. Yes, the prisoners of Guantanamo are hated and feared by the American people, but that’s not a reason to withhold their legal rights. Our constitutional system of law is designed to provide equal rights to everyone, whether they are despised or not. The refusal of fair trial from anyone should be a cause for concern for a member of Congress like Peter Hoekstra, not a cause for celebration.

Representative Hoekstra and his allies have contended that bringing the criminal suspects to the United States for trial or imprisonment would lead to the likelihood of terrorist attacks. Simple experience shows that this concern has little merit. The suspects have been imprisoned on the island of Cuba for almost an entire decade, after all, but Cuba has not suffered terrorist attacks as a result.

There’s no practical reason to refuse fair trial to the Guantanamo suspects, and the legal justifications for the evasion of their criminal trials undermines the system of equality under the law that we all depend upon. Congressman Hoekstra may be afraid of what might happen if the American system of justice is allowed to proceed with the Guantanamo suspects, but justice is not something that should be altered in order to suit politicians’ fears.