The Political Fight to Close Guantanamo Bay
That conversation is once again at a peak, and President Obama presented a plan yesterday to close Gitmo, arguing that “It’s been clear that the detention center at Guantanamo Bay does not advance our national security,” and that “It undermines our standing in the world.”
In other words, President Obama says closing Guantanamo Bay would nix a popular talking point for people hostile to America. Of course, not dropping so many bombs in foreign countries might be more effective, but closing Guantanamo Bay is nevertheless a worthwhile goal.
Unfortunately, the reality is that President Obama’s plan is unlikely to go anywhere fast.
The president proposed roughly the same plan in May 2009. That effort was not a total failure—the administration has managed to transfer 147 prisoners abroad (following 500 during the George W. Bush administration), reducing Gitmo’s prisoner population to 91. But even then, with the Democrats running both Houses, the effort to move detainees to U.S. stalled. Today, the political obstacles to closure have only grown.
In some ways, the debate over where to house the remaining prisoners distracts us from the more important issue of indefinite detention. Even under the administration’s plan, several dozen detainees face indefinite detention in the U.S., awaiting an official end to a war that seems endless.
Internationally, detention practices at Guantanamo remain in violation of several statutes of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Moreover, it could also be argued that detention practices at Guantanamo stand in defiance of national law as well, particularly the guarantee of due process secured through the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.
But, Guantanamo’s questionable legal status alone is not enough to implicate it. Were the actions of abolitionists who sought to free slaves by providing passage to the north in violation of the Fugitive Slave Act morally wrong? Of course not. By the same logic, actions and institutions cannot be morally wrong solely because they are in defiance of the law.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) concluded that the institutional infrastructure present within Guantanamo “cannot be considered other than an intentional system of cruel, unusual and degrading treatment and a form of torture,” but even that in itself is not the biggest problem with Guantanamo Bay.
Even if no torture whatsoever took place at Guantanamo Bay, it would still be filled with people who are being denied basic due process of law, and imprisoned for years upon years with no chance of defending their innocence in front of a legitimate, unbiased court.
The idea of habeas corpus—which suggests that, when you have an executive detention, there ought to be an opportunity for the individual detained to get an independent judicial assessment about whether the detention is legal—is at the core of American values.
Yet, the United States has suspended habeas corpus for detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
What is the great fear of permitting someone at Guantanamo Bay to file a writ of habeas corpus with a judge and say, “Your Honor, I think I am being held here illegally. I am not an enemy combatant. I have not had involvement in active hostilities against the United States. All I want is a fair hearing.”?
We have the judicial process to ensure that we make a proper cut. After all, the difference between civilization and barbarism is that civilization cares about punishing only those who are guilty.
Yes, it is possible to reduce the risk of terrorism by creating a police state and effectively eliminating all of our Constitutional protections, but the price is the end of our Republic. And that is too high a price to pay.
