I’m a bit confused by this New York Times article on the future of the detainee facility at Guantanamo after the election:
As the Bush administration enters its final months with no apparent plan to close the Guantánamo Bay camp, an extensive review of the government’s military tribunal files suggests that dozens of the roughly 255 prisoners remaining in detention are said by military and intelligence agencies to have been captured with important terrorism suspects, to have connections to top leaders of Al Qaeda or to have other serious terrorism credentials.
Senators John McCain and Barack Obama have said they would close the detention camp, but the review of the government’s public files underscores the challenges of fulfilling that promise. The next president will have to contend with sobering intelligence claims against many of the remaining detainees.
“It would be very difficult for a new president to come in and say, ‘I don’t believe what the C.I.A. is saying about these guys,’” said Daniel Marcus, a Democrat who was general counsel of the 9/11 Commission and held senior positions in the Carter and Clinton administrations.
But none of that is really the point. “Closing Guantanamo” is not synonymous with shutting down the War on Terror. A commitment — which both candidates made — to shut the facility does not imply a lack of commitment to prosecute those who deserve prosecution.
“Closing Guantanamo” is instead about shutting down the paradigm that the facility represents:
- The notion that there can be places on earth where the U.S. government has absolute control but where the Constitution does not apply in any way whatsoever.
- The notion that everyone whom the government detains must be guilty.
- The notion that the U.S. can single-handedly exempt itself from duly enacted treaties, up to and including the Geneva Conventions.
- The notion that torture is ever consistent with American ideals and civilized notions of humane treatment for anyone, no matter how guilty and no matter how evil.
- The notion that barbaric conditions that literally drive detainees to suicide are consistent with American ideals (not to mention the insane suggestion that such suicides constitute an “act of war”).
In a post-Bush, post-Boumediene Washington, closing “Guantanamo the Base” (i.e., while merely transferring the remaining detainees to a military prison on U.S. soil, to face a prosecution that comports with due process) is a simple, uncomplicated yet important symbolic step that by itself would represent a tremendous step back from the brink, for it would repudiate, finally, the notion that we as a nation are ever entitled to behave lawlessly.
Previously:
–“Due Process of Law” Quote of the Day
–Guantanamo Suicides “An Act of War”?
–Pentagon: Punish Law Firms Defending Gitmo Prisoners
