Guantanamo Prison Camp. Shut it Down!

You are an American.  So am I. We celebrate our freedoms and rights and we trust in our justice system to safeguard those rights.  So, if someone we know is jailed for say, burglary, we would be concerned, but not panicked. We would trust that his innocence (hopefully) would be vindicated or, at worst, his guilt would receive a proportional penalty: nothing more.  But if days of detention turned into weeks and then months without trial or even formal charging, we would speak up and demand answers.  And if justice officials should inform us he is to be held indefinitely, without trial or further due process because, well, because he is, after all, a burglar, we would dial the NRA hotline and demand a national call to arms.

Why then is there no sense of outrage over 166 human beings, more than one hundred of whom are on a hunger strike, held behind chain link and razor wire at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, without evidence to prosecute or plan to release? When such a spectacle would evoke the strongest pangs of sympathy and ire if the prisoners were uncharged Americans, what can explain our indifference or justify Congressional action barring their release? Have we accepted the harsh treatment because, well, because they’re terrorists?  Are they terrorists?

Allow me to shed some light on the subject.

Since 2002, when the facility’s metal gates creaked open to admit combatants captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan or in other theaters of the war on terror, 779 men have entered; 604 have been repatriated to their homelands or transferred to other settlement countries, nine have died—six by suicide, and 166 remain, almost all having spent ten or more years in captivity with only six facing formal charges. Let’s review the kinds of men who comprise the shuffling, shackled line who over time have witnessed some or all of the camp’s evolution from new facility, to symbol of torture and interminable imprisonment, to number one recruitment tool of Islamic terrorist groups in the world today.

Some, are terrorists. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is the confessed mastermind of the September 11 attack in the United States and the Bali nightclub bombings in Indonesia. He was captured ten years ago and awaits transfer to the U.S for a federal court trial that may still be years away. Ramzi bin al-Shibh is another September 11 conspirator, currently being tried before a military commission.

Most, however, entered Guantanamo as prisoners of war of one stripe or another. Some were captured fighting Coalition forces on the battlefield.  Others were found on the fringes: learning to fight in remote training camps or providing support of some form or another to the anti-Coalition cause.  Together, they included hundreds not captured by U.S. forces but handed over by our Pakistani or Afghan allies after American military officials advertised bounties of $5,000 or more per head.  The torrent of Guantanamo-bound prisoners thus unleashed prompted our own frustrated Secretary of Defense to complain in a memo reported by the Washington Post, “We need to stop populating Guantanamo Bay with low-level enemy combatants...GTMO needs to serve as an [redacted] not a prison for Afghanistan.”

Many of these prisoners were tortured.

Our review completed, we ask what to do with those remaining, a question that makes us face our heritage of basic freedoms and our most deeply held conceptions of right and wrong.  

Excepting those involuntarily committed to mental institutions, American moral and legal tradition has recognized only two classes of people we may lawfully hold against their will: criminals and prisoners of war. This tradition and the justice it represents should be applied to the 166 now languishing at Guantanamo.  The handful who are alleged to be criminals must be prosecuted, and sent to U.S. super-max prisons if convicted, otherwise, set free.  

The POWs can be divided into two groups and dealt with accordingly.  The first group comprises 86 prisoners who have been cleared for release and who are no longer deemed combatants nor security threats.  Their continued detention is inexcusable, though Congress has taken action effectively preventing their release. Congress should reverese itself and leave the State Department free to work out details of their transfers with home countries. 

The second group includes those the Department of Defense and other security agencies describe as ‘not feasible to prosecute but too dangerous to release.’ As emotionally evocative as it is vague, this classification will not do. It’s like taking that burglar I spoke of earlier and saying, ‘We have no evidence to convict you, but we won’t release you to burglarize again.’ Vivid labels must never serve as a substitute for justice or an excuse to abuse the basic rights of fellow human beings. Cases must reviewed once more for evidence of plots or crimes against the United States.  Evidence must be followed with charges and prosecution; otherwise these men should be treated as prisoners of war and repatriated.

The world knows what values we say we uphold and they see our inconsistency.  The UN has called the continued detention of so many people without trial a clear violation of international law.  Amnesty International has called Guantanamo the gulag of our time.

Now that the war in Iraq is over and we are beginning the drawdown of American forces in Afghanistan the only practical value of continued operations at the Guantanamo prison falls to those who use images of its prisoners and the legacy of its torture to draw fresh recruits to the jihadist cause.  We must shut it down.

This we must do, because we are Americans.