rssWhy Closing Gitmo Isn’t Enough
Friday, November 14, 2008 at 6:01 am
- 5 Comments
At a call-in “town hall” meeting tonight, the American Civil Liberties Union reiterated its call for the new Obama administration to close the Guantanamo Bay prison on the president’s first day in office. With the help of the filmmaker Robert Greenwald, the ACLU is even distributing a short film to persuade people to join in the campaign.
Closing Guantanamo Bay and even ending the military commissions (also part of the campaign) is all well and good, but that alone doesn’t solve the problem the ACLU and others are trying to address.
Since 2001, Washington has been indefinitely detaining people around the world without charge, and in many cases without access to lawyers or even the right to communicate with family members. Some of those men were swept up by bounty hunters; many were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Many have been abused or tortured in custody.
As I wrote in a story for The American Lawyer, more than 600 prisoners are imprisoned indefinitely and without charge in what’s become a black hole at the U.S. air base in Bagram, Afghanistan. Unlike Guantanamo, the Supreme Court has never ruled (or had a chance to rule) that they have any due process rights.
That’s why Washington has been sending suspects there instead of to Gitmo, ever since the Supreme Court ruled in 2004 they have rights at the U.S. base in Cuba. Thousands more suspected terrorists, or their associates, are detained under similar conditions in other U.S.-controlled prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Even right here at home, in South Carolina, Illinois resident Ali Saleh Kahllah Al-Marri has been imprisoned without charge for more than 5 years in a Navy brig, because the president decided he was a dangerous “enemy combatant.” For more than a year, he was held in total isolation, shackled and subjected to painful stress positions and icy temperatures. His lawyers recently filed a petition to the Supreme Court, asking them to review the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal’s decision that indefinite detention of a U.S. resident without charge or a hearing is not a problem.
Closing Guantanamo Bay is certainly an important symbolic act. The 250 people still detained there certainly deserve to have the U.S. government decide what it’s going to do with them. (Only about 24 have even been charged.)
Simply transferring them to prisons in the United States won’t solve what is an infinitely larger and more complicated problem.
5 Comments
Comment posted November 14, 2008 @ 7:28 am
Hi Daphne,
Actually, if remember right, the Boumedienne decision to grant habeas corpus rights DID extend beyond Gitmo. You might want to look at that more closely, though, as I am not entirely sure. But what is certain: everyone is worried about Cuba and missing this real issue–Bagram is the new Gitmo.
Comment posted November 14, 2008 @ 11:50 am
Actually, Boumedienne wasn't clear about that at all. Certainly some lawyers are arguing that Boumedienne should extend beyond Gitmo, but the government (at least the current one) isn't likely to accept that.
Comment posted December 6, 2008 @ 11:11 am
We need to get the military out of the prison business. Civilian oversight of the military is a foundational concept in the American System. Lets use it.
The military having participated in war, having watched their fellow fighters die, having been sniped at, bombed and ambushed are hardly objective in the administration of those suspected of doing such.
The military commanded by a “war president” and having spent a lifetime of following orders is hardly the body that should be holding, interrogating, or rendering to another country a person arbitrarily or not named as an “enemy combatant” by the Commander in Chief.
If we as a Country don't apply OUR Justice system to ALL prisoners we as a Country suffer. Its always ease to create another “us and them” category of enemies. Once we compromise our standards and our justice to meet a “new” or “different” or “threatening national security” group we degrade our moral position in the world.
We need to remember that just as a corporation has a huge investment and value in its name, logo and “good will”, so does the US. When you lose the moral high ground you might win the battle but you lose the war.
Comment posted December 6, 2008 @ 7:11 pm
We need to get the military out of the prison business. Civilian oversight of the military is a foundational concept in the American System. Lets use it.
The military having participated in war, having watched their fellow fighters die, having been sniped at, bombed and ambushed are hardly objective in the administration of those suspected of doing such.
The military commanded by a “war president” and having spent a lifetime of following orders is hardly the body that should be holding, interrogating, or rendering to another country a person arbitrarily or not named as an “enemy combatant” by the Commander in Chief.
If we as a Country don't apply OUR Justice system to ALL prisoners we as a Country suffer. Its always ease to create another “us and them” category of enemies. Once we compromise our standards and our justice to meet a “new” or “different” or “threatening national security” group we degrade our moral position in the world.
We need to remember that just as a corporation has a huge investment and value in its name, logo and “good will”, so does the US. When you lose the moral high ground you might win the battle but you lose the war.
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
