Guantanamo Bay in Cuba has been a partisan point of contention for years. Democrats want it closed. Republicans want it open. Obama made closing it a plank in his platform when he was first elected in 2008, and Romney struck back at his position in 2012. On Feb. 23, the issue skyrocketed back into the news when Obama handed over a closure plan to Congress — in the last year of his presidency.
Treatment of prisoners is always a controversial subject, and treatment of terrorists as prisoners even more so — as I’ve said in previous columns, it’s very easy to not care about these people. When we think of someone as a bad person, it’s difficult to feel compassion toward them or concern for their well-being. There is the ever-present feeling that prison is a punishment and that their rights are therefore not as important as everyone else’s. Certainly in the case of terrorists being held in Guantanamo, where the prisoners are usually not U.S. citizens, there is a pervasive feeling that they should not be granted constitutional rights, regardless of who is holding them.
Nevertheless, Guantanamo Bay needs to close. Obama needs to make good on this campaign promise, not because it’s necessarily more important than his other promises, but because it’s time.
Over the years since 2002 when Guantanamo first opened its doors, it has held 783 prisoners. The population has declined from its high point at 670 prisoners in 2003 to 91 today. In those 14 years, the inside of the prison has seen horrific abuse of prisoners and brutal and widespread use of torture. Detainees were sexually assaulted, kept awake for up to three days at a time, forced to watch other detainees being tortured and put into solitary confinement, among various other cruelties.
Nine prisoners have died in custody. Seven of those were apparently suicides. That might not seem like very many people, but that’s more than five times the death rate by percentage of prisoners in federal prison by the most recent figure. It's more than twenty times the suicide rate.
Guantanamo’s original reason for existence, detailed in the executive order that created it, was to hold non-U.S. citizens for whatever sentence was determined for them — not by a court, but by a military commission — up to and including life in prison or even execution. Essentially, it is a place to hold terrorists or terrorism suspects indefinitely, without any need for a fair trial or right to habeas corpus — the ability to appeal their detainment.
When the Supreme Court ruled in 2004 in the case of Hamdi v. Rumsfeld that habeas corpus applied even to non-citizens, President Bush responded by passing an act that would allow us to ignore that right for our enemies in wartime. The Supreme Court then struck down the law as unconstitutional after Bush left office in 2008, but by that time, Guantanamo had been open and operating for seven long years, and plenty of damage had been done already. The Court’s most recent brush with the prison has been to turn away two cases in 2015 regarding the CIA’s torture of detainees.
Proponents of Guantanamo, like Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, as well as many other original supporters, have defended the prison as being necessary, because the men held within are supposed to be “the worst of the worst.” This is a sentiment Mitt Romney echoed when questioned about the prison.
There are two problems with these views, of course. Firstly, those who voice them tend to favor the continued operation of Guantanamo so that we can continue to “detain and interrogate” terrorists for information that will help us prevent future terror attacks, when in fact torture does not produce reliable counterterrorism information. Secondly, many of those detained at Guantanamo were innocent, which takes some of the punch out of the idea that we were only doing bad things to bad people.
Many others who believe the prison should remain open are understandably worried about the idea of simply releasing dangerous detainees back to their countries to potentially attack the United States again. To them, I would say this: Generally, that doesn’t happen. By the estimates of the Bush administration, only something like 6 percent of the 500 or so men they repatriated returned to association with terrorism.
That isn’t anything like an ideal number — it’s about 30 terrorists we sent right back to the battlefield. But if you compare it to national statistics about recidivism in American prisons — over 70 percent of violent criminals who we release back into our own society are rearrested — the number begins to look a lot smaller.
Now, is the plan the Pentagon sent to Congress the best way to actually close Guantanamo? That isn’t certain. Republican senators — including John McCain, who is notoriously anti-Guantanamo and has reliably supported its closure — oppose it because the plan suggests that any detainees who cannot be returned to their home countries be placed in facilities on U.S. soil. There is widespread concern about the vague — and, according to some, poorly-thought out — ideas outlined in the plan.
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, another long-time supporter of closing the facility, has also denounced the plan for its lack of realistic specifics and has withdrawn his support for closure under it. And his opinion is not without relevance — not only would he have been one of the president’s few Republican allies in the Senate, but his state, along with Kansas and Colorado, is one which the detainees might be moved to. That’s right: A naval base in Hanahan, South Carolina, is one of the sites the Pentagon is considering for the 30 to 60 detainees who would be displaced into the U.S. by the closure of Guantanamo.
Nevertheless, whether this is the plan that closes the prison, the fact remains: It needs to be closed. The walls of Guantanamo Bay have seen unspeakable acts perpetrated against inmates by our government. Detainees have had the rights our Constitution grants to them violated. We have driven prisoners to suicide and earned the condemnation of the UN, as well as criticism from high-ranking government officials in Ireland, Germany, Iceland and Saudi Arabia. The European Parliament and European Union of Foreign Ministers have urged us to close it.
Guantanamo is a still-living reminder of 14 years and counting of being on the wrong side of the Constitution, the international community and basic human rights. It is a black mark on the face of America and a place of outstanding hypocrisy.
It’s high time we find our strength on this issue and end this national disgrace.