The Dilemma of Guantanamo Bay

Terrorists are nothing but cowards who use mass-murder to undermine governments around the world. That being said, we all in some way, I believe, support the “war” on terror. No one likes the thought of a terrorist taking lives, be they on American soil or abroad. With the killing of Osama bin Laden still fresh in our minds, many have begun to reexamine our tactics in this “war.” With the controversies at Abu Ghraib, news that air strikes are killing more and more civilians in Afghanistan every day, and the water-boarding debate, it becomes clear that the biggest Catch-22 of this war is still as much of a problem today as it was Sept. 12, 2001.

How do we win the war on terror with minimum collateral damage?

While the three controversies I just covered in the above paragraph would be too much to try to fit in one article, I would like to focus on a very big part of this minimum collateral damage dialogue—Gitmo.

Otherwise known as Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp, Gitmo is located within the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base on the island of Cuba. It was opened in 2002 by the Bush Administration. The biggest issue that most take with this detention camp is that its detainees are not subject to the rules of the Hague. Or at least, they were not initially. From what I know, this has several implications:

1. They do not have to be charged with anything to be detained there
2. They have no right to counsel
3. There are no limits to what their interrogators can do
4. Habeus corpus does not exist.

The detainees can now, however, benefit from Common Article 3 of the Hague, which applies to “Armed Conflicts” not international in nature. All this article says, however, is

• § Persons taking no active part in hostilities, including military persons who have ceased to be active as a result of sickness, injury, or detention, should be treated humanely.
• § The wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for

(Pictet, Jean (1958). Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949: Commentary. International Committee of the Red Cross.  http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/Geneva_conventions-1949.html.)

What does “humanely” mean, anyway? How comforting these two “protections” must be to those who remain in Guantanamo wrongfully accused.

I realize that, regardless of guilt, most will say, “I didn’t do it.” But viewed in the light of recent WikiLeaks findings, it appears that more of these claims of innocence might be true than I, at least, originally thought.

This recently revealed batch of documents indicates that the stories of eight detainees made up a major part of the cases against 255 others also detained there. Additionally, the documents made clear that intelligence analysts had found gaping holes in the stories of these eight detainees.

President Obama had promised in his campaign to close the camp, following persistent and very public allegations from ex-prisoners of severe abuses within the camp. He has since backed away from that promise. He then tried to order the preparation of some facility somewhere in Illinois, where detainees were to be transferred.

However, the final report of the Guantanamo Review Task Force indicated that, of the 240 detainees subject to review, ”36 were the subject of active cases or investigations; 30 detainees from Yemen were designated for ‘conditional detention’ due to the security environment in Yemen; 126 detainees were approved for transfer; 48 detainees were determined ‘too dangerous to transfer but not feasible for prosecution’.” (^ “Final Report of the Guantanamo Review Task Force (vid. p.ii.)”. United States Department of Justice.http://www.justice.gov/ag/guantanamo-review-final-report.pdf. Retrieved 13 January 2011.)

Now, I am not naive. I understand that force of some sort has to be selectively applied to get information from individuals who may be initially… unwilling. But where do we draw the line? Hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money has probably gone into the maintenence of this facility. If less than one third of those being detained are actually the subject of an active investigation, how effective is it?

I understand that it is easier for people to point out problems with the system than it is to find viable solutions. But with so many people finding problems with this kind of detention, there must be at least a hint of a solution somewhere!

Any ideas?

For a list of more articles about Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp, please visit www.amnesty.org, and search “gitmo”.