Being the Good Guys

12 June 2006



Guantánamo Suicides Shame America

Over the week-end, three prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay committed suicide. The camp commander, Rear Admiral Harry Harris, said that the deaths were “an act of warfare waged against us.” This “Twilight Zone” reasoning only underscores the delusions of the administration’s policy here. America needs to close the prison, try the detainees and restore some of its good name.

This journal doesn’t dispute that the guys being held in the prison could be intent on killing Americans. After being held for four years without charge or trial, many who weren’t before are now. Yet the camp does more to harm America’s reputation in the war against Fascislam than it does to protect innocent Americans in Peoria, Boise and Cheyenne (places Al Qaeda couldn’t find with a map and a flashlight). It is, outside America, a concentration camp, a jihadi zoo, and a great recruiting poster for suicide bombers from Madrid to London to Toronto.

The Bush administration got itself in this mess by trying to be tough on terrorists to the point of ignoring international law and customs, to say nothing of the American constitution (a document with which the White House has only a nodding acquaintance). Either the men detained are prisoners of war or they are civilian captives. There is no middle ground, no matter what the Attorney General may try to argue.

If these men are prisoners of war, they are entitled to the treatment accorded to such under the Geneva Convention. They may not be tortured, they must receive medical care, they are entitled to contact with the Red Cross/Crescent. And they could be held until the end of the war – which the Pentagon is calling “The Long War,” so they aren’t going to get out to hurt anyone any time soon. If they are civilian prisoners, they are entitled to know the charges against them, they are entitled to face their accusers in open court, and they are entitled to a trial (not some quasi-military farce). If found guilty, sufficiently stiff prison sentences should keep America safe.

Yet, what if the Busheviks have the wrong guy? Given the Bush administration’s record, it would be surprising if they ever got the right guy. After four years, these people cannot have any intelligence value (their knowledge is at least four years out of date, presuming they ever knew anything). The fact that US military personnel couldn’t prevent three from killing themselves suggests incompetence on the ground as well as at policy level. Guantánamo has outlived any usefulness it might have had. Cutting losses is not the same as cutting and running.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.


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