Not So Fast

Obama’s Efforts to Close Guantanamo Bay Stir Establishment Resistance.

Anas Coburn
January 31, 2009

 The news that a process moving toward the closing of the prison at Guantanamo Bay had begun was one of the top ten good news stories of 2008 at Alt.Muslim. (and see their update here)  The news got even better once Barak Obama took office. One of his first actions as President was to request a suspension of the proceedings there. Not long after, Obama signed an executive order specifying that the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay be closed within a year, and that CIA Black Sites be similarly closed. For many Americans, it looked like Obama was on his way to fulfilling the hope of redemption for America that his candidacy promised. It is too soon to relax vigilance.

 No sooner had Obama taken these positive steps than Republican members of congress and certain segments of the “Mainstream Media” (often abbreviated M$M) began their attempt to incite public opinion against Obama’s decision using the weapon the Right has so successfully wielded over the last eight years – fear. House Minority Leader John Boehner weighed in:  "I think the first thing we have to remember is that we're talking about terrorists here.  Do we bring them into our borders? Do we release them back into the battlefield, like some 61 detainees that have been released we know are back on the battlefield?" GOP House Minority Whip Eric Cantor warned "Actively moving terrorists inside our borders weakens our security.  Most families neither want nor need hundreds of terrorists seeking to kill Americans in their communities.”

 Let’s look at Boehner’s first assertion “we’re talking about terrorists here.” Are we? The fact that the government accuses someone of something does not make them guilty. Under the rule of law, guilt is established through a trial with due process. Hundreds of those swept up from around the world and sent to Guantanamo were never terrorists. The fact that they were subsequently released over the years between 2002 and 2009 – after being kept in cages for years and never receiving a trial – implicitly acknowledges this fact. Even as recently November, a Bush-appointed judge ruled that five detainees had to be released “forthwith” because there was never any credible evidence against them. It is not at all clear how many of the remaining 245 prisoners held at Guantanamo are terrorists.

 Boehner’s second assertion, framed as a question, is that it is somehow dangerous to bring them to the United States for trial and if guilty, incarceration. Cantor makes the point explicitly – claiming our security is weakened by moving terrorists inside our borders. These assertions are simply unsupported by the facts. There are already several Muslims convicted (a partial list here) for terrorism and terrorism-related offences imprisoned in the United States, some for many years, and there have been no harmful effects on the local communities.

 Boehner’s next point, about the “some 61 detainees that have been released we know are back on the battlefield” again does not stand up to scrutiny. According to Professor Denbeaux of the Seton Hall Center for Policy & Research the “DOD has issued 'recidivism' numbers 43 times, and each time they have been wrong—this last time the most egregiously so. ... DOD has counted people as 'returning to the fight' for their having written an Op-ed piece in the New York Times and for their having appeared in a documentary exhibited at the Cannes Film Festival.”

 Former detainees may indeed take up arms against the United States. The New York Times ran a story Jan. 22 on Said Ali al-Shihri, a former Guantanamo detainee who was released to Saudi Arabia, then went to Yemen where he became deputy head of Al Qaeda in Yemen. All this certainly is a cause for concern. The argument that Boehner and Cantor are making is that there are these dangerous terrorists at Guantanamo and if we let them go they will do dangerous things. But as Steve Benen points out at the Washington Monthly, “Ali al-Shihri returning to al Qaeda isn't evidence of a flawed Obama process, it's evidence of a flawed Bush process. Why did Bush let a guy this dangerous go? Did Bush's team not consider, I don't know, bringing charges against him before setting him free?” There is also the possibility that given detainee was not dangerous to the US before being detained, but that years of living in a cage and being subjected to “enhanced interrogation” turned him into someone committed to harming the US. But Benen’s point about bringing charges against al-Shiri raises yet another problem, illustrated by the case of Mohammed Al-Jawad.

 Mohammed was an adolescent when he was picked up in Afghanistan more than six years ago. Glenn Greenwald reviews the case, here.  In part, he notes:

Suffice to say, Jawad's chief prosecutor at Guantanamo -- the Bronze-Star-recipient Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld, who since 9/11 has served in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia and Africa -- became so repelled by the treatment to which Jawad was subjected, by the fact that virutally all of the evidence against him was severely coerced, and by the fact that there is "no credible evidence" to justify his detention, that he first demanded that Jawad be released, then, when Bush officials refused, unsuccessfully demanded to be relieved of his duty to prosecute, and then finally resigned.  He has now become one of the key witnesses in Jawad's habeas proceeding.

 Some portion of the detainees have suffered such egregious treatment that the evidence coerced from them cannot be used. Judge Susan Crawford became the first senior Bush Administration to acknowledge the use of torture, as the Washington Post reported here.

 The story of the Bush Administration’s treatment of “enemy combatants” has been morally offensive and a blight on the international standing of the United States of America. As further details emerge over the coming months we can expect to see more Americans lifting their voices in outrage. Those who have followed this story must remain vigilant and resist the inevitable attempts to “make it go away.” The issues raised go to the fundamental question of whether or not this is indeed a nation in which, as Attorney General Appointee Eric Holder stated at his confirmation hearing, “No one is above the law.” The problem is not simply that we have high governmental officials in the executive branch who appear to have ordered the commission of war crimes.  We also have leaders in congress who were receiving briefings on executive branch actions but did very little to nothing to try stop them.  Nor does the problem end there, for we have ‘journalists’ eager to argue on behalf of the political leaders over whom they should serve as watchdogs. This essay began by examining some of the objections to closing Guantanamo raised by Republic leaders in the House and the Senate. Now we have news that Col. James L. Pohl of the Army, a military judge in Guantanamo has said the Obama administration’s request to pause Military Commission proceedings for 120 “is not reasonable.” When Obama signed the Executive Orders calling for the closure of Guantanamo, he said, "The orders that I signed today should send an unmistakable signal that our actions in defense of liberty will be as just as our cause, and we, the people, will uphold our fundamental values as vigilantly as we protect our security." As Thomas Paine pointed out in 1777 "Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."