In the last week, the United States facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba has received a great deal of attention from the press. President Obama, acting on an idea he espoused during the presidential campaign, signed an executive order calling for the closure of the prison within the year and suspending the military tribunals held there. Though a cause long embraced by opponents of the war and the policies of George W. Bush for quite some time, closing the prison facilities at Guantanamo Bay would be a mistake. It might resolve some legal issues and make the United States look better in the eyes of the world, but to shut the detention facility down would solve few problems and create a batch of new ones.
The sticky nature of Guantanamo Bay arises from the same difficulties that make the war on terror so difficult to prosecute. The dividing line between enemy combatants and civilians is extraordinarily murky — enemies can pop up, strike and blend back in with the unfortunate people who happen to occupy the combat zone. A similar lack of clarity comes because of the unconventional legal standing of the war. The United States has not officially declared war on anybody, and therefore the people are not really prisoners of war. But practically the conflict continues, and therefore enemies must be removed from the fray in order to keep them from harming U.S. soldiers.
Guantanamo Bay has come under fire for its symbolic role in the U.S. prosecution of the war on terror. To its opponents, it represents a violation of civil rights, humans held without trial and repugnant torture techniques like water-boarding and psychological abuses used to extract information from the 245 individuals held there. These things, its opponents say, are below the dignity of the United States, and the practices used on the inmates at Guantanamo lower the image of our nation in the eyes of the world.
But closing Guantanamo does not really solve any of the problems that the prison’s opponents claim it causes. Shutting the base down, while it would look good from a public-relations standpoint, would not resolve the legal problems of holding suspected terrorists. The questions of whether or not the United States can try the detainees according to military rules or whether they have total access to civil courts stems from the problematical nature of the war on terror, and will not be solved by shutting down the Guantanamo facility. The problem will still be there, if less prominent than before.
The same remains on the issue of prisoner treatment. Wherever they are held, the debate over whether or not methods like water-boarding ought to be applied to terrorists will continue. Can harsh methods be used to extract national security-related information be used on these detainees? Or does the 8th Amendment apply to these enemy combatants? This issue will not go away simply by shutting down Guantanamo.
Indeed, shutting down the base raises a simple but troubling question: What do you do with the detainees, if they are not held in a military base? Should they be held in a federal prison in the territorial United States? This does not seem workable — prison is a dangerous place for anybody, much less a person accused of attacking the United States. Should a special facility be set up on U.S. soil? This seems unlikely, as what representative would want 200 or more terror suspects plunked down in the middle or his or her district? Republicans have semi-seriously suggested using the old Alcatraz prison for terror detainees, in part to bring the point home to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi that she would not want them on her turf.
Similarly, releasing detainees to their home nations presents problems. Besides the fear that they will not be prosecuted for their activities, the possibility of escapes remains a concern. Given a recidivism rate of around 12 percent for terror suspects, turning them over to governments that may free them is a risky proposition.
Guantanamo Bay provided a secure, isolated holding point for terror suspects, away from American civilians and from the front lines of the war on terror alike. Closing it down, while it will make a nice story for the new administration, presents a new problem of where to house enemy combatants while still contending with the other legal and security issues surrounding them. This public relations triumph is hardly worth the resulting headaches.
Robby Colby’s column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at r.colby@cavalierdaily.com.
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