US President Barack Obama has announced that he will transfer 17 or 18 detainees from Guantanamo by the end of his term in office next month. They are among the 22 prisoners who are cleared for release so far, and if there are no last minute snags, only 41 or 42 detainees overall will remain at the detention center, built on a forty-five square mile US naval base situated on a land leased from Cuba in1903.
Guantanamo prison, also known as Gitmo, was established by President George W. Bush in 2002 in the wake of Sept. 11 attacks on US. The Republican president wanted a place to detain “extraordinarily dangerous people.”
All those who were thrown into this legal black hole were not dreaded terrorists. Innocents, or hardened criminals, they could not claim basic constitutional protections since the base was outside US territory. The prisoners were “unlawful enemy combatants” so they, according to the Bush administration, were outside the purview of Geneva Conventions regarding the treatment of prisoners of war and civilians during wartime. With the result the inmates were subject to force-feedings, sleep deprivation, stress positions, vicious beatings, and other forms of torture.
The situation remained unchanged even after Obama took over though he gave the impression that he was not happy at what was going on.
At its peak, Guantanamo had as many as 779 prisoners. 709 have been released or transferred and nine have died including those who committed suicide. In January 2009 when Obama took over, there were 242 detainees. The number now stands at 59. This includes all those deemed too dangerous to release or move yet impossible to try in a civilian or even military court for reasons of inadequate or tainted evidence.
Even such “indefinite detainees” were overjoyed when they learned Obama had been elected president. Has he not called for the closure of Gitmo in his campaign speeches? Their hopes were again raised when on Jan. 22, 2009, his second day in office, he issued an executive order directing that prison be shut down within a year.
But the prison guards who remained unmoved knew better.
In public remarks, Obama has blamed Congress for his failure to close the facility. The president would not have been unaware of Congress’ reservations in the matter.
Still he was not without options. There was a time when he could have used all of his executive powers to make good on the vow to close Guantanamo, whatever the objections of Congress. Despite his claims of Republican obstruction, Obama actually has the power to push his legislation through and close the facility. That he did not do any such thing shows a failure of nerve, a Hamlet-like hesitation to act decisively on an issue about which he felt strongly.
“I think I would have closed Guantanamo on the first day,” Obama says. Speaking at an economics conference in Cleveland, Ohio, in March 2015, he said if he could return to the first days of his presidency, he would close the Guantanamo Bay prison immediately. Obama should realize that only in fairy tales people could go back in time to do the things they want. Striking moral postures every now and then will not relieve the agony of those for whom every moment of their life is a living hell. The most tragic part is that Obama failed to realize that if he did not shutter the facility, nobody else, Republican or Democrat, could do it and Gitmo, described as a medieval torture chamber, will become a permanent feature of America’s security landscape.
President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to keep the Gitmo operating, and has suggested bringing in new detainees. During the campaign in February, he told a crowd in Nevada: “We’re gonna load it up with some bad dudes.”
Bad news for all those who want to see an end to this blemish on America’s moral reputation.
