Close Guantanamo? Wait Just a Minute.
Text & Photos: Julie Schwietert Collazo
If you’d have asked me two months ago whether I agreed that we should close Guantanamo, I would have said “Yes!” without thinking. Like many Americans and citizens of the world, I viewed the US naval base and detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba as a symbol of everything that’s wrong with the current administration and its foreign policy and defense decisions.
I probably knew more about Guantanamo than your ordinary American. I knew that the base was booty my country acquired (or commandeered) in 1898 at the end of the Spanish-American War. I knew it was the oldest US naval base outside the continental US. I knew about the treaty governing the base’s perpetual lease, that it had temporarily housed both Cuban and Haitian refugees in the mid 1990s, and that Fidel Castro has allegedly never cashed any of the annual $4,085 checks the US drafts to pay rent on this patch of land in southeast Cuba.
I also knew that Guantanamo–American shorthand for the base–is actually a town in Cuba, a dusty, desert town where 30 year olds look a good 20 years older.
Like most Americans, I also knew that my government had used Guantanamo Bay as a legal black hole in the global War on Terror, converting facilities on the base into housing for “detainees” who are considered to be dangerous “enemy combatants,” and, at one point, using those facilities to conduct “interrogations” in which activities like waterboarding, hooding, and extreme sensory deprivation raised questions about what torture really is and whether “civilized” Americans would use it as a policy instrument.
So would I have said “Close Guantanamo” two months ago?
Yes.
Without hesitation.
But then I went there.
*
President-elect Barack Obama, for whom I voted and who I support unequivocally, has articulated his commitment to close Guantanamo Bay as soon as possible. In a November 12 Washington Post article, staff writer Peter Finn reported:
The Obama administration will launch a review of the classified files of the approximately 250 detainees at Guantanamo Bay immediately after taking office, as part of an intensive effort to close the U.S. prison in Cuba, according to people who advised the campaign on detainee issues.
As of late October, when I visited, 255 men were still being held at the US military’s Joint Task Force (JTF) detention facility at Guantanamo.
Many of the men being held–referred to euphemistically as “detainees”–were removed from their home countries and transported to this island, where they have lived in captivity for several years.
They have been awaiting trial and due process (hell, most of them have been awaiting formal charges) ever since, with few ever seeing their day in court. Those who have could legitimately question whether justice was served, as military judges are appointed to panels that hear detainees’ cases.
A good number of the men have actually been cleared for release by an administrative review board. But here’s the problem: They have nowhere to go. According to sources on the base, the men who could leave Guantanamo Bay today can’t go anywhere because no country wants them. It’s too dangerous for them to go home. Yet no other country is stepping up and volunteering to give them temporary or permanent shelter.
*
There are things we can’t understand unless we see them.
Things we can understand intellectually or emotionally, but fail to grasp entirely until we’re staring them–literally–in the face.
And that’s the case with Guantanamo.
Close Guantanamo.
It sounds logical enough.
Easy enough.
But as with economic bail outs and battlefront pull outs, closing Guantanamo is only easy if you’re thinking about it from afar.
In the abstract.
Rhetorically.
When you start to think about the bigger picture, the longer term, the human consequences, and–especially–when you see it… nothing is quite as easy as it seems.
Do I want to see the detention facility closed?
Yes.
But not unless we have a realistic plan in place to transfer men whose true lives are poorly understood into societies where they have a chance to live. Not unless we’re ready to acknowledge that the complete miscarriage of justice for which President Bush is responsible is likely to have effects that we’re not remotely prepared to handle.
Closing Guantanamo is the easy part. It’s what comes after that is hard… and which no one is talking about.
November 25th, 2008 at 8:59 pm
Julie this is an extraordinary article, one that asks questions no one else is. Thank you for being my education for the day - I’m fwding this on to people.
November 25th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
Thanks, Liv!
November 25th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
Great post, Julie. I read something recently (can’t remember where now) about a possible rehabilitation strategy being put together for Omar Khadr, to re-integrate him into Canadian society over the course of about 10 years.
But for the citizens of places like Yemen, etc, I suppose there aren’t necessarily high-end psychologists on the case!
I think that closing the base as soon as possible really is key - it represents to so many people around the world a total abdication of the principles the United States was built on, and the data about its use as an Al-Qaeda recruitment tool (as propaganda, not on-base activities, obviously) is truly alarming. I would think there must be some way to bring the “detainees” onto US soil and “process them” (God, look at the language we pick up around stuff like this) there for either release or trial.
If some of them are found to be low-risk, but their countries still don’t want them back, I’d humbly suggest that it’s the US government’s responsibility to adopt them, rehabilitate them, and give them a home there.
This’ll be a long, hard mess to clean up, that’s for sure!
November 25th, 2008 at 9:24 pm
Now here’s the problem I see with this. While I TOTALLY get where you’re coming from, I think you’re assuming that when we close Guantanamo, we’re just going to gut the place and toss everything and everyone out onto the street to fend for themselves in one fell swoop. Were that the case, I’d say that you’re right. However, I’m willing to bet that part of Obama’s plans for closing Guantanamo include finding destinations for all of the detainees. It wouldn’t really be in keeping with the spirit of closing the place. Closing Gitmo is an attempt to show the world that we care enough to respect people and legal processes and just throwing inmates there out and shrugging our shoulders at them is completely opposite the original spirit of the whole thing. But that’s just what I think.
November 25th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
Cameron-
Thanks for your comment. I agree with you. What concerns me is that no plan has ever been articulated for short or long-term placement/handling of the people currently being held at Guantanamo. I don’t think–under an Obama administration–that we’ll be irresponsible about this. But what I want to know is what the plan is and why no one’s asking/talking about it.
November 25th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
Eva-
You’ve put your finger on a couple of problems that complicate this whole issue. First: assuming that the people cleared for release have been determined not to be terrorists, what has the effect of spending the past x# of years in US detention had upon them? That’s one question asked on the base: If they weren’t terrorists then, God knows they sure have reason to be now, right?
Second, closing the base is one sign of restoring values that, as you pointed out, the US was built upon but has largely abdicated. But if it’s only symbolic, not getting at larger, deeper, longer-lasting issues, then the sign is largely gestural and symbolic.
Finally, yes, the US should absolutely take responsibility for these men. But the people I spoke with on the base (both official and the military scuttlebut) say that will never happen. And if that’s the case, then where do they go?
November 25th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
Julie-
Seems perfectly reasonable to me that we should wonder about the Obama administration’s plans for the detainees. To me, though, it seems unlikely that Obama would come out NOW and state his intentions and plans regarding Gitmo, simply because there’s nothing he can do yet anyway. Better to wait and keep thinking on the issue than to speak up too early and risk having to go back on a stated plan due to some unforeseen complications.
As they say, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
November 25th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
In addition to being extraordinarily well written, I think Julie’s work shatters the mainstream “think speak” that an Obama Presidency will defuse honest and open debate among progressives.
I can only hope that there will be enough voices to raise these debates in popular forums. Paging Rachel Maddow…
November 25th, 2008 at 11:32 pm
Erik-
Glad to see you haven’t lost your political interest! What are you up to these days?
November 25th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
One other important point: the very notion of closing Guantanamo is a bit misleading. Americans have come to conflate Guantanamo the naval base with Guantanamo the detention facility, and so when we say “Close Guantanamo,” what, exactly, are we talking about? The detention facility? The naval base?
While most of the contacts I made on the base and at the detention facility agreed that the detention facility should be closed, the vast majority, including the base commander, the JTF commander, and other high officials I interviewed, said they are extremely doubtful that the US–regardless who is in the White House–will close Guantanamo the base. Strategically speaking, the locaion is far too important. So I’d further argue that precision in our argument is important.
Cameron, I agree that Obama need not lay out a point by point strategy. My point is that for many Americans and others who are concerned about Guantanamo, there’s not a lot of awareness about what the base actually is, what actually occurs there, and what closing the detention facility implies for everyone involved.
November 26th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Yikes. I read today that 5 Bosnian detainees have been in Gitmo for 7 years without charges… because a single anonymous source alleged that they had *intentions* of going to Afghanistan to fight.
So the only (questionable) witness to their “crime” isn’t even suggesting they had actually committed a crime yet?
Yikes. Yikes. Yikes.
November 26th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
One thing that hasn’t come up yet is the possibility of lawsuits and compensation payments. Up here, wrongful convictions run for about a million dollars per year of incarceration, if they can prove the “mistake” was actually malicious or inept prosecution. Should be interesting to see whether any detainees attempt to go that route once they have their lives back…
November 30th, 2008 at 8:49 am
Julie, there is a recent article regarding Sean Penns visit to Cuba. Raul Castro is asking to meet with Obama in Guantanamo to talk about the embargo and other matters. He is also offering medical assistance to the prisoners in Gitmo. I agree with you that the matter is far more complex than closing the base. It appears that Castro is not so anxious for the US to leave Cuba for military reasons which is a great departure from Fidel’s position. The Guantanamo prisoners will require a concerted effort by our government to truly investigate charges and make whole the prisoners who have been held without just cause. Perhaps there is a country that will take some of the prisoners…Cuba.
November 30th, 2008 at 10:58 am
Hi, Alina-
Thanks for your comment. I just read Sean Penn’s article in The Nation; the full version is supposed to come out tomorrow on Huffington Post. Though he was criticized vehemently by both Venezuelasns opposed to Chavez and Cubans opposed to Castro, I felt the article was interesting because it was the first foreign media interview with Raul since Obama’s election.
What Raul mentions in the interview regarding training exercises between the US and Cuban military at the border of the base is true; I spoke with several officials there who said the same thing. In fact, the relations are very cordial. Thanks so much for visiting!
November 30th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
Now here’s an angle on Guantanamo I haven’t heard before. Nice work, Julie!
A lot of things seem great (or not great) in the abstract. We could all benefit from a little more profound thinking.
December 3rd, 2008 at 12:05 am
Julie, I welcomed Sean Penns article and I am no longer tolerant of anyone who is not interested in a dialogue. There was also an article in the Miami Herald regarding Cubans who delivered signatures this year to the government demanding equal access to dollars, complaining about the dual economy in Cuba. Apparently 10,000 signatures were delivered last year and there are now more than 20,000 signatures. Clearly, if people are willing to sign their name and complain to the government there seems to be a big change taking place in Cuba and I believe that the US should take advantage of this opening and willingness of Raul to establish
a dialogue. I am hoping that Obama will spearhead some kind of rapprochement. I do not have much faith however on Hillary Clinton to engage in any kind of meaningful diplomacy.
Best wishes,
December 7th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Solid work as always. Stumbled!
December 9th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
Great article, Julie. Very thought provoking. Using the scenario you outlined it would indeed be very difficult to close Guantanamo. No one has considered the “human” factor.
There is much more to this than the War on Terror, and the dark totem that Guantanamo has become.
December 10th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
Julie, I found this article that may be of interest to you.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation/story/774678.html
December 13th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
See article below:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7781019.stm
There is an effort by Portugal to provide asylum to some of the prisorners.
December 22nd, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Yet another country willing to take some prisoners: Germany
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking-news/story/822795.html