The stink of the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, will cling to America for a very long time no matter when it is closed. But thanks to the latest congressional action, the faint hopes that President Obama's January 2009 vow to shutter the prison might actually happen have been dashed again. By Congress again. The prison will remain open for some while longer, perhaps another dozen years added to the dozen it's already been in existence.
Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, for another month the Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told the media Monday night that the annual defense authorization bill will not include language the Obama administration had requested that would allow Guantánamo's closure:
In its version of the defense bill in May, the Senate Armed Services Committee included a provision that would authorize the transfer of terror suspects to U.S. soil "for detention, trial and incarceration, subject to stringent security measures and legal protections, once the president has submitted a plan to Congress for closing Guantanamo and Congress has had an opportunity to vote to disapprove that plan under expedited procedures."
The House version of the defense bill prohibited the transfer to U.S. soil, and Republican and Democratic lawmakers who have repeatedly and successfully fought White House efforts to move detainees prevailed in the final version of the defense bill.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the move could prompt a veto from Obama. That seems unlikely even though one of his advisers who opposed transferring Guantánamo prisoners to the U.S.—Chuck Hagel—will no longer be around to offer his 2 cents in the matter.
The prison was established in 2002 to hold suspected terrorists. It was quite the scheme. The Guantánamo site was leased at gunpoint for a coaling station in 1903 after the U.S. beat Spain in a brief war that also brought Puerto Rico and the Philippines under Washington's control. The lease was renewed in 1938. Each year since, the United States has sent a pitiful $4,085 check for what was soon transformed into a small but full-fledged naval base. Since 1959, the Cuban government has refused the check. Just as with the prison that would be built more than six decades later, there is no expiration date on that lease.
From the Bush administration's viewpoint, Guantánamo was perfect. Although it is Cuban territory, Cuban law would not apply. And since it's not U.S. territory, U.S. law would not either. Or so went the reasoning of Bush's lawyers. Very convenient for the guys who were running a rendition, torture, and secret prisons operation with the assistance of compliant or intimidated nations around the world. The Supreme Court jerked on the reins a bit, but not nearly enough.
There's more about this below the strands of orange razorwire.
As of Tuesday, 142 men remain incarcerated at Guantánamo, many of them having been held there for nearly 13 years without trial. Seventy-three have been cleared for release. But finding countries that will accept them is nearly as difficult as getting Congress to approve transfers to the U.S., even when those transfers would incarcerate them in maximum security prisons:
Although just 13 detainees have been released so far this year, seven were transferred last month alone—three to Georgia, two to Slovakia, one was repatriated to Saudi Arabia, and another to Kuwait. Since Obama has taken office, about 100 men have been released.
“We’re hearing that there are at least a dozen more transfers in the next month or so,” said David Remes, the attorney who represents detainees from Yemen.
One big problem is that 54 of those cleared for release are Yemeni. The U.S. has held back from releasing Yemenis to Yemen for fear that that nation's instability will not allow the government to keep tabs on the returnees that some critics say will join jihadis there or elsewhere in the Middle East.
Guantánamo. Two evils in one. Our nation's imperialist past, denied, glossed over, rationalized and justified under American "exceptionalism" and, contradictorially, by its self-interested Manifest Destiny. And America's imperialist present—backed both by a core military budget that, despite Obama-era cuts, is larger in inflation-adjusted terms than the defense budgets during the Vietnam War and slated to grow still larger over the next decade. This plus a law that permits indefinite detention of anyone executively deemed to be a terror suspect.
No new prisoners will probably ever be sent to Guantánamo. But its unending presence as a naval base and precedence as stolen foothold are a stain our leaders would excoriate were any nation not a U.S. ally to operate such an facility on seized foreign territory.
Despite the longevity of the Castro regime, it certainly is nearing its end, and what better way to begin building fair relations between sovereigns than to acknowledge that prying Guantánamo out of Cuban hands more than a century ago and using it in a criminal manner is no way for 21st century nations to interact. In other words, the United States should behave in the way that our leaders so often tell other leaders, including Cuban leaders, to behave.
But short of massive pressure from the American people, that closure is not going to happen any more than dismantling most of the hundreds of U.S. bases overseas will happen this year or the next two. The question is: Will it ever?
