Guantanamo Bay Detention Centre Essay
Discuss the impact of the Guant́anamo Bay Detention Centre on the ‘War on Terror.’
The Guant́́anamo Bay Detention Centre in Cuba has had symbolic power in the ‘War on Terror’, both for the American administration, and more recently, for people who are opposed to its methods. For the US Government, it illustrated that the “War on Terror is a new kind of war."[1] This ‘new war’ needed a new set of rules to help “obtaining intelligence vital to the protection of untold thousands of American citizens”[2] from detainees initially labelled as “among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth.”[3] With this description there was an implied message to the American people, that, they had apprehended key figures from ‘Al Qaeda’ in Afghanistan, and that they were making progress in the ‘War on Terror.’ The power of Guant́anamo as a symbol for the humanitarian organisations and outspoken individuals opposed to the camps has been growing gradually year by year as more information has become available. For them it symbolises the apparent contradiction of the US policy, that is, simultaneously trying to spread ‘Freedom and Democracy’ around the world, whilst not adhering to normal rules of engagement and international human rights laws. These detentions in a “legal black hole”[4] has achieved its aim of “keeping them off the streets”[5] but, after falling under the spotlight of the world’s media, the impact of these blatant human rights violations and their unilateral approach to foreign policy has eroded much of the world’s post ‘9/11’ sympathy for America and will continue to alter people’s perceptions of the ‘War on Terror.’
In October, 2001, three days after ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ had officially started in Afghanistan, US President George W. Bush outlined in a prime-time news conference the nature of the enemy they needed to fight in this ‘War on Terror.’ "The attack took place on American soil, but it was an attack on the heart and soul of the civilized world. And the world has come together to fight a new and different war, the first, and we hope the only one, of the 21st century. A war against all those who seek to export terror, and a war against those governments that support or shelter them." This coming together of the world after ‘9/11’ did not last long. It wasn’t the prospect of a “long war”[6] against such a fundamentally subjective ememy but the advent of places like Guant́anamo that led people to think that the U.S. had “dissipated the goodwill out of its arrogance and incompetence. A lot of people who would never ever have considered themselves anti-American are now very distressed with the United States.”[7]
By January, 2002, the American Government was already exporting suspected ‘Al Qaeda and Taliban’ prisoners they had detained there, Pakistan and elsewhere to the newly expanded Guant́anamo Bay Detention Centre in Cuba. In the words of Donald Rumsfeld the US Secretary for Defence on 21st January 2002; “These people are committed terrorists, we are keeping them off the streets and out of the airlines and out of the nuclear power plants and out of the ports across this country and across other countries.” Apart from protecting the American people from the detainees held in Cuba, they were also said to be “developing information of enormous value to the nation, enormously valuble intelligence” and that they “think of Guant́anamo as the interrogation battle lab of the war against terror.”[8]
Two months earlier, on November 13, 2001, the US president, George Bush, had issued a Presidential Military Order, as the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Services, outlining that suspected ‘Al Qaeda’ terrorists could be tried by special military commissions, and that they would not be classed as Prisoners of War, but as ‘Enemy Combatants.’ Some were surprised when told that this term also was applicaple to all the detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. Not long after they arrived it was said that due to this ‘Enemy combatant’ classification “they do not have any rights under the Geneva Conventions.”[9] The detainees were also deprived of access to US federal law and this left them, as the English Court of Appeal said in 2004, in a ‘legal black hole.’ This ‘new’ approach was later outlined in some detail in a leaked memo; “As Commander-in-Chief, the president has the constitutional authority to odrer interrogations of enemy combatants to gain intelligence information about the plans of the enemy.”[10] This new approach of classing anyone, by decree of the president, as ‘Enemy combatants,’ gives the administration their new set of rules, for this ‘new kind of war.’
The western media response to the first pictures of the detainees arriving at Guant́anamo was unambiguously negative. The broadcast of images of the detainees arriving at Camp X-Ray shackled together, kneeling in the dirt, wearing blacked out goggles, orange jump suits and taped-on gloves was met with a combination of shock and revulsion around the world. It illustrates how much the mood of the world media had changed in the few months after 9/11. Seeing the civilian population in America attacked allegedly by Islamic terrorists temporarily softened, even the most critical opponents of American foreign policy. However these pictures were met with instant indignation from elements of the media and human rights groups. The contradiction of publicly parading pictures of detainees (which could be seen as a direct violation of the Geneva Convention on Human Rights) whilst trying to win the battle for ‘Hearts and Minds’ in the ‘War on Terror’ was lost on the American administration. The negative publicity the pictures created worldwide did lead to the admission by Donald Rumsfeld that allowing the release of the pictures was “probably unfortunate.”
The response from the developing world, and in particular the Arab world, was even less diverse and even more negative. The image of scores of Muslim men being incarcerated in what could be seen as, a ‘concentration camp,’ with no legal representation or access to the Red Cross caused a new wave of anti-American sentiment in the region. These images and subsequent photos from the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq provided ample ammunition for pamphleteers, cartoonists and the broadcast media in the Arab world to highlight what they see as contradictions in the ‘moral’ position of US Policy. There have also been oblique references to Guantanamo in the worrying and more recent speit of decapitations, with the video footage showing pictures of western hostages in Iraq being dressed in orange ‘Guant́anamo style’ jump suits before being beheaded.
The negative impact of these images and the immoral practices that came out of Abu Ghraib has undoubtedly worked as a recruitment tool for ‘Al Qaeda’ and any organisation opposed the US administration. Islamic fundamentalist websites are saturated with images and news of the human rights abuses, excessive use of military power and use of certain banned weapons by the American administration and its allies. The ‘Al Jazeera’ news station based in Doha in Qatar has become a target for the administration as it broadcasts in Arabic, exercises its own editorial control and doesn’t conform to the usual usage of erroneous and misleading language like most western media outlets. It also has correspondents on the ground in dangerous places like Afghanistan and Iraq sending out real-time news of developments on the ground that the administration would like to control. In both Afghanistan and Iraq mistakes were made by the Americans military by ‘accidentally’ bombing the ‘Al Jazeera’ news desks even though they had the GPS co-ordinates. These may have indeed have been accidents, but it has undoubtedly been seen in the Arab world as an attempt to silence uncomplimentary news. This also is seen as a contradiction in American policy, the media in the West is meant to be ‘free’ to tell the truth, but a news station not conforming to ‘the official line’ of the US government could be accidentally targeted by US bombs.
The new approach to the classification of Enemy Combatants outlined above and the National Security Strategy of September 2002[11] and its implementation in the ‘War on Terror’ have been regarded as important developments in international relations. The contradiction again is implicit in the acceptance of the usefulness of these doctrines whilst accepting that it cannot be “a universal principle available to every nation.”[12] This is in stark contrast to what Noam Chomsky describes as “the most elementary moral truism, the principle of universality.”[13] What would be the American administration’s response be to US citizens or spies been arrested, transported to, and imprisoned indefinitely without charge in a foreign prison? This concept of ‘universality’ is also explicitly mentioned in the preamble of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights when talking about the responsibilities of member states to “secure their universal and effective recognition and observance.”
Of the 650+ detainees that have been held at the Guant́anamo Bay Detention Centre to date, less than ten prisoners were ever charged with any offence. This extremely low conviction rate appears at odds with the administration’s claims that these people were ’among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth.’ The disparity between the claims of the administration and the conviction rate has been explained by some as a result of intelligence screening processes in Afghanistan and elsewhere being “flawed and inadequate, made still worse by the use of woefully poor and virtually untrained translators.”[14] This contradiction between the description of the detainees being the “worst of the worst”[15] and the low conviction rate and the poor intelligence techniques used to determine their involvement in terrorism reflect badly on the administration’s use of its power and judgement in this ‘War on Terror.’
The American administration claimed that although the Geneva Convention did not apply to the detainees at Guant́anamo, as it was, “written for a different kind of war”[16]; their treatment was “in the spirit of Geneva.”[17] This came around at the same time that the administration was moving away from the leaked memo (mentioned above) from 1st August 2002, which was legal advice from the Department of Justice on the legality of certain interrogation techniques in relation to international law. This document redefined torture as having to cause “death, organ failure or the permanent impairment of a significant body function.”[18] It also proposed that any American charged with torturing a ‘terrorist’ suspect can use, ‘self-defence,’ as a legal position due to the ‘9/11’ atrocities. The credible depiction of life in the camp from some of the released detainees suggest that practices such as sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, exposure to heat/cold, shackling in ‘stress’ positions were all used in combination. These methods we described by the International Committee of the Red Cross as ‘tantamount to torture.’
The previous US administration had been said to have taken “the lead in eliminating human rights protections”[19] so it should be no shock to hear this administration describing the Geneva Conventions as being “quaint.”[20] Article 5 of the UD states: “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” The myths created around these detainees fuelled the incorrect assumption that the people they picked up in Afghanistan, Pakistan or anywhere else in the region were predominantly ‘Al Qaeda’ operatives. When they got no tangible results from the first wave of interrogations they used the ‘new’ definitions of interrogation technique thinking that would get a better return. However, if you want to charge and convict the detainees of any crime, you need evidence, but all respectable courts will not permit confessions under duress. This realisation was articulated by Lieutenant-Commander Swift; “Even if we did get some intelligence of value it wasn’t worth it. Let’s suppose that among those 600 detainees, there are some bad guys. The likelihood now is that, eventually, they’ll go free. If we’d handled this differently, this wouldn’t have been the case.”[21]
The campaign to get Guant́anamo closed has been gaining momentum over the past few years. On June 28 2004 the US Supreme Court decided that the detainees could have access to federal law to challenge their detention. There has also being a build-up of influential people speaking out even more unequivocally against the camp. Most detainees have now been freed but, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has said that the United States must shut down the Guant́anamo Bay prison camp "as soon as is possible."[22] And the British Attorney General Lord Goldsmith has called it a “symbol of injustice”[23] and that it would be ‘right’ for it to close down. Even George Bush has now said that he would like to see “all the detainees charged and the camp closed”[24] – but what damage has already been done to the perception of America’s role in the War on Terror?
The Guant́anamo detention centre has had mixed success in achieving its own stated aims. It has kept the detainees ‘off the streets’, but it is intrinsically less clear if it helped in ’obtaining intelligence vital to the protection of untold thousands of American citizens.’ If, like administration officials have said, a “key element of our offensive strategy against terrorism, is to wage a battle of ideas to impede recruitment and support,”[25] then with this they have had even less success. It is in this ‘battle of ideas’ that Guant́anamo impacts most in the ‘War on Terror.’ It highlights the hypocrisy of the US policies. An official who worked at the camp said the problem was that “we were supposed to be the good guys, but at Gitmo, we aren’t.”[26] The men detained were often not affiliated in any way with either ‘Al Qaeda’ or the Taliban and have been treated in ways that leads to Guant́anamo being seen as an “icon of oppression”[27] throughout the world. There is evidence that at Guant́anamo, the US have broken the Geneva Conventions and reneged on its ratification of the UN 1985 Torture treaty. Its foreign policy has highlighted their unilaterally approach and its all justified with the single explanation that they are ‘protecting the American people.’ Winston Churchill the British World War Two Prime Minister who ‘protected’ the British people against the rise of Hitler’s Nazi Germany said; “The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and to particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian governments whether Nazi or Communist.”[28]
The Guant́anamo Bay Detention Centre now symbolises; contradictions in U.S. policy, suggestions of torture, human rights abuses, a lack of ‘universality’ in policy, a misuse of power and ill thought-out and inadequate vetting procedures for suspected terrorists. This has all worked to show that mottos like that of Guant́anamo, “Honour Bound to Defend Freedom,”[29] have now lost their validity. If the camp doesn’t hold the most senior members of ‘Al Qaeda’ that they have detained, then, where are they? If places like the Guant́anamo Bay Detention Centre attract so much media attention, what will be the effect of further revelations of ‘extraordinary renditions’ and U.S. ran secret prisons in other countries? The impact of Guant́anamo as a symbol is important because it is a microcosm of the ‘War on Terror’ and if lessons were learned from losing that ‘battle of ideas’ then ultimate success may not be so allusive.
Sebastian O’Brien
May 2006.
[1] Alberto Gonzales- Memo to Bush 25/01/02
[2] William J Haynes- Memo to Donald Rumsfeld ‘Wall Street Journal’ 06/03/03
[3] Donald Rumsfeld- Speaking from Camp X-Ray in Cuba 27/01/02
[4] English Court of Appeal Ruling 06/11/02
[5] Donald Rumsfeld- Speech 21/01/02
[6] Washington Post- ‘Ability to Wage 'Long War' Is Key To Pentagon Plan’ Ann Scott Tyson 04/02/06
[7] Meghnad Desai- Director of the Institute for Global Governance at the London School of Economics
[8] Major-General Geoffrey D. Miller- Pg 81 ‘Guantanamo’ by David Rose 2004
[9] Donald Rumsfeld- Guantanamo’ David Rose
[10] Leaked US Department of Justice Memo or ‘Bybee’ Memo 22/01/02
[11] National Security Strategy 17/11/2002
[12] Henry Kissinger- Chicago Tribune 11/08/02
[13] ‘Hegemony or Survival’ Noam Chomsky Pg 239
[14] ‘Guantanamo’ David Rose
[15] Donald Rumsfeld
[16] Alberto Gonzales- Memo to Bush 25/01/02
[17] Major McCann ‘US Afgan Prisoner Treatment Decried’ Asim Khan ‘Al Jazeera’ Online 07/02/05
[18] Leaked ‘Bybee’ Memo
[19] Human Rights Watch World Report 1997
[20] Alberto Gonzales- Memo to Bush 25/01/02
[21] ‘Guantamo’- David Rose
[22] Washington Post ‘Military Prison’s Closure Is Urged’ Colum Lynch 20/05/06
[23] AP 10/05/06
[24] Guardian Unlimited ‘Close the detention facility’ David Fickling 19/05/06 quote date 08/05/06
[25] Douglas J Feith ‘Strategy in the War on Terror’ 07/02/03
[26] Lieutenant-Commander Swift- ‘Guantanamo’- David Rose
[27] ‘Guantanamo’- David Rose
[28] Winston Churchill- ‘Hegemony or Survival’ Noam Chomsky
[29] ‘Guantanamo’- David Rose
The Guant́́anamo Bay Detention Centre in Cuba has had symbolic power in the ‘War on Terror’, both for the American administration, and more recently, for people who are opposed to its methods. For the US Government, it illustrated that the “War on Terror is a new kind of war."[1] This ‘new war’ needed a new set of rules to help “obtaining intelligence vital to the protection of untold thousands of American citizens”[2] from detainees initially labelled as “among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth.”[3] With this description there was an implied message to the American people, that, they had apprehended key figures from ‘Al Qaeda’ in Afghanistan, and that they were making progress in the ‘War on Terror.’ The power of Guant́anamo as a symbol for the humanitarian organisations and outspoken individuals opposed to the camps has been growing gradually year by year as more information has become available. For them it symbolises the apparent contradiction of the US policy, that is, simultaneously trying to spread ‘Freedom and Democracy’ around the world, whilst not adhering to normal rules of engagement and international human rights laws. These detentions in a “legal black hole”[4] has achieved its aim of “keeping them off the streets”[5] but, after falling under the spotlight of the world’s media, the impact of these blatant human rights violations and their unilateral approach to foreign policy has eroded much of the world’s post ‘9/11’ sympathy for America and will continue to alter people’s perceptions of the ‘War on Terror.’
In October, 2001, three days after ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ had officially started in Afghanistan, US President George W. Bush outlined in a prime-time news conference the nature of the enemy they needed to fight in this ‘War on Terror.’ "The attack took place on American soil, but it was an attack on the heart and soul of the civilized world. And the world has come together to fight a new and different war, the first, and we hope the only one, of the 21st century. A war against all those who seek to export terror, and a war against those governments that support or shelter them." This coming together of the world after ‘9/11’ did not last long. It wasn’t the prospect of a “long war”[6] against such a fundamentally subjective ememy but the advent of places like Guant́anamo that led people to think that the U.S. had “dissipated the goodwill out of its arrogance and incompetence. A lot of people who would never ever have considered themselves anti-American are now very distressed with the United States.”[7]
By January, 2002, the American Government was already exporting suspected ‘Al Qaeda and Taliban’ prisoners they had detained there, Pakistan and elsewhere to the newly expanded Guant́anamo Bay Detention Centre in Cuba. In the words of Donald Rumsfeld the US Secretary for Defence on 21st January 2002; “These people are committed terrorists, we are keeping them off the streets and out of the airlines and out of the nuclear power plants and out of the ports across this country and across other countries.” Apart from protecting the American people from the detainees held in Cuba, they were also said to be “developing information of enormous value to the nation, enormously valuble intelligence” and that they “think of Guant́anamo as the interrogation battle lab of the war against terror.”[8]
Two months earlier, on November 13, 2001, the US president, George Bush, had issued a Presidential Military Order, as the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Services, outlining that suspected ‘Al Qaeda’ terrorists could be tried by special military commissions, and that they would not be classed as Prisoners of War, but as ‘Enemy Combatants.’ Some were surprised when told that this term also was applicaple to all the detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. Not long after they arrived it was said that due to this ‘Enemy combatant’ classification “they do not have any rights under the Geneva Conventions.”[9] The detainees were also deprived of access to US federal law and this left them, as the English Court of Appeal said in 2004, in a ‘legal black hole.’ This ‘new’ approach was later outlined in some detail in a leaked memo; “As Commander-in-Chief, the president has the constitutional authority to odrer interrogations of enemy combatants to gain intelligence information about the plans of the enemy.”[10] This new approach of classing anyone, by decree of the president, as ‘Enemy combatants,’ gives the administration their new set of rules, for this ‘new kind of war.’
The western media response to the first pictures of the detainees arriving at Guant́anamo was unambiguously negative. The broadcast of images of the detainees arriving at Camp X-Ray shackled together, kneeling in the dirt, wearing blacked out goggles, orange jump suits and taped-on gloves was met with a combination of shock and revulsion around the world. It illustrates how much the mood of the world media had changed in the few months after 9/11. Seeing the civilian population in America attacked allegedly by Islamic terrorists temporarily softened, even the most critical opponents of American foreign policy. However these pictures were met with instant indignation from elements of the media and human rights groups. The contradiction of publicly parading pictures of detainees (which could be seen as a direct violation of the Geneva Convention on Human Rights) whilst trying to win the battle for ‘Hearts and Minds’ in the ‘War on Terror’ was lost on the American administration. The negative publicity the pictures created worldwide did lead to the admission by Donald Rumsfeld that allowing the release of the pictures was “probably unfortunate.”
The response from the developing world, and in particular the Arab world, was even less diverse and even more negative. The image of scores of Muslim men being incarcerated in what could be seen as, a ‘concentration camp,’ with no legal representation or access to the Red Cross caused a new wave of anti-American sentiment in the region. These images and subsequent photos from the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq provided ample ammunition for pamphleteers, cartoonists and the broadcast media in the Arab world to highlight what they see as contradictions in the ‘moral’ position of US Policy. There have also been oblique references to Guantanamo in the worrying and more recent speit of decapitations, with the video footage showing pictures of western hostages in Iraq being dressed in orange ‘Guant́anamo style’ jump suits before being beheaded.
The negative impact of these images and the immoral practices that came out of Abu Ghraib has undoubtedly worked as a recruitment tool for ‘Al Qaeda’ and any organisation opposed the US administration. Islamic fundamentalist websites are saturated with images and news of the human rights abuses, excessive use of military power and use of certain banned weapons by the American administration and its allies. The ‘Al Jazeera’ news station based in Doha in Qatar has become a target for the administration as it broadcasts in Arabic, exercises its own editorial control and doesn’t conform to the usual usage of erroneous and misleading language like most western media outlets. It also has correspondents on the ground in dangerous places like Afghanistan and Iraq sending out real-time news of developments on the ground that the administration would like to control. In both Afghanistan and Iraq mistakes were made by the Americans military by ‘accidentally’ bombing the ‘Al Jazeera’ news desks even though they had the GPS co-ordinates. These may have indeed have been accidents, but it has undoubtedly been seen in the Arab world as an attempt to silence uncomplimentary news. This also is seen as a contradiction in American policy, the media in the West is meant to be ‘free’ to tell the truth, but a news station not conforming to ‘the official line’ of the US government could be accidentally targeted by US bombs.
The new approach to the classification of Enemy Combatants outlined above and the National Security Strategy of September 2002[11] and its implementation in the ‘War on Terror’ have been regarded as important developments in international relations. The contradiction again is implicit in the acceptance of the usefulness of these doctrines whilst accepting that it cannot be “a universal principle available to every nation.”[12] This is in stark contrast to what Noam Chomsky describes as “the most elementary moral truism, the principle of universality.”[13] What would be the American administration’s response be to US citizens or spies been arrested, transported to, and imprisoned indefinitely without charge in a foreign prison? This concept of ‘universality’ is also explicitly mentioned in the preamble of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights when talking about the responsibilities of member states to “secure their universal and effective recognition and observance.”
Of the 650+ detainees that have been held at the Guant́anamo Bay Detention Centre to date, less than ten prisoners were ever charged with any offence. This extremely low conviction rate appears at odds with the administration’s claims that these people were ’among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth.’ The disparity between the claims of the administration and the conviction rate has been explained by some as a result of intelligence screening processes in Afghanistan and elsewhere being “flawed and inadequate, made still worse by the use of woefully poor and virtually untrained translators.”[14] This contradiction between the description of the detainees being the “worst of the worst”[15] and the low conviction rate and the poor intelligence techniques used to determine their involvement in terrorism reflect badly on the administration’s use of its power and judgement in this ‘War on Terror.’
The American administration claimed that although the Geneva Convention did not apply to the detainees at Guant́anamo, as it was, “written for a different kind of war”[16]; their treatment was “in the spirit of Geneva.”[17] This came around at the same time that the administration was moving away from the leaked memo (mentioned above) from 1st August 2002, which was legal advice from the Department of Justice on the legality of certain interrogation techniques in relation to international law. This document redefined torture as having to cause “death, organ failure or the permanent impairment of a significant body function.”[18] It also proposed that any American charged with torturing a ‘terrorist’ suspect can use, ‘self-defence,’ as a legal position due to the ‘9/11’ atrocities. The credible depiction of life in the camp from some of the released detainees suggest that practices such as sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, exposure to heat/cold, shackling in ‘stress’ positions were all used in combination. These methods we described by the International Committee of the Red Cross as ‘tantamount to torture.’
The previous US administration had been said to have taken “the lead in eliminating human rights protections”[19] so it should be no shock to hear this administration describing the Geneva Conventions as being “quaint.”[20] Article 5 of the UD states: “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” The myths created around these detainees fuelled the incorrect assumption that the people they picked up in Afghanistan, Pakistan or anywhere else in the region were predominantly ‘Al Qaeda’ operatives. When they got no tangible results from the first wave of interrogations they used the ‘new’ definitions of interrogation technique thinking that would get a better return. However, if you want to charge and convict the detainees of any crime, you need evidence, but all respectable courts will not permit confessions under duress. This realisation was articulated by Lieutenant-Commander Swift; “Even if we did get some intelligence of value it wasn’t worth it. Let’s suppose that among those 600 detainees, there are some bad guys. The likelihood now is that, eventually, they’ll go free. If we’d handled this differently, this wouldn’t have been the case.”[21]
The campaign to get Guant́anamo closed has been gaining momentum over the past few years. On June 28 2004 the US Supreme Court decided that the detainees could have access to federal law to challenge their detention. There has also being a build-up of influential people speaking out even more unequivocally against the camp. Most detainees have now been freed but, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has said that the United States must shut down the Guant́anamo Bay prison camp "as soon as is possible."[22] And the British Attorney General Lord Goldsmith has called it a “symbol of injustice”[23] and that it would be ‘right’ for it to close down. Even George Bush has now said that he would like to see “all the detainees charged and the camp closed”[24] – but what damage has already been done to the perception of America’s role in the War on Terror?
The Guant́anamo detention centre has had mixed success in achieving its own stated aims. It has kept the detainees ‘off the streets’, but it is intrinsically less clear if it helped in ’obtaining intelligence vital to the protection of untold thousands of American citizens.’ If, like administration officials have said, a “key element of our offensive strategy against terrorism, is to wage a battle of ideas to impede recruitment and support,”[25] then with this they have had even less success. It is in this ‘battle of ideas’ that Guant́anamo impacts most in the ‘War on Terror.’ It highlights the hypocrisy of the US policies. An official who worked at the camp said the problem was that “we were supposed to be the good guys, but at Gitmo, we aren’t.”[26] The men detained were often not affiliated in any way with either ‘Al Qaeda’ or the Taliban and have been treated in ways that leads to Guant́anamo being seen as an “icon of oppression”[27] throughout the world. There is evidence that at Guant́anamo, the US have broken the Geneva Conventions and reneged on its ratification of the UN 1985 Torture treaty. Its foreign policy has highlighted their unilaterally approach and its all justified with the single explanation that they are ‘protecting the American people.’ Winston Churchill the British World War Two Prime Minister who ‘protected’ the British people against the rise of Hitler’s Nazi Germany said; “The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and to particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian governments whether Nazi or Communist.”[28]
The Guant́anamo Bay Detention Centre now symbolises; contradictions in U.S. policy, suggestions of torture, human rights abuses, a lack of ‘universality’ in policy, a misuse of power and ill thought-out and inadequate vetting procedures for suspected terrorists. This has all worked to show that mottos like that of Guant́anamo, “Honour Bound to Defend Freedom,”[29] have now lost their validity. If the camp doesn’t hold the most senior members of ‘Al Qaeda’ that they have detained, then, where are they? If places like the Guant́anamo Bay Detention Centre attract so much media attention, what will be the effect of further revelations of ‘extraordinary renditions’ and U.S. ran secret prisons in other countries? The impact of Guant́anamo as a symbol is important because it is a microcosm of the ‘War on Terror’ and if lessons were learned from losing that ‘battle of ideas’ then ultimate success may not be so allusive.
Sebastian O’Brien
May 2006.
[1] Alberto Gonzales- Memo to Bush 25/01/02
[2] William J Haynes- Memo to Donald Rumsfeld ‘Wall Street Journal’ 06/03/03
[3] Donald Rumsfeld- Speaking from Camp X-Ray in Cuba 27/01/02
[4] English Court of Appeal Ruling 06/11/02
[5] Donald Rumsfeld- Speech 21/01/02
[6] Washington Post- ‘Ability to Wage 'Long War' Is Key To Pentagon Plan’ Ann Scott Tyson 04/02/06
[7] Meghnad Desai- Director of the Institute for Global Governance at the London School of Economics
[8] Major-General Geoffrey D. Miller- Pg 81 ‘Guantanamo’ by David Rose 2004
[9] Donald Rumsfeld- Guantanamo’ David Rose
[10] Leaked US Department of Justice Memo or ‘Bybee’ Memo 22/01/02
[11] National Security Strategy 17/11/2002
[12] Henry Kissinger- Chicago Tribune 11/08/02
[13] ‘Hegemony or Survival’ Noam Chomsky Pg 239
[14] ‘Guantanamo’ David Rose
[15] Donald Rumsfeld
[16] Alberto Gonzales- Memo to Bush 25/01/02
[17] Major McCann ‘US Afgan Prisoner Treatment Decried’ Asim Khan ‘Al Jazeera’ Online 07/02/05
[18] Leaked ‘Bybee’ Memo
[19] Human Rights Watch World Report 1997
[20] Alberto Gonzales- Memo to Bush 25/01/02
[21] ‘Guantamo’- David Rose
[22] Washington Post ‘Military Prison’s Closure Is Urged’ Colum Lynch 20/05/06
[23] AP 10/05/06
[24] Guardian Unlimited ‘Close the detention facility’ David Fickling 19/05/06 quote date 08/05/06
[25] Douglas J Feith ‘Strategy in the War on Terror’ 07/02/03
[26] Lieutenant-Commander Swift- ‘Guantanamo’- David Rose
[27] ‘Guantanamo’- David Rose
[28] Winston Churchill- ‘Hegemony or Survival’ Noam Chomsky
[29] ‘Guantanamo’- David Rose
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