The US government has not listened to the volley of protests and allegations, international and home-grown, about its prison camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba — that it is an abuse of human rights, that torture goes on there. Perhaps finally it will listen to the UN, which has just published a damning report calling for the prison’s immediate closure.
That may initially seem a hope too far. However, it is a fact that Guantanamo Bay shames the US and blows wide apart its efforts to claim the moral high ground in international politics. Prisoners captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the US war on terror were sent to the outpost in Cuba specifically because US civil law does not apply there. The White House has used this loophole to detain prisoners indefinitely there and treat them in a way that would not be allowed on US soil.
It shows an amazing contempt for the law by a government that makes much about how it is fighting the war on terror and bringing freedom and democracy to the world and that democracy is not just about elections and majorities, it is also about respecting the law. Yet when it comes to Guantanamo, it is a different story; the Bush administration uses it to openly flout its own laws. This destroys Washington’s credibility and make the war it is fighting all the more difficult to win.
Just two days ago, US troops caught an Iraqi Interior Ministry “death squad” as it was about to kill a Sunni victim. But there is no political dividend for the US among Iraqi Sunnis now able to prove that the Interior Ministry targets them. The accusation of hypocrisy, reinforced by the latest installment on the Abu Ghraib prison abuse saga, more than wipes out the good done.
Americans, understandably, take deep exception to complaints about their conduct from countries they consider to have far worse human rights records than them; it is gross hypocrisy they say. That is not the point. The US has to be judged by its own standards. That is what is so damaging about Guantanamo. It makes the US out to be dishonest. It is “do as I say” not “do as I do”.
The knee-jerk reaction against the UN report in the corridors of powers in Washington is not a particularly Bush-administration response; no US administration has been willing to allow the UN to tell it what or what not to do, nor would most other countries. But a little bit of common sense should tell the Bush administration that Guantanamo has to close. Together with Abu Ghraib and the allegations about prisoners being flown to countries where they can be held indefinitely and tortured, the prison corrodes belief in America’s integrity and intentions.
Washington understood this corrosion in the case of Abu Ghraib and the prisoner flights stories, moving quickly to punish those involved while also denying the reports. But nothing has yet been done about Guantanamo. It does not make sense. For its own good, America needs to close its Cuban jail and release the prisoners, charge them, or allow them to be extradited if they face charges elsewhere. Guantanamo poisons the US’ reputation.
