If the discussions currently under way in the US Defense Department do indeed lead to the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention center, it is unlikely to be because the Bush administration has had a change of heart about the legal status of this limbo prison and the torture of inmates in complete contravention of the Geneva Conventions.
No doubt it will be because the White House simply wants to blunt a legal challenge currently being mounted in the US Supreme Court by lawyers acting on behalf of detainees. The question now is: If the detention center is closed, will the prisoners be moved to US territory and thus the jurisdiction of US courts? Or will some other ridiculous halfway house be conjured up to keep them away from due process but in a subtly different way that would undermine the present Supreme Court action?
The Bush administration knows that once the remaining 320 detainees can claim the protection of US justice, the full extent of the torture that they have been subjected to will become graphically clear in detailed testimony. Americans, who perhaps once responded to the notion that terror secrets had to be uncovered in any possible way because their country faced a clear and present danger, are increasingly uncomfortable with the fact that torture such as “waterboarding” have been carried out in their name.
The trickle of releases from Guantanamo continued this week with another 11 prisoners being sent home, eight to Afghanistan and three to Jordan. If Guantanamo was designed to hold “hardened and dangerous terrorists,” why is it that so many have been freed after up to six years incarceration? And if the remaining detainees do really represent a hard core of Al-Qaeda operatives, can they not now be brought before US courts and charged with terror crimes?
The problem is that Guantanamo is itself a crime, not just against the detainees, regardless of their guilt or innocence, but against every decent civilized standard that Bush claimed he was fighting to protect. The harsh truth is that this president, whose poll ratings are now the lowest of any incumbent since records began, has so bungled his war on terror that he has actually made the world safe for terror. Strategically, he plunged Iraq into chaos and gave Al-Qaeda a shooting gallery beyond its wildest imaginings. The simple truth is that the crimes of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have given the terrorists major propaganda victories.
Yet still Bush ploughs on, insisting that extreme dangers call for extreme measures. The president who destroyed Iraq so it could enjoy the benefits of democracy is quite beyond appreciating that if he uses the same brutal, illegal and ruthless methods as the terrorists, he is no better than a terrorist himself. It may come hard to a man who has clambered to the top of the greasy pole of US democratic politics, but in his dirty war on terror, Bush has betrayed virtually all the principles that maintain his great office.
