For a president who seeks a new beginning with the Muslim world, Guantánamo is an obstacle that must be removed, said The Daily Telegraph in an editorial yesterday. Excerpts:
The administration now has 120 days to decide what it is going to do with all the inmates when, as Obama has pledged, the center is closed. But it will not be an easy task, nor can it involve the release of all the detainees, some of whom are held for their alleged role in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The relatives of those who died on that day are right to demand that the interests of justice are also served. If there is evidence against some of the detainees of involvement in 9/11 they should be tried in the normal way in America’s criminal courts.
But there are others who defy any ordinary definition of a “criminal”. One of those detained is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, an Al-Qaeda leader who has confessed to no fewer than 31 terrorist attacks and plots. Is he an enemy combatant or a criminal? The waters have been muddied by politicians, including David Miliband, the British foreign secretary, who wants us to believe this is not a “war” on terrorism, despite the deployment of thousands of troops to prosecute it. Other detainees captured on the battlefield far from their own homes have legitimately been held as prisoners of war. The argument that they were all visiting friends or were unwittingly caught up in the conflict does not hold water.
The problem, however, is that in a “normal” war, prisoners go home once peace is attained, as a result of defeat, surrender or armistice. This is where Miliband’s point had some resonance: When does a “war on terror” end? Prisoners cannot be held forever.
Those who think Obama’s arrival in the White House changes these realities are likely to be disappointed. It is precisely because of these conundrums that Guantánamo has become a byword for an absence of due process and of arbitrary executive action.
President Obama has adopted the right language when talking about the need to close Guantánamo; but the problem is no less intractable now that he is office than it was under his predecessor.
