Thursday, April 29, 2004
Unless the Supreme Court of the United States says otherwise, the Bush administration has created a no man's land at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in which hundreds of men, and a few boys, could be held for years -- decades even -- without ever being charged with a criminal offense.
This is no accident. It is a cynical plan -- and has been from its earliest days -- to use the unique status of Guantanamo, which is a U.S. base sitting on the shore of a hostile nation.
Because it is not U.S. territory, U.S. law does not apply there, the administration claims. But, obviously, Cuban law does not apply, since the administration would scoff if a Cuban court were to claim jurisdiction over the prisoners.
The administration has gone even further, denying any international jurisdiction regarding the prisoners. The same administration that stresses daily that the United States is in a war against terrorism, insists that the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war don't apply to the Guantanamo inmates.
Danger ahead
This is a dangerous game that the United States is playing.
To be sure, it is the responsibility of the administration to protect the American people from terrorists. But it is also the responsibility of the administration to uphold the law and to set an example of how a free nation is supposed to operate.
President Bush is fond of saying that free societies are peaceful societies. That is a bedrock principle in rationalizing the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Replace a brutal dictator with an open and democratic society and terrorist cells will whither and die.
Is it possible to postulate that principle with a straight face while setting up a lawless enclave such as the Guantanamo detention camps? We wouldn't think so.
Life sentences
Senior U.S. defense officials told The New York Times in February that they are planning to keep many of the Guantanamo detainees there for many years, maybe "indefinitely," which presumably means for life.
The maximum-security prison at Guantanamo now holds 650 prisoners, mostly captured in Afghanistan and alleged to be hard-core Taliban and Al-Qaida fighters. Clearly not all of them are. A 15-year-old Afghan released a while ago after 14 months was a simple farm boy grateful for the good treatment and an opportunity to learn how to read and write.
For whatever reason, the screening of the prisoners, some of them there two years, has gone slowly; only about 80 have been returned to their home countries. The administration says it will release prisoners only after it is convinced they have no further intelligence value and are no further danger to Americans, but how, or if, this process works is shrouded in secrecy.
The administration has a still-evolving plan for military tribunals to try some of the prisoners, but none has yet. And officials have said that if a prisoner were convicted by a tribunal and served a sentence, they might still hold the prisoner indefinitely. This would reduce the tribunal to a judicial charade.
The case is now before the Supreme Court, which is this nation's best hope for showing the rest of the world that Americans still maintain a healthy respect for the rule of law.