Five New Reasons (and One Old One) Why We Must Close Guantanamo Now

By Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Posted June 6, 2009.

"That's the most harmful part of this," Glenn Greenwald wrote last month. "It trains the other half of the citizenry to now become fervent admirers and defenders of some rather extreme presidential 'war powers.'"

If the USA Today/Gallup poll numbers are to be believed, it's more than half now.

Reason #5: Put an End to the Dems' Dilemma of the Politics Surrounding Gitmo

OK, as reasons for closing Guantánamo go, the political careers of Democratic politicians are not high on the priority list. But it cannot go unsaid that those Democrats (many who spent the past eight years criticizing Bush over the violations at Guantánamo Bay) who are suddenly finding reasons to keep the prison camp open are doing so based on public opinion and the fear of landing on the wrong side of a national security issues. There may be little political reward for taking a (now) unpopular position on a national security matter and pushing to close Guantánamo. But for anyone who cares about this country's supposed values, there is more at stake than 2010. It is simply a moral imperative. As Matt Taibbi recently argued, "It’s one thing to change your mind or play both sides of the fence on matters that don’t involve human lives, on theoretical/hypothetical campaign issues, but another thing to do it with actual incarcerated human beings as the key variable in the political equation."

Conveniently for the Dems, however, the prisoners at Guantánamo remain abstract and far away to the average American, and it seems most would like to keep it that way. Thus, last month, Senate Democrats pulled $80 million worth of funding that was meant to be used to enable the closing of Guantánamo, a maneuver that "raised the possibility that Mr. Obama's order to close the camp by Jan. 22, 2010, might have to be changed or delayed," as the New York Times reported on May 19.

"This is neither the time nor the bill to deal with this," Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., announced. "Democrats under no circumstances will move forward without a comprehensive, responsible plan from the president. We will never allow terrorists to be released into the United States."

Reid's posturing met with predictable approval from politicians on the other side of the aisle. "Guantánamo is the perfect place for these terrorists," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said. "However, if the president ends up sticking with this decision to close it next January, obviously they need a place to be. It ought not to be the United States of America."

As Matthew Daloisio points out: "Everyone who wanted to close Gitmo when it was popular to hold that position, has already gotten all of the political mileage they could from it. Now it is simply a political liability. No one gains anything at this point from pushing for Gitmo to close … It's the only bipartisan issue going."

The Republicans did a good job of playing on the fears of the American public, and the Democrats and the administration not only did not fight back, but ended up mostly agreeing. The notion that "if you ended up at Gitmo, you must have done something wrong," is a prevailing one, which does not make it in any way true.

The Democrats should learn a lesson from what many say happened to the Republicans: That they sacrificed their core principals over the last eight years. The Democrats are in the process of doing the same thing.

Reason #6: Seven years after the first prisoners in the rebranded "war on terror," Guantánamo is still a legal netherworld, a stain on our democracy, a rallying cry for actual terrorists, and a violation of Cuba’s sovereignty.

Does any of this really need explaining?

See more stories tagged with: torture, guantanamo, barack obama, jeremy scahill, andy worthington, michael ratner, ahmed ghappour, lakhdar boumediene, force-feeding, muhammad ahmad abdallah s

Liliana Segura is an AlterNet staff writer.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »