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To build on Daphne Eviatar’s post about bogus numbers of terrorist Guantanamo parolees, the New York Times carries a kind of silly story about a former Guantanamo detainee turned Yemen-based Al Qaeda terrorist. If the story was merely an exploration of this former detainee, there wouldn’t be any problem. But it carries this gloss:
The emergence of a former Guantánamo Bay detainee as the deputy leader of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch has underscored the potential complications in carrying out the executive order President Obama signed Thursday that the detention center be shut down within a year.
If Obama’s executive order had been to let all the Guantanamo detainees go free, then this point would probably stand. But that’s not at all what the order says. It directs a screening process to determine which detainees ought to be released; which ought to be repatriated to their home countries’ legal systems; which ought to be sent to a third-party country’s legal system; and which ought to be prosecuted by the United States. Admittedly, no screening process can eliminate with 100 percent certainty the possibility that a dangerous man won’t be released. But there’s recidivism in the U.S. prison system as well, and no one considers that an argument for indefinite detention.
The Times piece notes that Republican House members intend to demagogue the issue, continuing to describe the detainees as the worst-of-the-worst, which is not and has never been true. (The real worst-of-the-worst were detained in secret prisons run by the CIA or foreign intelligence partners.) National Journal in 2006 ran perhaps the most comprehensive study of the Guantanamo population and concluded that "Much of the evidence against the detainees is weak."
No one should expect a demagogue to be swayed by the facts. But the truth of the matter is that just as not all of the Guantanamo detainees are guilty, not all of them are innocent, either, and so a process to cull one from the other is the appropriate way to proceed. What isn’t ever appropriate, as the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled, is to hold them indefinitely and without due process, and the presence of a former detainee in a terrorist group doesn’t change that.
Crossposted to The Streak.
7 Comments
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Here is the thing about the NYTimes article and one thing that I think needs to be explored. It did worry me but not because of Obama’s executive order. What worried me was why was the guy released in the first place. His case wasn’t one where you had a lot of people saying he should be released. I would venture to say most civil libertarians hadn’t heard of him till this shit hit the fan. In the article itself the Times notes that he had been accused of travelling and meeting with other terrorists, being trained in a terrorist camp, and perhaps being involved in some attacks BEFORE he was detained. So the question remains, what compelled the Bush Administration to release him. Now I know its pure speculation but might this guy have been the subject of torture and thats why they had to let him go? The truth is the focus should be on how the Bush Administration could make a determination to let him go while continuing to detain people like Haji Bismullah on the word of a rival clan in Afghanistan. But instead you won’t see most media folks pursuing that angle. No, it will all be lumped on President Obama as being his fault as the article seemed to try to do. There is a back story here about how he got out and somebody needs to investigate it.
Exactly. Very well put. This entire line of argument is disingenuous on it’s face, because the only solution it can lead to is indefinite detention. Here in america, we don’t fucking well do that. We charge people with crimes, try them fairly in open court, and if they are convicted we punish them appropriately.
In the American Judicial system, most prosecutors can tell you who is going to offend again once released, and pretty damn accurately too. But nobody (well, almost nobody) says for that reason we simply shouldn’t release them.
If we are going truly going to reject the false choice between security and liberty, this whole “but, but, they’re just going to be terrorists again” line of reasoning needs to be smacked down hard…
mikey
Spencer, has there been some confusion as to whether the detainees should be treated as captured criminals or POWs?
I ask this of you in response to your mention that we shouldn’t detain any of these men because of the threat of “recidvism”?
Yeah, but that’s your criminal code. This is about people detained overseas as insurgents and terrorists by the military and CIA. America does have a history with that and it doesn’t involve anyone seeing a legal process.
In this respect, Gitmo closing is far less significant than what is opened in its place. In particular, the process by which anyone gets there.
Frankly I think you’ve seen the last useful bit of info from DC on this topic. You’ve already heard what they want to do, hearing them repeat this wouldn’t appear to be useful.
What remains to be heard is how military intel guys are actually going to use that process. They’re detaining nobody who they don’t want to question for immediate intel in theatre. At what point do they stop that questioning ? Where does it occur ? How are those locations any different from what Bagram was last week ?
I agree with the bulk of academics who state the ticking-time-bomb scenario is BS. But only to a degree – the big-bomb-scenario. Meanwhile, there’s a shitload of little ticking-time-bomb (IED) scenarios going on in theatre that the military has to address with captured insurgents/terrorists. Either you’re doing nothing to detainees in those scenarios or you’re doing something. What’s the something ?
Look, fer crissakes, this isn’t hard.
Policy, passed down from leadership, is that it is NOT ok to mistreat prisoners.
When I was in combat, we very often just shot them all. Fuck a bunch of trying to take care of them. Yeah, those were war crimes, but they were small and localized. And have been part of the combat soldier’s decision tree for about ten thousand years.
If you fucked up and ended up with a live prisoner, you had to find a way to hand him off to G2. This would cut seriously into your pot smoking and sleeping time. Nope. Not gonna do it.
But that’s combat. That’s not POLICY. Policy has to be clear and unequivocal. And now, finally, today, we get that…
mikey
Policy you dont have to believe in?
Christ knows what he’s talking about.
If you exclude the actions of the military, carried out in accordance with policy from their civilian leadership, from what is considered “US policy” then the past 8 years in Iraq hasn’t been all that bad.
In fact, if that’s the case, WTF is anyone’s problem with Rumsfeld ?
As far as I know, he didn’t fk up any corn growing quotas in Iowa. He wasn’t responsible for any bridge collapses. Not a single part of the financial crisis can be attributed to him.