Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Editorial: Guantanamo betrays American values
Those caught in Bush's purgatory aren't given the protections of ordinary criminals or prisoners of war. This is a stain on the nation's soul.
The U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where three detainees committed suicide over the weekend, is an ongoing affront to cherished American values.
Hundreds of prisoners have been held there since the invasion of Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
President Bush turned the detention center at Guantanamo into an indefinite purgatory for those men, who are denied both the constitutional protections of the criminally accused and the humanitarian protections afforded prisoners of war by the Geneva Conventions and other international treaties.
A lawyer for one of the detainees speculated that despair over the prospect of indefinite detention drove the hopelessness that led the three inmates to kill themselves.
"These men have been told they will be held at Guantanamo forever. They've been told that while they're held there they do not have a single right," Joshua Colangelo-Bryan told The New York Times.
It's difficult to imagine anything more contrary to basic American principles and values.
The Bush administration argues that the prisoners of Guantanamo are dangerous terrorists committed to harming the United States and that they pose too great a threat to free.
But precious little evidence is offered to back up that assertion -- and only a handful of those held at Guantanamo have had a chance even to present a defense before a military tribunal.
Members of the president's own party and other staunch allies are questioning whether maintaining this detention center serves U.S. interests in the war against terrorists.
Sen. Arlen Specter, Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said, "Those people have to be tried." He complained that some are being held on "the flimsiest sort of hearsay."
On CNN, Denmark Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said, "It would be to the benefit of our cause and our fight for freedom and against terrorism if the facilities at Guantanamo Bay were closed down."
In the first panicked months after the Sept. 11 attacks, Americans could be forgiven, perhaps, for consenting to such a betrayal of their fundamental values.
Liberty and principles, after all, ultimately depend upon national survival.
But nearly five years after the terrible events of that day, Americans should not allow fear to rule their lives. The nation can fight its enemies without sacrificing its values.
