Pacific Free Press was launched in March 2007 by Dutch-Canadian Richard
Kastelein of V.O.F. Expathos, in the Netherlands along with Chris Cook- CFUV radio journalist and Editor in Chief of Pacific Free Press. Cook is based in , Victoria, British Columbia.
The mission of Pacific Free Press is simple: to dig out nuggets of truth from
the slag-heap of lies, ignorance and witless diversion that has buried
public discourse today. Pacific Free Press provides a new venue for
disseminating hard news and insightful, fact-based analysis of the
harsh realities too often ignored or distorted by the mainstream press.
Guantanamo as a Symbol
by Ramzy Baroud 11 January marked the sixth year anniversary of the establishment of the Guantanamo detention camp. Mere months after the start of the 2001 United States invasion of Afghanistan, a large cargo plane landed in a US military base in Cuba's Guantanamo Bay, bringing in a group of hunchbacked, orange-clad, blindfolded, "terrorist" suspects, apparently representing the worst of the worst. They included children and aged men, charity workers, journalists and people who were sold to the US military in exchange for a large bounty.
The debate over this notorious prison has ever since been marred by easy reductionism. The fact is that Guantanamo is neither a warranted compound holding "bad people" -- as explained by the ever straightforward President Bush -- nor is it a dark spot in the otherwise luminous US record for respecting human rights, rules of war and international treaties.
If anything, Guantanamo is a mere extension of a long list of untold violations practised by the Bush administration, which condenses the camp to being a symbol of widespread policy predicated on nonchalantly undermining international law.
The prison is arguably one of the worst mockeries of
international law, which was itself drafted partly by American legal
experts. Past US administrations may not have been devoted followers of
the Geneva Conventions, but neither have they ever discarded
international treaties as openly and as arrogantly as the current one.
Former attorney-general Alberto Gonzales, a personal friend of
President Bush, mastered this art in a way that allowed his bosses to
adorn their gratuitous actions with the air of legitimacy. Guantanamo
was his ultimate masterpiece.
Hundreds of Guantanamo prisoners
have subsequently been released, some to the custody of their
respective governments. Roughly 275 remain in the camp. Out of a total
of about 1,000 only 10 have been charged.
The prisoners at
Guantanamo are "among the most dangerous, best trained vicious killers
on the face of the earth," according to former secretary of defense
Donald Rumsfeld. If that was the case, why wasn't Rumsfeld prepared to
try them in a court of law? After all his self-assured judgement shows
that he possessed more evidence than needed by any court to convict and
throw them into jail. But, of course, the subject of evidence or lack
thereof was irrelevant.
Neither habeas corpus, due process,
nor any set of laws, national or international, mattered much to an
administration that prided itself on its ability to transcend all of
that. Of course, such disregard was justified on the basis of national
interests and a whole set of tired pretences. Time, however, showed
that Guantanamo, and the overriding militancy it symbolised, has
probably done more damage to US national interest than any other event
in US history.
In the early years, prisoners at Guantanamo
were held in open air cages, with nothing but a mat and a bucket for a
toilet. Anthony D Romero, executive director of the American Civil
Liberties Union, wrote in Salon.com, "We now know that only a small
percentage of the many hundreds of men and boys who have been held at
Guantanamo were captured on a battlefield fighting against Americans;
far more were sold into captivity by tribal warlords for substantial
bounties." Romero cites comments made by a former Guantanamo commander
for several years, Brigadier General Jay Hood. The commander told the
Wall Street Journal, "Sometimes, we just didn't get the right folks."
Moreover,
both former secretary of state Colin Powell and current Secretary
Condoleezza Rice called for the shutting down of Guantanamo, along with
various international bodies and numerous rights groups in the US and
abroad. But the Bush administration still persists in maintaining
Guantanamo. The chances are if the Guantanamo prisoners were of any
value in Operation Enduring Freedom and in the so-called global war on
terror, whatever information some of them might have possessed has
already been extracted, violently or otherwise. Moreover, if
overwhelming evidence against them was indeed at hand, the Bush
administration would have tried them long ago. Neither scenario is
convincing.
Leigh Sales, writing for the Sydney Morning Herald
made the dubious assessment that the "the problem is what to do with
the prisoners [if the detention camp is shutdown]. If they are moved to
American jails, they will have to be charged and tried under US law.
Evidence gathered through coercive interrogations will not be
admissible in regular courts and so Bush would risk watching the likes
of Mohamed and Hambali walk free." Such commentary, emulated by others,
suggests that the underlying reason behind the preservation of
Guantanamo is, more or less, national interests.
However,
Guantanamo is staying in business, for the exact same reason that the
Iraq war rages on, and for similar reasons to why the Bush
administration's failing global policy persists. Shutting down
Guantanamo would be an admission of defeat, a declaration of failure,
which is something that the patrons of the empire cannot afford, at
least not now.
11 September was an opportune moment to turn a
new doctrine into reality, as outlined by the Project for the New
American Century, a desperate attempt to sustain an empire that is
facing challenges. The tactics, utilised almost immediately after the
terrorist attacks, pointed at a foreign and military policy style
designed to free itself from accountability to anyone, including the
American people, the United Nations and international law. Guantanamo
is a grotesque representation of that tactic -- and the failure of that
tactic.
Indeed, Guantanamo is a dark spot in US history and
shall go down in world history as a symbol of injustice and oppression.
And it will continue to be a jarring reminder of the inhumanity, the
torture, and the extreme violence associated with the Bush
administration's so- called war on terror.
Ramzy Baroud
(www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of
PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers
and journals worldwide. His latest book is The Second Palestinian
Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle (Pluto Press, London).
Writings 
Subscribe to this comment's feed
