Four Reasons The U.S. Should Close Guantanamo

Why does the U.S. government need to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center—and now?

Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.), the Senior Member on the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, offered a list of reasons why America should finally close Gitmo, as the military prison is called, a decade after it opened. Moran offered the suggestions during a panel on the topic with journalists, lawyers and military personnel during a recent event at the New America Foundation.

While President Obama signed an executive order in 2009 to close Guantanamo Bay, his plan to transplant detainees to federal prisons on the U.S. mainland was thwarted by fierce congressional opposition. Obama caved to political pressure and allowed military tribunals to continue at the U.S. naval base, based in Cuba. Of the 171 prisoners who still remain imprisoned there, 89 have been cleared for transfer or release but are either stuck in political limbo or are unable to be released for other reasons.

Here are some of the top reasons to close Guantanamo soon:

It’s Expensive

Moran says: "Not only is this the least justifiable facility controlled by the U.S. for national security purposes, but it is by far the most expensive prison on the planet.”

Each year, American taxpayers pay $800,000 dollars (including intelligence and court costs) to house each detainee at Gitmo, according a report by the Miami Herald.

With just 8 percent of the detainees characterized as al Qaeda fighters, 40 percent with no definitive connection to al Qaeda, and 18 percent with zero ties to either al Qaeda or the Taliban, according to government defense data, it is also the most inefficient prison system.

Bounty Hunters Aren’t to be Trusted

Most of the detainees at Gitmo weren't even captured by U.S. military, Moran says. According to a report [PDF] using only Department of Defense Data, the United States captured just five percent of the Guantanamo detainees, while Pakistan and the Northern Alliance captured a staggering 86 percent.

When turned over to U.S. authorities, Moran said officials did “very little screening” of the “suspected terrorists.”

"This was at a time when the United States offered large bounties for the capture of suspected enemies. … We know a lot of the actions that the Pakistan military have taken have not been consistent with America's national security policy and yet these are the people we have accepted these prisoners from.”

“We have accepted their word—that [the detainees] were terrorists,” Moran added. “But the majority of the detainees have not been determined to have committed any hostile acts against the United States or its coalition allies."

Vague Terms and Real Consequences

The United States has subjected prisoners to indefinite detainment for being "associated with" a terrorist organization or a "potentially hostile" organization. These criteria, Moran said, are "loose" and insufficient justifications to keep detainees imprisoned.

With 600 detainees out of 800 released, it seems the criteria for who should be determined a terrorist is not stringent enough.

“Everything has been done to keep these people dehumanized," said Andy Worthington, a journalist and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison. “Soldiers of war are protected by the Geneva Convention but since the detainees are ‘illegal enemy combatants’ they hover in limbo between prisoner of war and criminal suspect with no proper rights.”

"The last two prisoners to leave Guantanamo left in coffins,” Worthington said. “The last one to leave alive was released last year. We held them in detention without giving the ability to defend themselves or know what they were accused of."

Because the Courts Move S…L…O…W…L…Y

The standards for what habeas corpus means for an undefined “enemy combatant” has been left open to interpretation and severely narrowed, said attorney Thomas Wilner, who represented detainees in both the Rasul v. Bush and Boumediene v. Bush—U.S. Supreme Court cases that determined detainees have habeas corpus rights.

Several appeals have gone to the high court but all have been rejected. Wilner said it could be a long time until any clarification on what habeas rights for Guantanamo Bay detainees actually means.

"Eventually, it will be cleared up,” Wilner said. “But a lot of people will be dead or broken by that time.”

These reasons alone won’t shutter Gitmo, said Moran, who attributed a lack of congressional action to the "uneducated" public support for the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act.

"I don't know why they didn't fight the language more vigorously,” he said. “I don’t know whether it was political policy or if they didn't have the people in place. …  [Obama] hasn't changed his position but he has accepted the political reality that unless the American people become more educated on this and far more caring … it's not going to change."

Moran’s fellow panelists did not let Obama off the hook so easily, citing his lack of leadership as a primary reason Guantanamo Bay remains open today.

"He showed tremendous ability during the campaign to convince people that what the Bush administration was doing was not in our public's interest—and he used to say it, every day, that we were going to close Guantanamo and we are going to stand up for habeas corpus," Wilner said. "He needs to do that again and we need to push him to do it. We struggle to get out the facts. He has the bully pulpit—he should use it."

Naima Ramos-Chapman is an associate editor at Campus Progress.

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