Guantánamo has been a pockmark on our society ever since it opened. The detention facility itself is a human rights abomination, but it’s not just the physical center that is a problem – it is the spirit it embodies. The policy of indefinite detention in Gitmo makes a mockery of the US constitution. That’s why, as Barack Obama makes his latest impassioned and forceful plea to close it once and for all, it is shameful that he is leaving in place the practices that enabled it to flourish in the first place.

It’s unlikely that Guantánamo will actually be closed by the time Obama leaves office, given the half measures and hesitations in his first term that allowed Congress to throw up legal roadblocks to transferring prisoners to the US. But, even if Obama succeeds, that won’t be the end of this dark chapter in US history. As long as the unconstitutional policy of indefinite detention and the disastrous military commissions remain, so too will the stain on America’s reputation.

Indefinite detention – holding detainees for what is now decades with no trial or even charges of any kind on the horizon – is about as antithetical to American values and the constitution as it gets. There are dozens of detainees that are cleared for release now – and have been cleared for release for years – that still remain behind bars on the US military base in Cuba. But there are dozens more that the US considers “unfit for trial” but “too dangerous to release”. (Many of them can’t be tried because the US tortured them.)



Guantánamo Bay: Obama reiterates call to close prison in final plan to Congress Read more

Obama made clear at the end of his remarks that indefinite detention remains US policy. As long as the post-9/11 Authorization for Military Force (AUMF) remains active, the US government acts like it can hold these prisoners forever. And as the administration now claims the bill is the legal authority that let’s it bomb Syria, Iraq and now Libya – fighting a terrorist organization that did not exist on 9/11 and for which there is no end – there is virtually no chance of the legislation being repealed this decade. These prisoners possibly face spending the rest of their lives in jail without seeing trial.

As for the rest of the prisoners who can and should face trial, they remain marred in the disastrous military commissions trial system, which has been plagued with problem after problem for more than a decade. This has left them all but unworkable, and in many cases, unconstitutional. The president, while criticizing the military commissions and explaining how normal federal courts are much more effective in actually trying terrorists, remains stubbornly insistent that the commissions can still work – as long as Congress alters them yet again.

How Obama is going to get a Republican-controlled Congress to pass anything in this election year he did not explain, but it sounds like just as big of a fantasy as getting a new US supreme court nominee through the Senate in the same time frame. The military commissions should’ve been scrapped years ago, and will continue to haunt whatever administration is voted into office this November.



Obama's last Guantánamo closure plan does not name new sites for detainees Read more

Certainly it’s not only the White House’s fault alone that Guantánamo has remained open. As Obama pointed out repeatedly in his speech, closing Gitmo was once something both parties agreed on. Both George W Bush and Obama’s 2008 presidential opponent John McCain once advocated for it too, given that it is one of the most powerful terrorist recruiting tools that has existed since 9/11. But as soon as Obama gained office, Republicans decided to oppose such efforts at every turn.

Opponents of closing the controversial facility claim to be acting for the sake of public safety, as if Obama is going to release battle-hardened terrorists on to the streets of New York City. They seem to think terror suspects arriving in the US will suddenly develop cartoonish Magneto-like superpowers, allowing them to do things like escape maximum security prisons. Their ludicrous “not in my backyard!” diatribes would be amusing if they weren’t so harmful to our nation.

There are many reasons why we should all hope that Obama’s plan to close Guantánamo succeeds. But, unfortunately, without reversing the underlying policies that made Guantánamo such a disaster for human rights in the first place, the dark stain on the US will remain.