A Question About Guantanamo

CAN SOMEONE EXPLAIN TO ME why Guantanamo, the place, had to be abandoned in order for the United States to regain its moral standing as a humane place?

Again, the place, not the practices that took place there, which I found grossly unacceptable: the "enhanced interrogation techniques," the absence of any sort of due process that enlightened people are supposed to follow. (How could we allow people to sit there, for long stretches in solitary confinement, without even being read charges or having access to an outside counsel?) I also detested the previous administration's tortured (sorry for the pun) legal rationalizations for these practices as much as I did their arrogant certainty that they were right and everyone else who disagreed was an unpatriotic wimp.

But it seemed to be accepted wisdom that we had to flee the place, the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Indeed, President Obama made it one of his very first orders of business after taking over the Oval Office.

Why? Of all the talk on this subject -- and I think there's been plenty, maybe too much -- I never heard a sufficient argument for leaving the facility at Guantanamo. The only thing I can figure is that people regard it as they would a house down the block where a murder once took place, or a street corner where a pedestrian was once hit by a car. The very vision of it brings up bad thoughts and memories.

But that's not a good reason to leave a place that, as far as I understand (and there's a lot here that I probably don't understand) did what it was supposed to: provided a secure facility to lock up bad people. What went on there is another story, isn't it?

But because of this decision to leave the place, we now have new problems because of it: no one abroad wants to take the prisoners, and few, if any, communities domestically want them (which I don't understand either; there are many dangerous people in our prisons around the country. How would these prisoners endanger our communities even more?). I think Obama has handled this delicate issue about as well as he could, but I don't understand this part of it.

What am I missing here?

Jeff

Comments

[Jon]

Seems to be a combination of symbolic and legal reasons. My response here: http://repartay.com/2009/06/12/why-guantanamo-the-place-needs-to-be-closed/

[Shai Franklin]

Using an offshore facility has been used to avoid accountability for those practices and the act of incarceration. So now, at least we're dropping that charade and acknowledging the legal consequences and responsibility.

[Jeff Weintraub]

Okay, Jon and Shai, that helps me understand better. I had missed that logic. But still, is scattering (or trying to) the inmates to other countries for who-knows-what-treatment because we don't now have a place to keep these guys going to absolve us of the moral consequences? And, again, couldn't we carry out legitimate practices in an off-shore location like Guantanamo? Again, the practices, not the place, were the heart of the problem, right?

[Larry Blatt]

Jeff

Please email me.

Larry