How to Close Guantanamo - ASK THE EXPERT - CAP's Gude

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http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/06/guantanamo.html President George W. Bush is fond of saying that his administration tackles challenges head-on and refuses to leave tough decisions to his successors. No description could be further from the truth when applied to his policy at Guantánamo. Regardless of what happens over these last months of the Bush administration, the next president will inherit a detainee policy in total disarray. Transfers out of Guantánamo have stalled; the easier cases have already been shipped out, leaving a population stabilizing at around 270 detainees. Trials of Guantánamo detainees in Military Commissions are sputtering as the unproven system struggles to get through simple procedural hearings. Future prosecutions have been thrown into doubt as charges were dropped against a detainee once thought to be the 20th hijacker on 9/11 because too much of the evidence against him was obtained through torture. In its third successive decision rebuking the Bush administrations detention policies, the Supreme Court recently ruled that the Guantánamo detainees have a constitutional right to habeas corpus. This decision will finally allow the detainees to contest the lawfulness of their confinement in a truly impartial hearing before a federal judge, rejecting the Bush administrations contention that Guantánamo existed outside the law. And beyond the prisons walls on the eastern tip of Cuba, serious problems have arisen in Afghanistan as both U.S.- and Afghan-run detention camps are replicating the worst excesses of Guantánamo. One critical conceptual error of the architects of Guantánamo within the Bush administrationan exclusive focus on the threat posed by the detainees themselveshas frustrated the efforts of senior officials like Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to overcome the prisons deficiencies. This myopic vision has completely discounted the strategic impact Guantánamo has had on the global security environment. In the Bush administrations paradigm, the risk of transferring or releasing any one detainee is measured only against the potential harm that individual might do if set free, a calculus always tilted in favor of continued detention in cases when doubt exists. In this context, the status quo gives the illusion of perfect security dramatically increasing the burden on those arguing for alternatives to Guantánamo. The reality is that the potential harm from Guantánamo detainees to American interests is not limited to the prospect of violence perpetrated after release. Guantánamo as currently constructed has become a symbol of a rogue American hegemony that disregards the rule of law, even as it uses calls for freedom and democracy as a weapon to assert its influence across the globe. The perpetuation of that symbol does great damage to American interests. Recognizing this new paradigm significantly alters the landscape when considering the future of Guantánamo and strongly favors closing the prison and pursuing alternative regimes for those detainees that require additional imprisonment. Counterintuitively, reaching the threshold decision to close Guantánamo will be the easiest part of cleaning up the catastrophe of U.S. detention policy. The next president will confront numerous obstacles in any effort to make changes at Guantánamo and to all U.S. detention policy, including: overturning the massive current credibility and legitimacy deficit of the United States; satisfying the real security challenges posed by some the detainees and respecting legitimate anxieties and fears about future acts of terrorism; building a far greater level of international cooperation, because even though this is an American problem, the United States cannot solve it on its own; deciding who among the Guantánamo detainees should stand trial, which trial venue is most appropriate, and what evidence can be used in those trials; and finding a new home for those detainees that are not going to be tried.