President Barack Obama has been promising to close Guantanamo Bay since the beginning of his first term, and on Feb. 23 he renewed his efforts to close the military prison. While Guantanamo Bay has a history of multiple egregious human rights violations, there are and will be many problems with Obama's plan.
Gitmo was opened in 2002 under George W. Bush's administration as a prison for Afghanistan war detainees. He declared that under the Geneva Convention, US courts had no right to decide what could be done to the prisoners there, which led to their atrocious treatment.
One case, in particular, was that of Mohammed Jawad, who was detained at Guantanamo as a child. He remained imprisoned there for six years before he was charged with attempted murder against laws of war. Additionally, the international law standard for treatment of children in custody is to place them in separate housing with educational programs and then send them back to Afghanistan for rehabilitation. Jawad was deprived of all of these programs. He is seeking damages after being released in 2009.
This is just one of the many cases in which human rights have been violated at the military facility. And while the closing of Gitmo would certainly be symbolic, signifying an effort to move forward from a dark past of the treatmen of alleged terrorists, the plan is flawed.
Even if Gitmo is closed, there are still 46 prisoners deemed too dangerous to move or who have not been charged or convicted that will have to be sent to other facilities. It will be difficult to get other countries to take US prisoners and possibly more difficult to place the prisoners on US soil.
Congress has already passed a law banning the military from moving any detainees onto domestic soil, so why would they change their minds now? Obama has been trying to close Gitmo for years and Congress has not budged in the past. And now the President has less than a year left in office.
The attitudes of Republican candidates do not bode well either for Obama's plan after he leaves office. Trump, Rubio, Cruz and Kasich have all said they will not close down Gitmo, which is strange, considering the fact that even George W. Bush said he wanted to shut it down. It seems like this issue has shifted from bipartisan to polarized in a further attempt to vilify the Obama administration.
However, even if Congress approves Obama's plan, the problem of Gitmo and its violation of human rights would just be relocated. Yes, the government would save millions of dollars in the long run, but would the treatment of the prisoners be reformed?
I recognize that there are many potentionally dangerous people in Gitmo (many have not been tried), many of them have been placed there for the wrong reasons or treated unjustly, as Jawad was, so who's to say this won't just continue in another location.
I stand with Obama’s position that the military prison Guantanamo Bay fosters inhumane treatment and can only worsen our international reputation, but I am doubtful that Congress will approve of his plan, and even if they do, would it be a good plan?
