Originally published on the CGS blog on September 29, 2007.
Karen J. Greenberg, Executive Director of the Center on Law and Security at New York University and the editor of The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib (with Joshua Dratel), The Torture Debate in America, and Al Qaeda Now: Understanding Today’s Terrorists, has a great commentary on motherjones.com. In “Relax, Mitt: Guantanamo’s Not Closing,” Greenberg explores why “We’ve wasted five and half years avoiding asking what is a policy on detention that the United States should live with?as opposed to just living with the ad hoc one we have.” Greenberg concludes her insightful commentary as follows:
Whatever the rationale for detention?be it tactical intelligence, the need for the ready presence of a human library of information on terrorism, or the reeducation of extremists?the fact remains that Guantanamo and allied U.S. detention facilities are all a long way from entering a wind-down phase. Detainee populations are on the rise as are new detention sites, new construction expenditures, and new guard training.
The only thing not on the rise is a serious policy discussion about all this. Six years after 9/11, isn’t it time to face the fact that, as a nation, we have not yet asked ourselves: What should our detention policy be? What are the rules and regulations we might want to create to confront the threat posed by terrorists? As a nation, we have chosen to bemoan the policies that have emerged without legislative backing and popular vetting?or, like you, Mitt, to call for more of the same. But even Gallup polling of American opinion on detention and torture fails to ask: Do you think that incarcerating suspected terrorists for indefinite periods without trials or convictions is acceptable? A country essentially without leadership, we have wasted five and half years avoiding asking what exactly is a policy on detention that the United States should live with?as opposed to just living with the ad hoc one we have.
So, Mitt, relax. Guantanamo (and everything it represents) is alive and well. The administration’s loose talk of change only conceals its stubborn commitment to a wholly discredited path. Guantanamo, a prison in no way ready to close, is at the heart of a conversation that almost no one seems willing to open.
So let’s start the conversation here: Do you think that incarcerating suspected terrorists for indefinite periods without trials or convictions is acceptable? Why?
