With little fanfare earlier this month, the Bush administration floated potential solutions to what one could call the "detainee problem" - that is, what to do with the hundreds of prisoners of war being held indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay in open violation of international law since 2002.
Largely from Afghanistan, these prisoners are comprised of alleged members of the Taliban or al-Qaida, and other suspected terrorists captured in the ongoing War on Terror.
According to the Third Geneva Convention, any captured enemy soldier or civilian who spontaneously took up arms in the protection of his or her home is classified as a prisoner of war. By its fifth article, any prisoner of war must be afforded certain protections, including freedom from violence and intimidation, "until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal."
Yet the Bush administration flouted these decrees with rhetorical slight-of-hand, classifying the inmates at Guantanamo Bay not as prisoners of war, but "enemy combatants," a category afforded fewer protections than prisoners of war. This decision took place without the tribunals required by the Geneva Convention to make such a judgment.
Though the Bush administration argued that the constitution has no jurisdiction over the Guantanamo prisoners, who are located in Cuba, the Supreme Court ruled in June that detainees have rights to the U.S. court system. This ultimately led to the creation of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals in order to classify the prisoners under the Geneva Conventions.
Though the last of these tribunals was held last week, the internees at Guantanamo Bay remain classified as enemy combatants under rulings of dubious nature - rulings based, for instance, on "secret evidence" to which the prisoners were denied access.
In fact, of Guantanamo's 545 prisoners, many who have been interned for more than three years, only four have actually faced criminal charges - and even those trials are on hold pending an appeal of a November U.S. District Court decision, which ruled that the military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay fail to meet American standards for justice.
But let us suspend our disbelief for a moment, and assume that the prisoners truly do not qualify for prisoner of war protections, and that their trials - replete, again, with secret evidence - were entirely fair. Still, that leaves hundreds of "enemy combatants" who have been imprisoned for years without a charge levied against them - which brings me back to the "detainee problem."
The current impetus for change comes not from the Supreme Court, concern for international law, or from the Red Cross report that found practices at Guantanamo that are "tantamount to torture." It comes instead from the Pentagon and CIA, which have jointly pressured the White House to attempt to reach a long-term solution to the day-to-day problem.
"Since global war on terror is a long-term effort, it makes sense for us to be looking at solutions for long-term problems," a Pentagon spokesman told the Washington Post. "(W)e are at a point in time where we have to say, "'How do you deal with them in the long term?'"
Unfortunately for those interned, the answer is more of the same. Much more.
One proposed solution would see the transfer of Afghan, Yemeni, and Saudi prisoners to new U.S.-built facilities located in and operated by their home nations. Another, backed by the CIA, would send the detainees to general facilities located in Egypt, Jordan, and Afghanistan.
And then, most frighteningly, there is the Pentagon's proposal: the creation of Camp 6, a $25 million state-of-the-art detention facility constructed specifically for the internment of Guantanamo prisoners.
Modeled on U.S. prisons, the proposal claims that Camp 6 is in the detainees' best interest, allowing for inmate socialization and offering more comfort and freedoms, while ensuring adherence to international human rights standards. This ostensible concern for human rights, however, is laughable in the face of Camp 6's reality: the facility is to be set aside for those prisoners that the United States does not have enough evidence to try. According to the Bush administration, the solution to the "detainee problem" - the indefinite detention of prisoners - is to permanently detain them with or without just cause.
It is clichéd at this point, of course, to compare the current administration to a certain historical movement, or to a certain dystopian novel, or a certain recently disposed regime. The subversion of international law and our own constitutional protections speak for themselves. So I won't say what I think this proposal is, but only what I know it is not: it is not representative of a nation - or an administration - that has any concern for liberty and justice.
Donald Tetto '06 is a poet, not a punk.
