President Obama gave a lengthy speech outlining in very specific terms what he intends to do about closing down that atrocity of a terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Immediately after the president’s speech, former vice-president Dick Cheney gave a speech of his own, defending the creation of that prison and arguing how doing away with it will make Americans less safe.
Some years ago I had a student, a corpsman, who took three classes from me. I got to know him fairly well. After the three classes, he was assigned to go to Gitmo and serve as a medic for several months. I told him before he left that based on what had happened at Abu Ghraib, he should be very careful about his conduct and not allow himself to get involved in anything that didn’t rigidly adhere to the military justice code. He knew me well enough to listen closely to what I said to him. I told him to do his duty to the Navy but to not get involved in anything that looked like torture. When he returned several months later, he came to see me in my classroom. He grabbed my hand and shook it vigorously, saying that he was very glad I’d warned him about being careful. He said that on several occasions he was asked to stand-by while various prisoners were waterboarded and other “intensive interrogation techniques” were applied. He said that on at least four occasions he had refused to participate in what he believed was wrongful behavior and each time he was readily excused from the room with no argument from his superiors.
During Cheney’s speech, he went to great lengths to argue that the prisoners at Gitmo have at all times and in all cases been cared for better than most American citizens. He’s LYING! Yes, there was and still is a large medical staff. Yes, many of the Muslim prisoners have been allowed to pray five times a day, with arrows painted on the floor showing them the direction of Mecca. They get an appropriate diet of 6000 calories and many of them are allowed to watch Al Jezeera TV… now. But such amenities have not always been available, nor has the treatment of these “terrorists” always been so gracious. There were things going on down there every bit as despicable as what happened at Abu Ghraib.
Some of you might say, “But these are not American citizens. They’re not entitled to the same justice as our people. They are hardened terrorists, sworn to kill Americans and destroy our way of life.”
Yes, some of them are. But a great many of them were innocent Iraqis who got caught up in the wide sweeps carried out by our military in the early days of the occupation. Many more were not “hardened” terrorists, but merely drivers and others on the periphery of the insurgency in its early stages. Oh yes, they are probably angry and hardened terrorists now, but that’s because they’ve been held for six years in captivity with no legal recourse or voice, and many of them have been tortured many times during that captivity.
Vice-President Cheney was lying throughout most of his speech.
The problem with President Obama’s speech is that it was too complicated for most Americans to understand. It’s so much easier, as it always has been, to grasp the reductionist and simplistic reasoning of fear and greed put forth by the Bush administration, but it’s not right. President Obama argued for the fair disposition of those prisoners remaining at Gitmo under a system of justice administered by the executive branch of government, but with oversight from both the judicial and legislative branches — in other words, according to the rule of law, which is the most basic underpinning of our entire national philosophy. But it’s complex and difficult to understand, so I’m afraid Obama’s efforts failed.
On their most fundamental level, the two speeches typified and symbolized the two currents of social and political thought in America today. On the one hand is Dick Cheney’s brand of fear and violation of law to gain the short-term appearance of security. That’s the easy one to understand. On the other, there’s President Obama’s appeal to the rule of law and the complexity involved. To establish some kind of workable disposition of the detainees at Gitmo will require the work of the best legal minds available in every branch of government. In the long run, though, it will mean that we have remained true to the ideals we hold up to the rest of the world. And that, to me, is more important that the short-term gains of arbitrarily imprisoning men and never giving them a chance to be heard. That’s not what Americans do. If it’s simplicity that’s required, the Cheney-Bush doctrine thrives in the darkness of secrecy, fear, and evil. The Obama policy adheres to our most cherished ideals and is lit for all to see by the lamp of liberty.
