The Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions, the ones about the ethical treatment of civilians and prisoners, the ones the current Administration has been so keen to discard, were negotiated into their current state in 1949. That was a time when the U.S. stood astride the world like no other power in history. The American homeland saw no damage and destruction from the war and alone among all the nations of the world the US possessed nuclear weapons. Iron Curtain or no Iron Curtain, it was an American World.
The accords were negotiated from a position of unprecedented American strength and they reflect that. In no way, shape or form do they limit useful action by the United States of America, quite the contrary. They helped to protect America’s position in the world by globally enshrining the ideals we espoused, and they were doing a good job of it right up until Bush the Younger and his team of dingbat fanatics panicked after the attacks of September 11th.
We can see the resulting folly in the five part series on Guantanamo Bay that McClatchy ran this week. For anyone who is not a knee jerk reactionary it should serve as a final and authoritative takedown of the place itself, the policies that led to it and the officials who thought it up. The cruelty and stupidity on display are beyond measure.
Not only was almost no useful information gained, but Thomas White, then Secretary of the Army, said it was obvious from the get go that at least a third of the guys didn’t belong there. And that was just at the beginning, a majority of them, most after years of detention, have been let go as immaterial! That’s what happens when people can be held with little to no way to challenge their imprisonment. It was a perfect embodiment of the nightmare the Founding Fathers hoped to stave off by including the right to habeas corpus in the Constitution. No one has the authority to simply command someone else to be held without cause, you have to have a reason and that reason has to be good enough to withstand impartial scrutiny.
Guantanamo was built specifically to deny that right to these guys and the results serve as one more reminder that abandoning our principals is a fool’s choice. By denying the men status as prisoners of war and denying them access to civilian courts the Administration hoped to create a new legal space where no protections existed. That they failed (albeit by a mere 5-4 vote in the Supreme Court two weeks ago) is a triumph of our system of government and of the principal that we are a society of laws not of men.
Of course, during the time when they had their legal limbo, both at Guantanamo and at foreign detention sites, torture and chaos were the order of the day. McClatchy documents the random cruelty that resulted when American troops, untrained in handling prisoners, were told to soften up detainees who probably had no worthwhile information anyway. The rule book was ignored and, not surprisingly, discipline among the guards broke down as well.
American soldiers, who killed a number of detainees through callous abuse, were once American kids. And American kids, and I wholeheartedly include myself in this category, are raised on movies and television shows where it is the Bad Guys who don’t respect the Geneva Conventions. It is the Bad Guys who abuse prisoners and act cruelly against the weak. The Good Guys don’t do that stuff, the Good Guys are always magnanimous towards those they dominate, think Stalag 17, think Bridge on the River Kwai, think Great Escape; even in Platoon, when Americans do horrible things to that village, it’s Charlie Sheen (the Good Guy) who stops the others from raping the girl. This is a concept is so simple and universally accepted that no less a man than Chuck Norris hung an entire action trilogy off of it. As a people Americans are ill equipped to do these things because our entire culture indoctrinates us against it.
Consequently, when the White House and its staff of penny ante lawyers came up with circle jerk justifications for - ahem - enhanced interrogation they had to do it in legally and morally convoluted ways. That confusion seeped down the ranks and resulted in the discarding of rules that kept us the Good Guys.
In some sense there isn’t much point to rehashing yet another of the Bush the Younger’s foul mistakes. Guantanamo Bay, like the Japanese internment camps before it, is a wound on America’s soul. With the upcoming end of the Bush Administration though we have a chance to heal it. Closing Guantanamo, apologizing for Guantanamo, blaming Bush the Younger, and publicly rededicating ourselves to the ideals that won us the Cold War will cause it to heal. Like all serious wounds it will leave a scar, but scars are not bad things. They remind you of where you’ve been and, sometimes, of mistakes you’ve made.
Prisoners of war have the right to humane treatment during the conflict and repatriation afterwards. Men held in government custody who are not prisoners of war have the right to challenge their detention. These rights are not granted by the Constitution or any other document. They are natural rights, inherent to everyone on Earth. The Constitution, the Geneva Conventions, these documents protect those rights. The people who wrote them had been through the most trying of times. They knew then what we are rediscovering now: that government officials, in any age and of any nationality, can abuse their power; that while discarding these principals can often seem expedient in the face of a newly fashionable fear, it is absolutely essential that it never be done.
What was true then is true now: there is no reason to abandon our most fundamental principals. Never has been, never will be.
