If there has been one benefit to the interminable health care drama it is that the Obama Administration’s announcement that prisoners from Guantanamo Bay are going to be moved to Illinois managed to sneak largely under the radar. The details are relatively straightforward. Illinois built a maximum security prison that it’s never really used. The Feds are going to buy it, renovate it, and turn it into Gitmo North. (And kudos to whoever made sure all the media photos of the place show it with snow. It both reinforces the idea of bringing them out of the Caribbean and still makes the place seem harsh. It’s excellent imagery.)
Like much of Obama’s policy when it comes to restoring the basic rule of law in this country this move is a welcome one, but on an almost microscopic scale. As always Glenn Greenwald has the must read piece (bold his):
Critically, none of those moved to Thomson will receive a trial in a real American court, and some will not be charged with any crime at all. The detainees who will be given trials won’t go to Thomson; they’ll be moved directly to the jurisdiction where they’ll be tried. The ones moved to Thomson will either (a) be put before a military commission or (b) held indefinitely without charges of any kind. In other words, they’ll have exactly the same rights — or lack thereof — as they have now at Guantanamo.
[…]
The sentiment behind Obama’s campaign vow to close Guantanamo was the right one, but the reality of how it’s being done negates that almost entirely. What is the point of closing Guantanamo only to replicate its essential framework — imprisonment without trials — a few thousand miles to the North?
Indeed. If we’re still going to be imprisoning men without trial (or with trials of dubious validity) we’re still pissing all over one of the founding concepts of American liberty. The geography of it, while a vast improvement, doesn’t seem to bear much on the heart of the matter.
Barack Obama bears a lot of the blame for trying to improve – instead of abolish – Bush Administration policies that are legally questionable and morally abhorrent. But he does not bear it all. It is we, the American people, in whose names this is being done. And it is we, those very same humble people, who are so ambivalent about our basic civil rights:
(If pollingreport.com, an otherwise wonderful site, has a way to permalink certain polls I haven’t found it yet, so this will have to do.)
Bloomberg Poll conducted by Selzer & Co. Dec. 3-7, 2009. N=1,000 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.1.
“What do you think would be the best way to handle prisoners currently detained at Guantanamo: put them on trial as alleged criminals in U.S. courts, put them on trial before military tribunals, or detain them indefinitely without trials, either at Guantanamo or somewhere else?”
U.S. Courts Military Tribunals Detain w/o Trials Unsure 21% 57% 10% 12% USA Today/Gallup Poll. Nov. 20-22, 2009. N=1,017 adults nationwide. MoE ± 4.
“Do you think it would be better to hold Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s trial in a civilian criminal court or a military court?”
Civilian Court Military Court No Preference (vol.) Unsure 36% 59% 2% 3%
There are other polls with slightly different numbers but the overall conclusion is pretty bleak: a solid majority of Americans are utterly unconcerned about these kinds of gross violations of our basic legal principals.
The above numbers are the true damage of terrorism. Twenty men (19 in airplanes plus whoever was behind the anthrax letters), aided and abetted by seven and a half years of deliberate federal fear mongering, have frightened us away from the better angels of our nature. That can (and probably should) be publicly lamented, but it’s an undeniable political fact.
Obama’s decisions on indefinite imprisonment and kangaroo military courts have been shameful in the extreme. There is no denying or sugarcoating that, they are a disgrace. That he had a chance to make a clean break and chose not to makes it doubly frustrating. However, his actions are at least politically understandable.
For all the pomp and celebration last year we are still living in Bush the Younger’s America, and likely will be for years. We are still living in a society that is scared. We shouldn’t be, the horrors the Bush Administration routinely invoked were almost completely fictional and the bogeymen they threw away in Guantanamo were mostly innocent bystanders. But we are.
That fear is dissipating, if nothing else the last two elections proved that much. But it is far from gone and in the meantime getting a little good with the bad may be the best we’re going to get. If nothing else, successfully housing these men in Illinois will inch them closer to their day in real court by proving to Americans that they aren’t so dangerous that they must be held on an island far from the US. Unclenching the American sphincter will take time and each little bit, no matter how odious it remains, has to be counted as progress.
