Guantanamo - The American Way

Hmm, I feel a political rant coming on (and a rather lengthy one at that - sorry). But it’s not going to be about Lebanon – right now, I feel like anything I could say about that whole mess would be both obvious and fruitless. Instead, I’m going to dredge up a subject I intended to blog about when it was in the news but never got round to, and which I’ve felt strongly about for years – Guantanamo Bay. A while back, it received a flurry of public attention and calls for closure, the US administration managed to ride it out until the media lost interest, and now it’s been left to continue its human rights violations in peace. Back to business as usual in the gulags. And this is why I felt it was still worth blogging about now – because the country that preaches and moralises, interferes and invades, assassinates and bombs in the name of freedom and democracy cannot be allowed to get away with this.

The trigger for the most recent scandal around Guantanamo was, of course, the first successful suicides. To me, it wasn’t just the fact that the suicides took place, and the regime it implied, that was totally unacceptable. Even more sickening was the US reaction to it. The first thing to come out of the US camp was that the suicides were “not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.” The fact that they refused to make public the details of the men’s suicide notes cast some doubt on their evidence for this, but there we go. The second thing to come out of the US camp was that the suicides were “a great PR move”. A great PR move?! Let’s just think through the implications of this for a moment.

Firstly, a great PR move for whom? Obviously not for the individuals involved, because they are now dead. The clear implication is that the suicides were good PR for Them – the mysterious and threatening Muslim terrorist entity that wants to kill us all. I find this insinuation absolutely outrageous. These people have not been convicted, or even bloody charged, with any crime; in fact, one of them was due to be released shortly, although he didn’t know it – a fact the Americans conveniently chose to ignore when painting him as a dangerous Islamic extremist. Innocent until proven guilty goes out the window, and it’s simply stated as fact that the suicides of men who’d been kept indefinitely in conditions which contravene human rights law and have been ruled tantamount to torture were ‘not acts of desperation, but of war’.

To me, the ‘great PR move’ comment actually translates as: “This was a terrible PR move for us, and we’re going to try and cover it up by turning the situation around and portraying the victims as perpetrators. Hell, ‘suicide’ sounds a bit like ‘suicide bomber’ – it shouldn’t be too hard to pull off.” The most appalling thing was that these unsubstantiated accusations pretty much substituted for any expression of regret, condolence or recognition that, one way or another, American policies in Guantanamo had led to the deaths of quite possibly innocent people. These people, apparently, were terrorists, and therefore their lives had no value - their deaths did not require regret. Camp Commander Rear Admiral Harris (responsible for the ‘asymmetric warfare’ comment) came out with this little gem in the days following the suicides: “They are smart, they are creative, they are committed. They have no regard for life, either ours or their own.” No regard for life? Maybe I’m missing something, but to me, the only people who this whole episode exposed as having a flagrant disregard for life and human dignity are the Americans.