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Yes, many of its prisoners, swept up in the early days of the war on terror, had committed no hostile acts against this country or its allies (55% of them, according to one study). And yes, they were dressed in those unforgettable orange jumpsuits that ISIS would later so horrifically put on its own prisoners before slaughtering them. And yes, from the beginning, the treatment they received at Guanta'namo, sometimes after having been brutally tortured in CIA "black sites" elsewhere, was a nightmare all its own.
If you doubt it, just consider Sean Baker's experience. A "model" American soldier who had been in the first Gulf War and volunteered again right after 9/11, he was assigned to the new prison as a military policeman. He would then be ordered to play an uncooperative prisoner in an orange jumpsuit so that the guards could practice on him and promptly would have the you-know-what beaten out of him by those very same guards, who mistook him for an actual prisoner, leaving him experiencing epileptic-style seizures 10 to 12 times a day. Honestly, what else do you need to know about the nature of that all-American site of injustice which just experienced its 20th anniversary and, as TomDispatch regular Karen Greenberg suggests today, despite the efforts of two of our last three presidents, shows few signs of actually closing down?
It's already been forever and forever it may forever be. In fact, Greenberg herself began writing about that grim prison in Cuba for TomDispatch almost 15 years ago after being given a carefully orchestrated media tour of its grounds. No matter how limited that tour was, it was obvious to her what a nightmare this country had created offshore of American justice. As she typically wrote at the time, "Even the less restrictive quarters for 'compliant' inmates belied any notion that Guanta'namo is merely a holding facility for those awaiting charges or possessing useful information." And so, of course, it has remained all these years, a site of horror that captures the nightmare of a global war on terror that's proved all-too-disastrous in its results (over its 20 years, terror groups on the planet doubled), the casualties it's caused, the tens of millions it's displaced, the trillions of dollars spent on it that could have been used so much more profitably here at home, and the disastrous way, as I've written elsewhere, it's helped "unbuild" this country. Without Guanta'namo, those grim CIA black sites, and the disastrous wars that went with them, we might be living in a very different American world and Donald Trump might be an insignificant bankruptee and conman.
So, 20 years after it was established, let Greenberg, whose latest book is Subtle Tools: The Dismantling of Democracy from the War on Terror to Donald Trump, tell you the latest in the (sadly) never-ending tale of the war-on-terror prison, itself a terror of the first order, that was built at Guanta'namo Bay in 2002. Tom
Guanta'namo's Forever Elusive Endgame
Will We "Celebrate" Its 30th Anniversary?
It's now more than 20 years later and that American offshore symbol of mistreatment and injustice, the prison at Guanta'namo Bay, Cuba, is still open. In fact, as 2021 ended, New York Times reporter Carol Rosenberg, who has covered that notorious prison complex since its first day, reported on the Pentagon's plans to build a brand-new prefab courthouse at that naval base. It's intended to serve as a second, even more secret facility for holding the four remaining trials of war-on-terror detainees and is scheduled to be ready "sometime in 2023."
Close Guanta'namo? Not soon, it seems. The cost of that new construction is a mere $4 million, a relatively minor sum compared to the $6 billion dollars and counting that detention and trial operations had claimed by 2019, according to the estimate of one whistleblower.
Notably, the news about the building of that secret courtroom coincided with the 20-year anniversary of the detention facility and the administration of the second president who's intending to shut the place down. Its plans are meant to suggest that the proposed structure will actually contribute to that never-ending process of closing the world's most notorious prison camp. Guanta'namo currently has 39 detainees in custody, 12 of whom are held under a military commissions system; 18 of whom, long kept without charges of any sort, have now been officially cleared for release to chosen countries which agree to have them (which doesn't mean that they'll actually be released); and nine of whom, also never charged, are merely hoping for such clearance.
With two courtrooms instead of one, trials, at least more than a year away, could theoretically take place at the same time rather than sequentially. Unfortunately, it's hard to imagine that the number of courtrooms will have any effect on a speedier outcome. As Scott Roehm, Washington director for the Center for Victims of Torture, recently told the Daily Beast, "There is a consensus that the commissions have failed but they haven't failed because of a lack of courtrooms."
Consider it a record of sorts that, in 20 years, only two trials have ever been completed there, both in 2008. Both led to convictions, one of which was later overturned, one of which is still on appeal. This paltry record is another sign of the forever reality of Guanta'namo, where neither small nips and tucks nor major alterations have proved anything more than cosmetic dressing for a situation that has proven intractable over three presidencies and the beginning of a fourth.
Of late, there has been a growing consensus that closing the prison is a must, especially given the final debacle of the U.S. departure from Afghanistan. As Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) wrote at Lawfare on the 20-year anniversary of that offshore symbol of all-American injustice, "Ending the failed experiment of detention at Guanta'namo Bay won't be easy. But now that the U.S.'s war in Afghanistan is over, it's time to shut the doors on Guanta'namo once and for all." On the floor of the Senate that same day, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) called for closure as well, deriding the prison camp as "a symbol of our failure to hold terrorists accountable and our failure to honor the sacrifices of our service members. These failures should not be passed on to another generation they should end with the Biden Administration."
But calling for closure is one thing, closing that prison is quite another.
The Challenges of Closure
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