Guantanamo

by Lance Thompson

 The American naval base at Guantanamo Bay has received plenty of attention in recent years, ever since we started hosting terrorists in pleasant Carribean detention there.  Liberals and wobbly conservatives have called for shutting down the terrorist-holding facilities there for some sort of vague public relations purpose.  I’m all for relieving the United States Navy of the responsibility of running a tropical retreat for our enemies, as long as they can be moved to some place more fitting–like Devil’s Island.  Whenever I hear about Guantanamo, I always wonder how the US Navy ended up with such a perfect natural harbor on one end of the most brutal, oppressive and dangerous communist island in the world.  Moreover, how does the United States maintain its position there while the Castro family has spent half a century trying to devise ways to get rid of us?  To satisfy my curiosity, I did some research.  Like so many other world-changing aspects of history, the security of our base at Guantanamo can be traced  to one man–determined, aggressive, and fearless.    United States Marines planted the first American flag at Guantanamo Bay during the Spanish-American War in 1898, in which Cuba gained independence from Spain.  The new Cuban government, in 1903, signed a treaty that leased Guantanamo Bay to the United States to use as a coaling station for American naval forces.  The United States was to have complete jurisdiction and control over Guantanamo Bay in perpetuity.  Only by abandoning the base could the United States abrogate the treaty.     For many years, the landlord-tenant relationship was mutually beneficial.  In exchange for an excellent harbor on the west coast of Cuba, the United States pumped money into the Cuban economy, paying rent; buying food, water, building supplies and other goods from Cuba; and employing thousands of Cubans in the base civilian work force.  In 1959, the situation changed radically.  Fidel Castro, briefly imprisoned for a previous attempt at insurrection, finally succeeded in overthrowing the government of dictator Fulgencio Batista, and instituted a communist system increasingly dependent on Soviet aid.  Castro nationalized hundreds of millions of dollars worth of American private property on the island, and the United States responded with a trade embargo.  The Eisenhower and subsequent Kennedy administrations both wanted Castro out.  In April, 1961, an American-sponsored invasion by Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs failed when President Kennedy refused to authorize American air support.  In October, 1962, an American U-2 reconnaissance plane detected Soviet missile launchers being erected in Cuba.  A tense diplomatic showdown ensued, escalating to an American blockade against Soviet ships, and the world stood at the brink of war between nuclear superpowers.  Ultimately, the Soviets agreed to dismantle their launchers, take back their missiles, and uneasy peace was restored.  Yet Castro, recently exposed as an enthusiastic and bellicose Soviet client, still had a large American naval base on the western end of his island nation, reminding him that he was not master of his domain.  He was determined to rid himself of the American military presence.    Into this highly-charged atmosphere came the new Guantanamo Bay base commander, newly-minted rear admiral John D. Bulkeley.  It was December, 1963, two weeks after the assassination of President Kennedy showed the world that its fate is never certain.  Admiral Bulkeley commanded a garrison of 5,000 marines, sailors and Seabees and a squadron of Crusader jets with which to defend his 45 square miles of Cuban real estate from Castro’s 250,000-man military equipped with modern Soviet weapons, tanks, and MiG fighters.  Of course, Guantanamo was backed up by military forces on the American mainland, but Bulkeley’s position was hardly favorable.   Bulkeley was not intimidated.  During World War II her served in the Pacific, Atlantic and Mediterranean.  Among other achievements, Bulkeley engaged and sunk Japanese and German warships, conducted secret missions on the coast of Fortress Europe, and was the PT boat skipper who delivered General Douglas MacArthur from Corregidor, through a cordon of Japanese ships and planes, to safety on Mindanao.  By the end of the war, Bulkeley had been awarded a Silver Star, three Distinguished Service Medals, two Distinguished Service Crosses, the Navy Cross and the Medal of Honor.  He was not the type to back down from a fight.  Castro tested Bulkeley in the first few days.  Cuban engineers bulldozed 1100 feet of chain link fence on the perimeter, and Castro’s minister of state security sent Bulkeley a threatening message advising the Americans it would be “imprudent” to repair the fence.  The reason for this incursion was that failing to repair the fence was considered “abandonment” by the treaty, and Castro could lay claim to Guantanamo if the Americans abandoned the base.  If Bulkeley heeded the Cuban warning and did nothing, the United States could lose legal claim to the base.  If he defied the Cubans, he could incite a shooting war with a Soviet ally.    Bulkeley ordered the fence repaired the next morning.  The admiral, dressed in fatigues, stood shoulder to shoulder with two thousand well-armed marines at the break in the fence.  His Crusaders were overhead, and four destroyers were in the bay, armed and ready for any Cuban reaction.  There was none, and navy Seabees had the fence repaired before dark.  Bulkeley had stood tall and Castro had backed down.  The Cuban government repeatedly incited the population with fabrications about American atrocities, incursions, and provocations–none of which were true, and none of which caused a popular uprising against the Americans.  So in February, 1964, Castro seized control of the pumping station for Guantanamo’s fresh water supply (which was outside the Guantanamo perimeter) and shut off the tap.  The Americans had been paying the Cuban government for the water since 1939, and Castro had kept the pipeline open even through the Bay of Pigs and the missile crisis to get the $14,00 monthly payment.  But now Castro intended to drive the Americans out by drought.  Bulkeley instituted severe water restrictions for the ten thousand Americans (military personnel, their families, and civilian workers) on base, cutting the two million gallons used per day in half.  Water tankers and barges shuttling back and forth from the United States and Jamaica brought millions of gallons per visit, and a desalination unit on one vessel supplied further water, but the base was far from self-sufficient.  The crisis made American headlines, and during this presidential election year, there was plenty of bipartisan support for the base commander.  President Johnson authorized immediate construction of a permanent desalination plant at Guantanamo.  With Bulkeley and Guantanamo holding out even without Cuban fresh water, Castro was on the verge of a public relations embarrassment–the Americans didn’t need his water.  So he fabricated another scandal–he accused the Americans of stealing Cuban water through the old pipeline.  Immediately, inquiries from the international press and the American State Department flooded Bulkeley’s office–“Are you stealing Cuban water?”  What neither Castro nor the gullible press knew was that Bulkeley had sealed off the old pipeline as a precaution against Castro restoring the flow with tainted or poisoned water.  Bulkeley sensed a public relations victory of his own.  He invited members of the press to Guantanamo, and had his engineers cut open the pipeline at the perimeter.  It was bone dry, as it had been for at least a week.  Castro was publicly caught in a lie, Bulkeley had again outsmarted him, and the world press was there to witness it.  Guantanamo’s desalination plant was completed by July, ensuring water self-sufficiency in perpetuity.  Castro was furious–Bulkeley outmaneuvered him at every turn.  When Cuban soldiers set up searchlights across the fence from a marine strong point, shining the intense beams into the eyes of the sentries to blind them, Bulkeley had a giant Marine Corps emblem placed on the front of the strong point.  When the Cubans realized they were just lighting up the emblem of their enemies, they removed the searchlights.     Castro’s schemes continued, but Bulkeley frustrated them all.  The Cubans even shot one of their own deceased soldiers and blamed the death on trigger-happy marines, but Bulkeley had clear evidence that the shot did not come from an American weapon.  Castro’s frustration finally led him to put a $50,000 bounty on Bulkeley, dead or alive.  It was never collected.  At any one of the crisis points in the first years of Castro’s reign, a less resolute officer might have buckled under the pressure.  John D. Bulkeley was not prone to buckling.  He steadfastly defended American interests with demonstrations (but never use of) of force, by ingenuity, and by exposing communist lies and propaganda.    Bulkeley had one advantage over contemporary officers.  He enjoyed the full support of the American press, public and president.  In the mid-sixties, American military victories, whether moral or martial, were celebrated by our nation.  Presidents still honored officers who performed well under pressure, rather than second-guessing them.  Citizens still cheered heroes, rather than questioning their motives.  The press still trumpeted our triumphs, rather than questioning our principles.  Admiral John D. Bulkeley made it clear that America would never willingly give up Guantanamo Bay, and would fight to keep it.  The legacy of his courage ensured our possession of Guantanamo Bay today.  According to the treaty, only abandonment will return this important American base to the communists.  If he were still around, Admiral Bulkeley would be astonished at how many Americans want to do just that. --- For the full story on Admiral Bulkeley and his lifelong service to this nation, see “Sea Wolf, the Daring Exploits of a Navy Legend,” by William A. Breuer, Presidio Press, Novato, California, 1989

I recall that candidate Obama insisted that closing Gitmo was essential to restoring America to being held in high esteem in Europe/

Hmmm, maybe not.  

I am delighted to hear that I am not the only person in this country who thinks that the €430,000 per year which will be spent on protecting the Guantanamo Bay suspects in Ireland is an absolute disgrace, as per Neil McGonigle (Letters, July 31).

Once again, it is an indication of a Government worried about its international reputation instead of unemployment levels and the fact that it is going broke

Note to President Obama and the Left. Sure Europe likes to complain about U.S. foreign policy. But what in Wicca's name made you think they wanted to do anything about the problem here themselves?

Hey, it's not like the Irish don't have their own problems to deal with these days

Question to the foreign policy brain trust. Name me one country where we were able to relocate Gitmo detainees where the local government wasn;t excoriated by its own populace for signing on?

Maybe we should blame Bush for the fact that the rest of the world sorta covertly likes a unilateral America that mops up the world's messes by itself, while allowing everyone else to complain about the janitor. Bottom line to the "reality based community". No one else wants to pick up a mop. 

Although I have opposed the use to which the facilities at Guantanamo are being put for years, the plans which the Obama administration is developing to deal with the remaining terrorists held there present problems which they seem not to have considered and which may be unresolvable.

The Bush administration already released about two thirds of those being held at GITMO. They released all the easy prisoners. They sent home the ones whose countries would welcome them and they tried the ones where the evidence was easy to argue in court. Even so, a significant number of those they freed immediately returned to fighting for al Qaeda or the Taliban or resumed engaging in acts of terrorism. What they've left for Obama to deal with are prisoners who are confirmed to be serious terrorist threats, but against whom the evidence is weak or hard to present, even in a military tribunal, and whose home countries will not take them back because they know what diehard bastards they are, and they have absolute confidence that they will be involved in future violence if given an opportunity.

If we take them out of GITMO either permanently or to face trial, we have to put them somewhere. Evidence suggests that our prisons are already a breeding ground for potential terrorists. The recent terror plots in Miami and New York both originated with Muslim converts who had been radicalized in prison. Allowing these terrorists from GITMO who really are "the worst of the worst" into the prison system where they will be treated by some as celebrities and role models could prove to be disastrous. Even in the relative isolation of a supermax facility their influence would be felt; passed on through the several hundred other terrorists already in the federal and state prison system and the underground communications networks of the prison gangs.

The only alternative would be to put them in a completely separate maximum security facility, either built or adapted to house them, inside the US. Although many governors are trying to keep GITMO prisoners out of their states, governors in states with the most severe economic problems might be persuaded to offer facilities in their states in exchange for federal dollars. Michigan's Governor John Engler has already offered one of the two small maximum security prisons in Michigan's upper peninsula for the purpose. Others are also interested, like the town of Hardin, Montana whose city council voted unanimously to welcome GITMO prisoners to their brand new maximum security prison which remains unoccupied after three years of disputes with state authorities.

So despite the "not in my back yard" attitude which prevails in most states when they envision terrorists as guests in their prisons, there are places which are desperate enough for federal dollars and jobs to take the terrorists, so housing them in the US is certainly feasible. However, aside from the technical difference of being on American soil, a supermax prison devoted solely to GITMO prisoners would not be much different from housing them where they are now. They would still be isolated from other prisoners, likely in a very remote part of the country, and held under uniquely high levels of security. No one has ever escaped from a supermax prison in the US, but keeping the prisoners secure is really the least of the problems.

But even if we put them in prison somewhere else, respect for the rule of law and the Constitution demands that we give them fair trials. Yet there's a reason why the Bush administration was only able to try a handful of them. The evidence against the rest is strong enough to convince most people that they really are dangerous terrorists but it is not sufficient to form an effective case good enough to stand up in US courts which have already rejected the kind of evidence the government is trying to use in many of these cases. There's enough evidence to know they are the "worst of the worst" but it's often not the kind of evidence which is up to the standards of a normal American court. Twenty reliable sources may have told us someone is a terrorist and we may absolutely believe them, but without witnesses to acts of terrorism or physical evidence, a trial may well end in an acquittal which should result in the release of the prisoner. Then what do we do? We can't keep him in the US because he's not a citizen and he really is a dangerous terrorist even if not convicted, so he's not about to get a visa. We can't send him home or to another country because they know who and what he is and won't take him. We can't just release him in the wilds of Waziristan when no one is looking, because he'll just start killing civilians and US soldiers as a recent Pentagon report demonstrates. What do we do that honors our legal system and our Constitution and also protects our people and the world?

President Obama admits he doesn't have a solution, saying "there are no neat and easy answers here." He has a plan but it is expected to be unable to provide a real solution for as many as 100 of the GITMO prisoners who cannot be repatriated or freed in the US. The president seems to be leaning towards holding them indefinitely in the US without trial instead of at Guantanamo, and that's really no solution at all. It's still a violation of their right to a trial and some sort of justice. And if they are going to continue to be held without trial, the prisoners might actually prefer the balmy climate of Cuba to a concrete cell in the frozen wastelands of Montana or northern Michigan.

There aren't a lot of other options. We can't set them free in the US, we can't send them home and we can't legally hold them forever without trial. What does that leave?

It's tempting to apologize to the acquitted terrorist, drop him near the fighting in Waziristan or Somalia with an unloaded AK-47 and then turn a blind eye as a soldier -- perhaps a Pakistani soldier for propriety's sake -- with more common sense than our government, shoots him as an enemy combatant. That wouldn't be nice, and the backlash would be horrendous if it leaked, and it's guaranteed to leak.

Or we could take that idea to a higher and even more draconian level that will appeal to fans of the New World Order. Tag them with the dreaded GPS locator chips which are now being put in dogs by the humane society and which some people are suggesting we put in our kids. Then release them in a terrorist controlled area and track them until they meet up with some terrorists and call in an airstrike or a drone with a Hellfire Missile and take them and their friends out. Even less nice, but we might have plausible deniability if we claimed we targeted the other terrorists, not the recently released guy with the chip.

I can think of only one other slightly less sleazy and considerably more humane solution, which will certainly appeal to the administration's legion of lawyers. Let them go through trial, and as soon as they are set free immediately arrest them on a trumped up charge -- illegal immigration comes to mind -- and imprison them again. Conveniently, our immigration laws are so screwed up we could probably hold them just about forever if we can't find a country to deport them to. This really isn't any different than just leaving them in jail, but they do get a trial and we get a legal fiction to hide behind.

After thinking long and hard and not being able to come up with better solutions than these, I do know one thing for sure. I'm glad I'm not President Obama, because even if he has the wisdom of Solomon, I don't think he can find a solution any better than the ones I outlined. He's in a no-win situation and will pay a high price for whatever inevitably unsatisfactory resolution he finally selects.

Crossposted at RedState.

The victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.
- Sun Tzu

Patrick’s post today on de-gimmicking the conservative movement makes an excellent point. We need to choose our battles, find conservative policies with overwhelming public support, and vigorously advance them in non-ideological terms. The approach worked with the Contract for America in 1994, and it worked with Drill Here Drill Now last year. When we find conservative policies with overwhelming support and draw upon the American people to create change, it works very well.
 
President Obama's January 22nd executive order, which ordered the closing of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, opened the door to such a winning 80/20 American issue. President Obama’s order will close the Guantanamo facility within one year of its signing and ordered an extensive revision of terrorist detainee policy which would determine where the Guantanamo detainees will go and what will happen to the detainees of the future. The executive order was a controversial document that has been assaulted from both the left and the right. However, most Americans overwhelmingly agree with conservatives on the key issue at hand and we should use this opportunity to advance sound national security policy, not gimmickry.
 
The Combatant vs. Criminal Battle and the Features of the Field
 
At its core, this is a struggle over whether terrorist detainees should be treated as civilian criminals or as combatant prisoners of war. Conservatives typically believe that terrorists should be treated as combatants, and liberals believe they should be treated as criminals.
 
This is a complex issue, and the major polls investigating the question can sometimes be misleading. For example, a recent ABC poll claimed that Americans supported trying detainees in civilian courts over releasing them to their home countries by a 2-1 margin. This may seem to demonstrate support for the terrorist-as-criminal position, but the question did not include the option of military tribunals.
 
Fortunately, when presented with the choice of providing detainees with civilian trials or using the military tribunal system, Americans strongly believe terrorist detainees should be treated as combatants, not criminals. In a January 27th Rasmussen poll, 69% said that terrorists should not be given all the rights of citizens, and 59% supported using military tribunals vs. 26% who supported using civilian trials to process detainee cases.
 
Furthermore, Americans do not want Guantanamo detainees (and presumably future detainees) transferred to the US, and certainly not in their own communities. A recent Opinion Dynamics poll reveals that 63% of all Americans, including majorities of Republicans, Democrats, and independents, do not want prisoners from Guantanamo Bay moved to prisons in their community, and a 52-47% majority do not want them in the US at all.
 
It is important to note that Guantanamo Bay itself has a negative connotation in the minds of the public that puts downward pressure on polling regarding the central criminal vs. combatant debate. The Rasmussen poll did not mention Guantanamo Bay in its questions about military tribunals and measured a large 33-point terrorist-as-combatant majority, while the ABC poll measured support for ‘continuing to hold [detainees] at Guantanamo’ rather than military tribunals and returned a relatively small 53-42 majority in favor of the terrorist-as-criminal approach.
 
With this knowledge and the work of Frank Luntz in mind, it would be wise for those of us who hold the terrorist-as-combatant view to let the Guantanamo Bay facility close. We should instead focus on the future by pushing the Administration to adopt a forward-looking counterterrorism detainee policy that is based on the terrorist-as-combatant view held by most Americans when Guantanamo is out of the picture. Sixty-eight percent of Americans, including majorities of Republicans, independents and Democrats, right-of-center terrorism experts Charles Stimson and James Jay Carafano, and even Newt Gingrich support the creation of a new set of clear international rules to set transparent guidelines for how countries can fight the War on Terror. If the process of creating these rules is transparent, the American people have the ability to provide their input into the process, and we have experts to publicly articulate the terrorist-as-combatant approach, the result would be a clearer, more stable system than what we have now which would ensure that dangerous combatants are not treated like fish in some catch-and-release system and allowed to return to the battlefield and kill again.  
 

Last Friday, President Obama met with a group of terrorism survivors in the White House and announced that all charges were dropped against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the suspected mastermind of the bombing of the USS Cole in 2001. This event was mostly overshadowed by the uproar surrounding the spending bill in the Senate, but it marks a dangerous milestone as the Obama Administration begins to deal with the messy repercussions of closing the terrorist detention facility in Guantanamo Bay.

The President will face a number of tough decisions over the next year as he prepares to move detainees to other facilities, and it is certain that there will be a great deal of pressure on him to treat these detainees as common criminals and even to let go some of the 200 detainees considered too dangerous to release.

Unfortunately, we do not have the luxury of treating the risk of releasing Guantanamo prisoners as a hypothetical issue. The Pentagon estimates that 62 former Guantanamo detainees have already returned to active involvement in terrorist organizations and that one has even risen to be the second in command of Al-Qaeda in Yemen.

In response to this troubling turn of events, Students for Victory recently launched the No Catch and Release petition campaign. No Catch and Release will gather public support for three general principles for handling the Guantanamo detainees. Each of the three principles are already supported by majorities of the American people. President Obama has repeatedly stated that he wants to listen to the ideas of all Americans, so this is our chance to make our voices heard.

You can read and sign the petition at http://www.studentsforvictory.com/savelives.

In just five months, Newt Gingrich’s Drill Here Drill Now campaign prepared the environment that allowed the #dontgo Revolution to take place and win an important policy victory for energy independence. We may not have the eloquence of Newt or the resources of American Solutions, but we do have a fired up and united grassroots ready to act to make this country safer.

We at Students for Victory are urging President Obama to follow these principles and we are building a widespread coalition of activists, bloggers, and organizations who will work with us to do the same. You can publicly endorse the principles and join the coalition at http://www.studentsforvictory.com/savelives.

All Americans have the right to have their voices heard. We face an uphill struggle against organized groups that favor releasing prisoners our soldiers fought to apprehend, but one signature at a time, one message to a friend at a time, and one blog post at a time, each of us can make a difference and act to help keep our loved ones safe.

We hope you’ll sign the petition, join the coalition, and get involved in the movement at http://www.studentsforvictory.com/savelives.

They say that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and while that has been resorted to in recent decades by history professor’s as a joke towards their students, those who would lead our country should also take note. While declaring his support for the recent Supreme Court ruling granting captured terrorists rights to civilian courts, Barack Obama cited possibly the worst historical example to back up his opinion:

Obama, a former senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, cited “that principle of habeas corpus, that a state can’t just hold you for any reason without charging you and without giving you any kind of due process — that’s the essence of who we are. I mean, you remember during the Nuremberg trials, part of what made us different was even after these Nazis had performed atrocities that no one had ever seen before, we still gave them a day in court and that taught the entire world about who we are but also the basic principles of rule of law. Now the Supreme Court upheld that principle yesterday.”

(Though Obama was clearly referring to the principle of giving criminals a day in court, it’s worth pointing out the distinction here, that the Nuremberg trials did not give Nazi war criminals access to U.S. courts, but to a special international military tribunal created by the U.S., USSR, France and the U.K. Though Nuremberg currently is considered a model for international law, it’s not as if Rudolph Hess had access to challenge his detention in U.S. federal court.)

This is the entire essence of the Supreme Court ruling, which it appears Obama has yet to read. The Supreme Court did not simply rule that detainees in Guantanamo have the right to question their detention, they already had that right via the Military Commission Act, what the ruling stated was that detainees had the right to do so in a civilian court. Conservatives have argued that at no point in our nations history did we grant access to civilian courts for captured enemy combatants, and Obama has inadvertently reminded his supporters of that.

As Ed Morrissey notes:

It’s not as if the military tribunals offered by Congress and the Bush administration fell below Nuremberg standards, either. They allowed for even more rights for the defendants than Nuremberg, or would have if the Supreme Court hadn’t twice stopped them before determining whether they worked. In fact, the tribunals as conceived in the last iteration closely match what American soldiers receive for their own trials under the UCMJ.

If Obama really understood the Nuremberg example, he would be criticizing the Boumediene decision, not praising it. The fact that he uses Nuremberg as an example shows how little he comprehends either, and the war on terror.

What the ruling in Boumediene has actually done is grant rights to unlawful combatants that would not otherwise be granted to lawful combatants. If we are at war with a nation and capture an enemy soldier in full uniform, that soldier has rights granted via the Geneva conventions. The Geneva conventions however has listed explicit conditions which had to be met in order to qualify as a POW:

• (a) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
• (b) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;
• (c) that of carrying arms openly;
• (d) that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

Illegal enemy combatants do not meet these conditions which was why Congress deemed it necessary to pass the Military Commission Act. This ruling will now offer an incentive in future conflicts for enemy soldiers to not abide by the laws and customs of war, offering them greater privileges for operating outside of those guidelines than within them.

Had Barack Obama learned his history regarding the Geneva conventions and the Nuremberg trials this would be abudnantly clear to him, instead he has chosen to ignore history in favor of ACLU talking points.

I agree with Scalia - this is a major setback.  On the positive side, the Bush administration has managed to keep some very dangerous men locked up for over 6 years.

One other positive aspect is that litigating these cases will tie up the courts and liberal lawyers for some time - I'd rather have them messin' around with that than re-writing the Constitution.