The Lessons of Guantanamo
While Guantanamo is hardly anything America can be proud of, it still hasn’t achieved the ignominy of Manzanar. From 1942 until 1945, over 110,000 men, women and children of Japanese descent, mostly American citizens, were deprived of their property and imprisoned without charge in Manzanar and nine other hastily built prison camps. American citizens.
There are, they tell us, no Americans being held at Guantanamo. Yet. But the people who are there, picked up from various places around the world and imprisoned, without charge, have been beaten, tortured, harassed and humiliated, some for as long as four years. There is no guarantee of a trial, the “quaint� Geneva Conventions don’t protect them, and there is no hope for any of them. Is it any wonder there have been at least 40 attempted suicides there?
The suicides last week of three men, one of whom was scheduled for release, were called acts of war by their captors, and a good public relations move. They were criticized for having been uncooperative and hostile toward their captors, and Harry Harris said “they have no regard for human life, neither ours or their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetric war against us.� How callous can you get? Try for a moment, Harry, to put yourself in their shoes: armed men pick you up, fly you continents away from your home, put you in prison and torture you, for years, with no chance for a trial, and no hope you will ever be free.
How would you feel, Harry?
Now once again the European Union is calling for the closure of Guantanamo, as are other nations, but as long as Dick Cheney is de-facto president, he has made it clear there is no hope for the inmates there. The orders that set up secret prisons, torture and mass murder, that have killed and maimed thousands of American soldiers, have spied on American citizens. . .these orders came from one man: Dick Cheney.
In a larger sense, Guantanamo is a learning opportunity for America, and for the world. We are learning how human rights can be suspended in ANY country, that one man can seize power in ANY country, that years or imprisonment and torture can lead men to take their own lives, and that, as in World War II, the rest of the world is, at least in the short term, powerless to stop maniacs with huge arsenals behind them.
Guantanamo is no Manzanar or Auschwitz yet, but in the annals of man’s inhumanity to man, it certainly deserves camparison. And OUR shame for letting it exist is no less than that of the Germans in the 1930’s and 40’s, or the Americans who allowed whole families of their fellow citizens to be stripped of their possessions and imprisoned in the California desert.