This past weekend, former Secretary of State Colin Powell recommended that "Guantanamo ought to be closed immediately". Secretary Powell said "the value of holding prisoners there was unclear, but the price we were paying around the world for doing so was obvious." Better late than never I say.
The Supreme Court's recent decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld has certainly altered the landscape and the urgency to deal with the American black eye in Cuba. The ruling was a victory for the rule of law and a reminder that even during our toughest times we must not allow the sometimes insatiable quest for expanded executive power to suffocate the wise system our founders created with checks and balances, co-equal branches of government. No branch or person, including the President, is above the law regardless of the difficult circumstances we find ourselves in. In fact, protecting these principles is even more critical during times of war, because our democratic values are challenged the most.
The Supreme Court declared that the military commissions the President established at Guantánamo are illegal. The court did not find the Geneva Conventions to be "quaint" and "obsolete" as the President's Attorney General did. In fact, the court found that the commissions failed to meet the minimum standards of procedural fairness required under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Conventions. The Uniform Code as well as the Geneva Conventions provide "all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples."
A detainee "shall in all circumstances be treated humanely" and the Conventions prohibit "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment." Without rehashing, I think many would agree that the environment at Guantanamo does not meet these standards.
The military commissions established under Bush fell short for many reasons. Perhaps most significantly, defendants don't have the right to be present at their own trial, nor confront the evidence against them. Furthermore, such evidence presented may have been obtained by coercion, which many in law enforcement deem unreliable.
Now, some on the Right are saying they will simply use Congressional power to authorize business as usual at Guantanamo. But then why did the commissions, already supposedly authorized by Congress under the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (a weak argument rejected by the Court), not pass judicial muster? As Justice O'Connor observed "the Constitution is best preserved by reliance on standards tested over time and insulated from the pressures of the moment."
The administration and our leaders have a chance for a course correction here and it is critical they take it. Guantanamo, as Powell noted, has devastated our ability to win hearts and minds and has hurt us dearly with our allies. We can ill afford losing such critical boons in our war against terror.
I hope you will join me in the action item to make sure Congress passes a statute consistent with the Geneva Conventions. It is not to protect those being held, but to protect the values this nation stands for and the recognition that the Conventions are of tremendous importance to our troops serving overseas.
Of course, the United States ought not do things just because Europe and the rest of the world wants us to.
But we should lead on issues of due process, laws that govern our democracy, morals, human rights and human dignity. The United States should set the example.
It is time for people to demand that the United States, a beacon of hope and freedom, reclaim its place as the world's leader in establishing real moral values in the way it operates, and show those starting down the path to democracy what it looks like in practice.
There would be no better way to set ourselves down that path than to shut down Guantanamo and provide those held there with the protections and standards of article 3 in the Geneva conventions.
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