This Wednesday will be the tenth anniversary of the US prison camp at Guantánamo Bay. Opened by Bush and, despite all his campaign promises, kept open by Barack Obama, this camp represents the warped state the rule of law has been put into in the US by both these presidents.
The New York Times has an impressive op-ed by Lakhdar Boumediene, one of the most well-known former Guántanamo prisoners, who was held innocent and subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques for seven years before he was released by court order.
Boumediene was head of the Red Crescent’s humanitarian aid for children department in Bosnia-Herzegovina before he was captured off the streets on October 19, 2001 by the US Army, deported to Gitmo, and held incommunicado without recourse to a lawyer, the court system, or Geneva protections. While he was subjected to stress techniques, his two daughters had to grow up for seven years without him. Only when the Supreme Court intervened to stop the Bush administration’s lawless practices, Boumediene was granted access to court, found innocent, and released.
His case represents the entire argument against Guantánamo. No government on Earth should be allowed to indefinitely detain people and treat them like they want without any check by an independent judiciary. That is what we have human rights for. Barack Obama, moreover, is the president who has turned this once controversial policy into bipartisan consensus. Under this president, indefinite detention has even been signed into law.
So to remind everyone of this poignant fact, here’s the op-ed by Boumediene. There’s another one too, by the way, from yet another Guantánamo survivor, Murat Kurnaz.
ON Wednesday, America’s detention camp at Guantánamo Bay will have been open for 10 years. For seven of them, I was held there without explanation or charge. During that time my daughters grew up without me. They were toddlers when I was imprisoned, and were never allowed to visit or speak to me by phone. Most of their letters were returned as “undeliverable,” and the few that I received were so thoroughly and thoughtlessly censored that their messages of love and support were lost.
Some American politicians say that people at Guantánamo are terrorists, but I have never been a terrorist. Had I been brought before a court when I was seized, my children’s lives would not have been torn apart, and my family would not have been thrown into poverty. It was only after the United States Supreme Court ordered the government to defend its actions before a federal judge that I was finally able to clear my name and be with them again.
I left Algeria in 1990 to work abroad. In 1997 my family and I moved to Bosnia and Herzegovina at the request of my employer, the Red Crescent Society of the United Arab Emirates. I served in the Sarajevo office as director of humanitarian aid for children who had lost relatives to violence during the Balkan conflicts. In 1998, I became a Bosnian citizen. We had a good life, but all of that changed after 9/11.
When I arrived at work on the morning of Oct. 19, 2001, an intelligence officer was waiting for me. He asked me to accompany him to answer questions. I did so, voluntarily — but afterward I was told that I could not go home. The United States had demanded that local authorities arrest me and five other men. News reports at the time said the United States believed that I was plotting to blow up its embassy in Sarajevo. I had never — for a second — considered this.
The fact that the United States had made a mistake was clear from the beginning. Bosnia’s highest court investigated the American claim, found that there was no evidence against me and ordered my release. But instead, the moment I was released American agents seized me and the five others. We were tied up like animals and flown to Guantánamo, the American naval base in Cuba. I arrived on Jan. 20, 2002.
I still had faith in American justice. I believed my captors would quickly realize their mistake and let me go. But when I would not give the interrogators the answers they wanted — how could I, when I had done nothing wrong? — they became more and more brutal. I was kept awake for many days straight. I was forced to remain in painful positions for hours at a time. These are things I do not want to write about; I want only to forget.
Some additional info on the “draconican piece of legislation” that is, the new security law:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/15/americans-face-guantanamo-detention-obama
“Americans can be arrested on home soil and taken to Guantánamo Bay under a provision inserted into the bill that funds the US military”.
“Barack Obama has abandoned a commitment to veto a new security law that allows the military to indefinitely detain without trial American terrorism suspects arrested on US soil who could then be shipped to Guantánamo Bay…”
“It’s something so radical that it would have been considered crazy had it been pushed by the Bush administration,” said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch. “It establishes precisely the kind of system that the United States has consistently urged other countries not to adopt. At a time when the United States is urging Egypt, for example, to scrap its emergency law and military courts, this is not consistent.”
And then some people say Ron Paul is “radical”. The one radical on the political stage in the US is Barack Obama. Although to be fair, his radicalism is shared by Republicans and Democrats alike.
Literally the only politician with a national outreach who wants to restore the rule of law, and abandon the practices of indefinite detention, military commissions and presidential overreach built up by Bush and kept in place by Obama, is Paul.
Hm, Ron Paul.. . Something unrelated in this context but did you know he is one of those “klimaatontken-gekkies”?
http://www.ronpaul.com/on-the-issues/global-warming/
“The greatest hoax I think that has been around for many, many years if not hundreds of years has been this hoax on [...] global warming.” – Ron Paul on Fox Business, Nov. 4, 2009
Ok, I didn’t know that. After checking the web a bit, I think you’re right: Ron Paul has called climate change a ‘hoax’ and doesn’t ‘believe’ in federal regulations to cap pollution. Shit.
That makes me drastically reconsider my support for Paul. Not that I ‘officially’ supported him, as I vehemently disagree with everything Paul says about the economy and social affairs.
Yet, Paul is the *only* candidate in *both* American parties who stands up for privacy rights, is against the War on Drugs, wants to end indefinite detention, extralegal executions and military commissions, wants to end the civilian-killing drone war, and is against American military excursions into foreign countries. He is the only person principled enough to challenge the by now bipartisan consensus on these matters. Obama has done nothing but extending and cementing Bush-Cheney policies, thereby putting the US imperial presidency on firmer grounds.
So the question every liberal/progressive must ask is, what do you value the most?
* In addition, Obama has been waging a war on whistleblowers that would make Bush and Cheney blush.
While this is all true and must be appreciated, he is also in favour of homeschooling (say what?!) because he believes that “no nation can remain free when the state has greater influence over the knowledge and values transmitted to children than the family do”, he opposes the right to an abortion “Defining life as beginning at conception by passing a “Sanctity of Life Act”, and he is in favour of protecting gun rights…just to name a few things.
So yeah, what do we value the most? Depends on whether you are an American citizen or not and thus on how directly you are affected by these positions.
That also goes the other way around. If you support Obama, you are saying: “I find the continuation of policies of indefinite detention without a judicial process, trial by military commissions, extrajudicial assassinations, and civilian-killing drone wars less important than policies reversing climate change, social policies, regulations, etc.” That’s fine as far as I’m concerned, and I’m not saying I have the answer, but it should at least be openly acknowledged and admitted.
I was one of the first one’s to admit the corruption and betrayal of Obama when he was still being cheered and receiving the Nobel Peace Prize etc so no, I am not supporting Obama. But remember when Obama first ran for president, how we all agreed with everything he said, how we believed his promises of “yes, we can” (this sounds almost sadistic now in my ears), how it was all going to be different. We have seen what has become of that. And now we have Ron Paul, with the same sort of promises..of abolishing policies of indefinite detention without a judicial process, trial by military commissions, extrajudicial assassinations, and civilian-killing drone wars.. . But yeah, it cannot get much worse so let’s hear it for Ron Paul.
If I had voting rights in the US I would not be very eager to vote for Obama, because of abovementioned reasons. But what I’m missing in this whole discussion is the fact that a vote for Ron Paul, is also a vote for the Republican Party! He may not be the most loyal Republican out there, but the fact is that at the moment he is running for the presidential nomination for the Republican Party.
This means that when he would get the nomination a vote in the general election for Ron Paul would equal a vote for the same political organization which has done an extreme amount of damage to the U.S. and to the whole world in the last decade. This is an organization which has reached an all-time low when it comes to morality, competence of their official representatives and political plans. We are no longer living in a time where the Republican party had reasonable, decent political candidates and where their program was pretty close to the mainstream of the American political tradition. This is no longer the era of George H.W. Bush. We’re living in a time of Palin, Huckabee, Bachmann, Gingrich, Perry, etc.
A vote for Paul would mean that if he would be voted president there would be a Republican president + a Republican Congress for at least 2 years.And it would mean that an administration full of Republicans would be installed. I’m not saying this means one should vote for Obama, but, at least for me, this means that no way in hell would I ever vote for Ron Paul.
Maartenp: The US political system is based on the separation of powers. Americans have the option to vote differently for the two branches. Therefore, in general, a vote for Ron Paul would by no means mean an automatic vote for the congressional Republican Party. You could vote Paul for president and Green Party for Congress if you’d like. As to the cabinet, f.e. Obama himself has appointed Republicans and independents as well, so Paul could (and probably would) do the same.
Furthermore, while Paul may nominally be a Republican, he is despised by the establishment of that party, a large share of their voters, and all other candidates. Throughout the debates, especially now that he’s surging, Paul has been treated by them like an enemy bigger than Obama. Political parties in the US are more like loose alliances than coherent organizations, as they are over here. It’s therefore entirely possible to support Paul and not support the Republican Party (in fact, you may do a disfavor to that party by supporting him, as he’s tearing them apart).
My biggest point, however, would be that I don’t give a rat’s ass about Obama or the Democratic Party. The Obama presidency has proven that the Dems are about as corrupt and authoritarian as their Republican counterparts. It has by now become clear that the *entire* American political system, and not just the Republicans, is rotten and decayed. Both parties are equally beholden to corporate interests, dependent on Wall Street, ineffective, and on certain issues (like counterterrorism and the War on Drugs) operating from a very narrow viewpoint, the Democrats no less than the Republicans.
You still seem to adhere to the fairytale that the Dems are “Good”, while the Republicans are “Bad”. While the latter may indeed have the more nuttier protagonists, and be beholden more to Christianist elements, on certain highly important matters they share a consensus that should be challenged. I thought Obama would do that, but he has proven to be a liar. By now it seems that only Ron Paul is challenging this pernicious bipartisan consensus on such matters as the “War” on Terror, America’s role as policeman/executioner in the world (especially in the Muslim world), and the importance of the (international) rule of law. I find this to be one of the most important issues of our day, about as important as climate change or the distribution of wealth. And on this issue, the Democrats are just as wrong as the Republicans. That is why Ron Paul is so very important.
Stuff like the drone war, indefinite detention (legally enshrined!), military courts and extrajudicial assassinations are not just some pet issues you can put aside, as (closet) supporters of Obama seem to do. Ron Paul has, before, during and after the Bush years, and now, principally opposed all this stuff. This in a party that would love to bomb and torture everyone into submission; standing on a national stage between all those wackjobs you mention. For that, he deserves the highest of praise, and possibly, even a vote. I don’t care if he’s in name a Republican or not.
I’m fully aware of how the American political system functions. But you know as well as me that the election of a president has consequences which go beyond the simple choice of who will sit in the white house for four years, even as there are, obviously, separate elections for the Presidency and Congress. When a Republican is elected Republicans will again get a much tighter grip on power, even with a person like Ron Paul, who might not be the most loyal Republican.
) So in my view the hypothetical choice between the Democrat Obama and the Republican Paul is a choice between the (recent) historical trackrecord of Republicans and the trackrecord of Democrats. That is not a weird way to look at it in a two-party system. And with this in mind the Democratic candidate may be far from perfect (continuing violation of human rights in War on Terror, not stopping War on Drugs, etc.) but he just might be the lesser of two evils.
And when my comments made you think that I am a big supporter of the Democrats, let me make clear that I am also deeply dissappointed by the continuation of Bush-policies like the indefinite detention, military courts, extrajudicial assassinations, etc., by this Democratic president, supported by Democratic members of Congress. Obama is as much a dissapointment for me as he is for you.
But what I think is necessary is a pragmatic decision. A decision which is not based on the emotions that came about after many liberal/progressives realized they were in a way betrayed by Obama. The question should be: with which president and party will the U.S. and therefore the world be better off? That is a tough question which cannot easily be answered. Especially since candidates make all kinds of promises which they don’t fulfill. But why not look at it historically? History may not be a completely accurate source for predictions, but at this point I trust it a lot more than promises made by politicians. If we look at the very recent history the fact is that the last Republican president has afflicted much more damage than the last Democratic one. And also the track record of Republicans in Congress is much worse than Democrats. Republicans started the war in Iraq, started using torture, the drone war, intensified the War on Drugs, etc. etc. So yes, I think it’s not unfair be very critical of the Republican Party, even if as an organization they are not as tightly organized as for instance a European counterpart. That is not a simplistic interpretation of the American political system, it is a historical reality. Fully trusting the Republican candidate Ron Paul now would be like trusting a new leader of the Baath party in Iraq after Saddam’s death, who claims he will in no way be influenced by the legacy of his predecessor and the evil party of which is a part (ok that’s pushing it, but you get the point
One other reason to be careful with Paul is his age. Not that I want to discriminate him for it ofcourse. But the fact is that he is 76 (!) years old and would be 77.5 years at his inauguration. The life expectancy for males is 75.6 in the U.S. Apart from the question if it’s a good idea in general to elect a president who could die at any moment of old age from the day he is inaugurated, I think it is of vital importance who his (Republican) vice-president would be!
Furthermore, I think it’s important to not make the same mistake as in 2008, when Obama was thought to be the “Messiah”, the one who would put all the wrongs of the Bush presidency right again. Aren’t you now hoping for Paul to do the same as you hoped Obama would do? You see him as “the one” who will finally be able to come up with bipartisan solutions, who will eradicate the rotten and corrupt elements from Washington, who will finally stop the War On Terror, etc. Hmmm, where did I hear that before. Who says he will be able or willing to do it? When I see Paul, I see a 76-going on-77 year old man who lives in a fairytale world when it comes to economic policies, denies global warming, is a Republican, and yes, has good ideas on ending the War On Terror and securing civil liberties and privacy. But as romantic as it may seem to support Paul, with his outsider, postpartisan, liberal image, he is not the next great solution, as a certain (young) group of liberals/progressives now wants him to be.
I would not support Ron Paul because it would be the ‘romantic’ thing to do, and of course I don’t see him as a liberal, like you imply in that last paragraph. Paul is a cranky old libertarian who has ridiculous, even dangerous ideas about the economy, is in favour of jungle-style, unfettered capitalism, wants to abolish entire government departments and regulatory agencies, is a climate change denialist, favors gun rights, is against abortion etc. etc. All that sucks balls.
However, when you tell me one cannot ever support a member of the Republican Party because of that party’s past regarding Iraq, torture, the War on Terror etc., how can you go past the point that it was Ron Paul all along who *within that same party* opposed all that stuff? Even when everybody, including the majority of Democrats, was full-on supporting extraordinary counterterrorism measures, invading Iraq, and curtailing privacy rights. Your argument doesn’t make sense when it comes to the specific person of Ron Paul. He has always, even when he was almost entirely alone, opposed his party’s (and Democratic) fallacies on these matters.
Your argument about pragmatism does make sense when it comes to weighing what either Paul or Obama would do in the future. Like I said before, it’s a trade-off between on the one hand continuing Obama’s authoritarian policies in the realm of counterterrorism and the rule of law, and on the other hand doing something about climate change, restricting capitalism, providing health care etc. Vote Obama and you get the latter, but also military commissions, indefinite detention, extralegal assassinations etc. Vote Paul and (hopefully) the rule of law will be restored, but you also get a whole package of disastrous economic and other ideas. In that sense, it’s a pragmatic choice. But at least don’t run away for that choice and present it in the starkest way possible. Vote Obama and you vote for keeping in place the most aggrandized, executively overreaching American presidency in history; a presidency that assumes it can singlehandedly make decisions about life and death. And don’t forget: after Obama’s gone, there might be a Republican in that enhanced presidential office!
In my view, Paul is the only one who is currently challenging this evolution of the American presidency towards a quasi-authoritarian power. That is why he is so important and why I could vote for him. He’s throwing a bomb on a tranquil stage that is occupied by Republicans *and* Democrats alike. He is the only one challenging dumb-ass neoconservatism in the former party, and exposing how Obama has continued Bush policies in the latter party. If it wasn’t for him and people considering to vote for him, young liberals and progressives would still be sipping lattes behind their iPads, content with Democratic policies, happy with Obama because he is so cool and intelligent (but only thwarted by those evil Republicans). That kind of tribalistic thinking should be something of the past. The entire American political system is dysfunctional, not just the Republicans, and they urgently need something like a third-party challenger or something else that shakes it up. Paul comes closest to that.
But yeah, there is a danger of over-Messiah-ing Paul, of making the same mistakes as with supporting Obama. But that is a highly cynical argument. If you say that, you’re saying that we should just acquiesce to the inevitable. We should just reconcile ourselves with the fact that Americans and foreigners can be arrested anywhere in the world, that they can be assassinated anywhere, etc. Because hey, why would Paul do it when Obama didn’t do it? Even though I’ve become highly cynical in politics because of Obama, that’s a kind of reasoning that I’m still not ready to follow.
Here maarten. Slightly related. If you have any illusion that the Democrats are somehow less corrupt and degenerate than the Republicans, read this.
http://www.salon.com/2012/01/10/the_new_wh_chief_of_staff_and_citigroup/singleton/
They all belong to the same political class and have the same kind of (mal)practices. Only the Democrats have a friendlier face.