Among all this political correctness, political lies and widespread citizens’ apathy and moral stagnation, it sometimes feels good to hear a provocative voice that, if it cannot shake up the establishment, might at least be able to shake up a bit the public debate. Today that a first series of articles went online commemorating the approaching 10th year anniversary of 9/11, I want to be this provocative voice: It is time for the West to stop pretending as if we were the only victims of 9/11 and that non-Western lives are worth less than Western ones. And as a first step of this enlightenment, Guantanamo has to go.
Policy options are simple: Give every Guantanamo detainee that you cannot legally convict of a crime in a US federal court based on untainted evidence obtained according to criminal justice standards acceptable for a liberal democracy a “US Greencard”. Yes, the right to permanently live on US soil among US citizens with the prospect of one day acquiring US citizenship. You think I am joking? Hardly. How to transfer the detainees in the absence of budget allocated by Congress to such an action? Have Europeans pay for the transfer of detainees to the US mainland. Paying is what we seem to be capable of best anyway! Too ambitious? Well, alternatively I could suggest have Europeans accept the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to European soil granting them a right to live there freely if we cannot legally detain them subject to the condition that the US accepts the institution of an effective UN Special Tribunal for the US War on Terror to try low-level and high-level US citizens suspected of having committed War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity and subject to the condition that the US agrees to fully cooperate with such a tribunal.
Why am I suggesting this? Because. Because the cheering and chanting of Americans in the streets of Washington DC and New York on May 1 to celebrate the death of Osama Bin Laden shows a twisted sense of justice. Because in mid April 2011, the Red Cross released a Survey that found that 59% of Americans between the age of 12 and 17 “believe there are times when it is acceptable to torture the enemy.” The survey was released just about a week after it was known that the Obama administration would fail to try the alleged conspirators of the 9/11 attacks in a civilian court and that trials are now due to start at the disgraced US military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, instead. At the same time and related to this, news confirmed the Obama administration’s intention to close disgraced GITMO not by relocating the detainees to US soil, but by convincing other States to take them in in return for other favors such as money, the lifting of visa bans and others. It seems ironic that almost at the same time new secret documents were released by Wikileaks that show the unprofessionalism with which US interrogators tried to gain valuable intelligence from Guantanamo detainees by using techniques tantamount to torture that would be considered invalid if submitted for scrutiny to a civilian court.
Finally, another blow to justice was given by the US Supreme Court’s refusal to hear an appeal from Chinese Muslims whose detention at Guantanamo could not be ended due to a lack of an agreement on where to settle them. But note, this despite the fact that their detention was recognized as being “without lawful cause.” Confronted with these defeating news one has to conclude that Guantanamo detainees are apparently relegated to a desperate fate in limbo in the absence of countries willing to take them in. They are going to stay on the infamous military base. Not only that, but with US President Obama’s determination to “look forward, not backwards”, they do not even have a chance of ever seeing their alleged torturers be prosecuted let alone condemned if found guilty since no one in the US who is in a meaningful position seems to advocate for putting US soldiers and high-ranking ex-Bush administration officials on trial for having engaged in and promoted what has been euphemistically renamed “enhanced interrogation techniques”. At the same time, the consensus of the political elite to look forward is not even countered by anything that could be defined as an American public eager to look backwards.
While feeling sorry for all those Americans that look at the above-mentioned developments with the same disgust as I do, I cannot help but to feel that at some point in time American political culture must have gone completely morally bankrupt. How can a presumed-to-be enlightened people tolerate injustices they would never allow to happen to their own kind? As I hinted at in a post commenting on Osama bin Laden’s death, it seems as if the American people has become completely self-absorbed by an antagonizing civic religion that foments an uncritical image of an unjustified war perceived to be launched by the evil “them” against the good “us”. This has to stop. Americans need to understand that crimes against humanity are being perpetrated also in their name. They have to recognize that justice requires them to make up for it and pay the consequences for their country’s action. They should understand that Americans too, have to submit to the laws and recognize that even non-Americans and non-Whites deserve respect for their lives and dignity as human beings. And it is time for the world, and especially America’s Western allies to get this message across to them to cause a course correction. If we fail to do so, I provocatively dare to say, we can unfortunately only expect worse to come from the other side of the Atlantic now that it’s suffering from what some have called “imperial overstretch, perpetual war, and insolvency” and a polarization of their political landscape.
Admittedly, I have been particularly harsh here and this is not to say that Europeans are saints. On the contrary, our absolute and unquestioned allegiance to the Unites States, our cowardness to find our own European ways made us partake in US actions for which also Europe should seek moral redemption. It is time for Europe to show the world that we are not just good at symbolically and hypocritically condemning American wrongs that we in the best case condoned, in the worst case outright welcomed. Indeed, Europe made itself a complicit when it pretended not to see the secret US flights and black sites on European soil, used Guantanamo detainees as a bargaining chip, and failed to act in diplomatic protection of its own citizens illegally detained there, when some European countries (e.g. Spain, or Germany) backed off from prosecuting American war criminals and torturers or to otherwise try to force the US to close the detention facility as well as reinstate the rule of law. With this Europe bears a share of the guilt for the crimes committed against Guantanamo detainees, at least some guilt for willful blindness and acquiescence. And as such Europe too should pay – not just with its money but with a commitment to make the right choices in the future, to call the US up on its actions by offering constructive though outrageous policy solution, even if this sets us on a path of confrontation with our closest ally. If you take the time to think about it, a feared but unlikely-to-really-happen deterioration of our strategic transatlantic partnership is a little price to pay in exchange for at least a tiny little bit of more global justice.
More entries to follow-up on this more in detail will follow soon.
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