Closing Guantanamo
Categories: American Politics,Gitmo Detainee,Al-Qa'ida,Europe
The President faces many challenges in the days ahead as he contemplates how to close the base and more importantly how to deal with the detainees. Human Rights Group are already pushing that no prisoners be returned to home countries where they could possibly face torture. Families of 9/11 victims are outraged by the President's moves and call for justice. moving the trials to civilian court systems could mean the compromise of intelligence operations and the loss of human lives or the outright dismissal of charges.
President Obama has said that he would like Europe to absorb some of the prisoners and promised the United States would do its part. On that note, Representative Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat has said his district would be willing to take the prisoners. Analysis of this remark reveals that the current prisons in Murtha's district are full and new one would have to be constructed, meaning more money and jobs for his constituents.
Here is what the German editorials have to say about Gitmo:
The Financial Times Deutschland writes:
"Barack Obama made many promises during his campaign for president, most of them aimed at Americans, but one promise was directed at the wider world: The prison at Guantanamo, which had become a symbol for a violation of human rights, would be closed. There may be no other question that has united Europeans, Asians and Africans so readily as the judgment that the Guantanamo prison represents a blemish on America's reputation."
"Support for the United States, an ally,will be credible only when Germany offers to accept potential 'instigators' who have committed no provable crime. This may even involve corralling police and constitutional protection powers to keep an eye on the former inmates. But Germany cannot avoid the investment if it takes its own commitment to human rights seriously."
The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:
"Guantanamo, the prison in Cuba, stands for the dark days of the war against terrorism and a practice that contradicts America's legal foundations and traditions … (But) closing the prison will be less easy than many people have suspected over the last few months. One question is what to do with the roughly 60 inmates who are now ready for release. No nation has yet made a full-throated offer to take any of them in -- but the German foreign minister says Germany should. Why? Does he want to ingratiate himself to Obama? If these prisoners represent a security risk, they have nothing to seek in Germany; if they're innocent, why can't they stay in America?"
The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung argues:
"It's a first step back toward the rule of law: Barack Obama has moved to halt the military trials in Guantanamo. The new US president needs to go further, though. The United States must put suspected terrorists before a proper criminal court. Prisoners against whom no crime can be proved need to go free. Then the prison at Guantanamo must close. This is the only way America can find its way back to the values that were betrayed under President Bush out of a mixture of hubris and fear. Then America will regain its preferred reputation as the land of democracy, freedom and justice."
"The international community must find answers to the question of what to do with the (cleared) Guantanamo prisoners. The current rules governing prisoners of war don't fit. They apply to combatants who fight for a given state. Al-Qaida militants are free radicals, and they pose not just legal, but also human rights problems."
"As long as there are no solutions, anyone who is not provably guilty must go free, even if he might be dangerous later. That is the price of the rule of law."
The conservative daily Die Welt writes:
"Obama's intention to close Guantanamo is right. The prison is not just condemned by critics around the world; even the American Supreme Court found the indefinite detention of 'foreign fighters' anti-constitutional. To distance himself from George W. Bush's policies it's been necessary for Obama … to close the prison, where a total of around 250 people remain. Many are apparently innocent. Some inmates, according to the Pentagon's own confession, have been tortured. But what seems overdue morally will run into legal problems, and will require from Obama his first show of strength."
"The president of the United States has responsibility for American prisoners. As long as Obama has made no formal request for help (as president), any offer to take in prisoners is just activism. But in the end the Europeans, who have long called for an end to Guantanamo, will have to shoulder some of the burden of its closure."
Finally, SPIEGEL ONLINE writes:
"Tuesday's motion is a nice but largely symbolic act. It has been rightly praised around the world. But now Obama must prove that he is serious about the promises he made during the campaign. Even before his inauguration, this smart president understood it wouldn't be easy -- and he already began managing expectations. There is absolutely no chance that Guantanamo will close during his first 100 days in office, he said a few days ago. For now, he has 120 days to present his plan -- and it won't just be his supporters who are counting those days."
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