By David Gushee
Eight years ago today (Jan. 11), the United States government transported the first prisoners from Afghanistan to the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
On January 22, 2009, the new President, Barack Obama, stated that Guantanamo would close its doors by Jan. 22, 2010. Because of complex questions relating to the future status of some Guantanamo detainees, however, the president has announced that, despite his intentions, the detention center at Guantanamo will not be closed by this deadline.
Guantanamo is known around the world not only for its indefinite detentions without trial but also as a place where the United States lost its way and engaged in cruel, inhuman, and torturous interrogation practices. Despite the rollback of those policies at that detention center, it remains an odious symbol, a propaganda goldmine for our nation’s adversaries.
It seems appropriate to use this occasion to reflect on Guantanamo as a place, and as a symbol of how we lost our way and how we find our way back.
For three years, Christians working under our banner at Evangelicals for Human Rights (EHR) have cooperated with the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT) and religious institutions across the nation to end U.S.-sponsored prisoner abuse and torture. No national-security concerns can override the basic dignity of the human person and the moral and legal principles that govern all civilized nations. We must find ways to secure our citizens without undermining the rule of law or violating our core moral values. The cruelty, abuse, and torture that occurred at Guantanamo stained the image of the United States and did nothing to enhance our long-term security.
Closing the detention center at Guantanamo is an important symbolic act. It will not resolve all the issues we face as a nation, but it would mark a new and better chapter in our efforts to deal with these issues.
But other steps are needed, some of them even more important. The U.S. government should put in place safeguards to make sure that we never violate our own laws and values in this way again. To know what laws or other changes are needed, Americans need to better understand U.S. policies and practices since 9/11. We need to know everything that was done to our prisoners in the last eight years, who did it, who authorized it and what its effects were. We also need to know who the heroic men and women were who resisted cruelty and torture from within the military and the civil service, often at the cost of their own careers.
NRCAT, formed in 2006 and made up of representatives from more than 260 religious organizations including EHR, is among those organizations that have called for the creation of an independent, nonpartisan commission of inquiry to investigate and make recommendations to Congress and the president about what happened and how to prevent it ever happening again.
Some members of the House of Representatives have discussed creating a select committee to perform a similar function. What’s important is that an inquiry happen, not the precise form such an inquiry should take.
The president’s Jan. 22 executive order on torture mandated that all government agencies follow guidelines laid out in the Army Field Manual while conducting interrogations. With the exception of Appendix M (which allows for the possible use of sleep deprivation, prolonged isolation, and sensory deprivation, which are “minor” forms of torture only to those not experiencing them), the Army Field Manual creates one single, public, reasonably humane standard for all U.S. interrogations. In the future, Appendix M ought to be removed from the manual. Additionally, new legal prohibitions ought to be put into place to prevent removal of suspects to other countries that allow torture for interrogation.
Executive orders are not settled law; they are administrative policies. President Obama’s executive order is not the final word on torture. A future president could revoke it — and in our fevered and fearful environment in this nation today, that is highly conceivable. In order to prevent cruelty, abuse, and torture over the long term, Congress should pass legislation that makes elements of the executive order permanent.
The necessary protections include a “Golden Rule” standard that would require the president to affirm that each interrogation technique authorized for use by American interrogators reflects practices we would find appropriate if employed in interrogating U.S. personnel overseas.
In addition, Congress should require by law that the International Committee of the Red Cross be granted access to all U.S.-held detainees.
America’s Christians should take the lead to ensure that the detention center at Guantanamo closes in 2010 and that future generations of Americans grow up in a country that never again descends to torture.