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Suicides at Guantanamo Bay

You may have heard about the three recent suicides by inmates at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp. As expected, this news has refocused the political spotlight on the prison camp, and fresh debates are being had about what should be done with the detainees at this facility.

Rick Moran, the conservative blogger at Right Wing Nut House, wrote a post yesterday titled “Guantanamo suicides a stain on American justice”. Mr. Moran gives several of the important details of the prison camp, noting that only 10 of the roughly 500 detainees have been charged with any crime. And those few that are charged with crimes are tried in military tribunals, where the accused are afforded very few, if any, of the basic rights of defendants tried in the U.S. justice system.

I think Mr. Moran sums it up best with the following paragraph:

Much as we loathe the men who have sworn to kill us all, we simply must come to grips with the idea that if we aren’t able to kill them on the battlefield, they must be granted some of the rights guaranteed by international law and our own constitution. To do any less cheapens our entire justice system. It isn’t a question of loving the terrorist. It is a question of loving liberty and the blessings granted by a constitution that recognizes value in every individual and equality before the law.

That’s the end of it. “It isn’t a question of loving the terrorist.” That’s exactly right. If these accused terrorists have done all the government says they have done, let’s put them to trial, convict them, and subject them to the same punishments that the cruelest of criminals get in the United States. That’s how things are done in America, where we have a justice system that respects the rights of all involved in a given proceeding.

The BBC News site reprinted excerpts of several editorials from the Islamic world. While I certainly don’t agree with everything these editorialists have to say, there is one particular paragraph that resonated with me:

Washington, which considers itself the sponsor of democracy and human rights in the world, and whose administration, House of Representatives and the Senate adopt sanctions against several countries that it sees as violating democracy and human rights, appears today as the main suspect in the violation of these rights.

Here is yet another example of America’s ceding of the moral high ground, which has been heavily accelerated since September 11, 2001. If we go to bat for the protection of human rights for all sorts of oppressed people all over the globe, it is, and continues to be, hypocritical to fail to protect fundamental human rights of some of those under our own control.

Let’s give these detainees fair trials, and if they’re the bad guys everyone in the administration says they are, then we can properly punish them and remove this “stain” on our justice system about which Mr. Moran writes.