'It's a huge political albatross': Guantnamo Bay, 20 years on

[lordsummerisle]

theguardian.com

The US-run enclave has proved hard to dismantle over two decades, a legal anomaly and lead weight wrapped around America’s global reputation.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/09/guantanamo-bay-20-years-on-detainees

[Sherman A1]

1. I would use it to put all of the 1/6 domestic terrorists in

lock the door and throw away the key.

[SharonAnn]

2. Because it operates "outside our normal laws". I said so at the beginning.

[PTWB]

3. It's long past time to close the place.

Charge the prisoners who can be charged. Transfer them to standard federal prisons until their trials. Release the prisoners who cannot be charged based on lack of evidence.

That's it.

[gulliver]

4. It's just like the Afghanistan War

We were forced to keep that war going by Republicans and the media. Look what happened when Biden got us out of the Afghanistan War. Trump, predictably, taunted that it was a "surrender," ignoring his own failure to get us out of the war and his great idea to invite the Taliban to Camp David. Media blockheads compared the withdrawal to the nonexistent perfect withdrawals in their imaginations (although not in actual history) and declared it "messy" and "icky."

So the Guantanamo detention center stays. If it were dissolved, then every problem that ever occurred afterward would be blamed on whoever dissolved it. Every terrorist attack would have the Republicans saying it happened because we shut down Guantanamo. Jake Tapper would pout fussily and pronounce it "another" mess.

[unblock]

5. the media also largely ignored that it was donnie who actually surrendered in afghanistan

the "deal" he made with the taliban was essentially, we will withdraw our troops and you will give us absolutely nothing in return.

ok, maybe not exactly nothing, they sorta agreed they might not shoot us as we leave.


in any event, that's pretty much a complete surrender.

[greenjar_01]

6. On the left, we often say that social programs, once passed are hard to take away

The right's version of this is anything military or carceral. Once passed, it is difficult to unwind, politically. If Obamacare is the left version of a difficult to repeal social program, Guantanamo is the paradigm case of a military/carceral project that seemingly cannot be unwound. (The absurdist increase and militarization of policing being the obvious other).

On edit: It goes to show the absolute determination and courage of Biden to withdraw completely from Afghanistan.