Introduction
President Barrack Obama, in keeping with his campaign pledges, ordered Guantanamo Bay prison to be closed with immediate effect. This happened on his second day as President. It was a bold move aimed at restoring the US’s moral image on a global scale. Before this, Guantanamo has been an epicenter for the inhuman treatment of detainees, and human activists have always had an issue with it. The Bay has been considered by some as one of former President George Bush’s biggest career errors. So many factions sighed in relief when Barrack effectively turned this whole situation around. However, while his move may have been well-intentioned, a few factors, if considered objectively, may lead to the conclusion that Guantanamo Bay should really continue to function.
Situation overview
Guantanamo Bay prison was the home of 248 hardened criminals. Amongst them were unpardonable murderers, terrorists, and so on. The terrorist called Khalid Shaikh Mohammed –the self-proclaimed mastermind of 9/11 – was amongst them. The sheer atrocities committed by the criminals held in Guantanamo Bay can never be overstated. For many in the US, this Bay prison was the final stop for any person without hope of ever being rectified by society. Guantanamo detainees are considered by many as deserving much worse fates than what they are currently being served with. This says a lot, for any Guantanamo detainee has a fistful of hardships to deal with on a daily basis.
Interrogation vs. torture
The US has established 19 methods for interrogating detainees. Most of these methods are used only with hardened criminals. Obviously, they are not pleasant by any stretch of the imagination. But statistics show that these methods have proven efficacy. Most people under interrogation tend to reveal everything asked of them in due time. Not surprisingly, Guantanamo Bay employed these methods regularly. The human rights activists against these interrogation methods say that most of them border on torture and that they are against the fundamental rights of any human being. But a look at the atrocities that some of the criminals in Guantanamo have committed makes one wonder whether these individuals qualify to be called human. Someone who can cold-bloodedly kill a total stranger in the name of some religious or political belief is surely not human. The arguments by the human-rights activist are hence fundamentally flawed.
Repatriation plans
If Guantanamo Bay was to be closed, its former inmates would have to be accommodated somewhere. This is a major problem because these twisted individuals obviously can not just join the normal society. In due recognizance of this fact, President Obama set forth a task force to organize how these individuals could be repatriated into third-party countries. The good intentions in this move are marred by the fact that giving these detainees another shot at a normal life is like leaving a ticking time bomb in the open. Sooner or later, these twisted individuals will revert back to their old ways, with even more vigor, given the suffering they have endured so far in the Bay prison. In a manner of speaking, “the final state will be worse than the initial.” Some criminals like Khalid Mohammed simply can never fit into mainstream society again.
Warped mindsets
A big motivation behind President Obama’s move seems to be an assumption that the Bay Prisoners can be rectified and recruited back to society. It is a humanistic point of view and likely to be an incomplete error. This is because it ignores the motivations driving the actions of these criminals. The detainees at Guantanamo were not goaded into their atrocities by desperation. Neither were they under any form of coercion to perform their atrocities. Most of the Bay detainees acted out of a deliberate, loathsome will to destroy the basic tenets of humanity. Most of them are surprisingly intelligent and rational beings. However, this intelligence, cast into their warped perceptions about human nature, ended up making them mankind’s worst nightmare. They don’t act out of revenge. They are not seeking retribution. They are simply driven by a need to degrade humanity. Hope for changing such a mindset is simply unfounded.
Moral grounds
America is seen by many as the epitome of global leadership. It is only natural that Americans would also wish to be moral leaders. Guantanamo Bay stands in the way of this particular goal. Thus another reason for closing it is so that America can be the undisputed model of moral leadership. The only problem with this reason is that this goal may, in the long run, not be worthwhile. If the status of Guantanamo Bay is a determinant of America’s moral grounds as perceived by the rest of the world, then perhaps Americans should be content with a low moral standpoint. Some victories are simply unaffordable. If the Bay’s detainees are released back into the society, America’s sudden high moral ground would be short-lived, for soon everybody would have to deal with the criminals’ actions.
Conclusion
Overall, the prime problem with Barrack Obama’s move is that a lot of crucial factors were not carefully considered before he made the bold statement. As already implied, the Bay prisoners can only be moved from there to another security stronghold. Once there, they would need approximately the same levels of guarding that they are receiving right now. It doesn’t matter whether they are repatriated to another country or not- their personal freedoms can never be fully granted. It then beats the whole purpose of releasing them from the Bay prison. As a final word, it should be noted that Guantanamo Bay was built out of necessity. Let it serve that purpose so that the rest of the Americans can have peace of mind.