OK, so I didn’t want to write about the CIA torture report again—mostly because I stand by what I said before—but I felt compelled to address it because the cognitive dissonance surrounding the report’s release has been too much to bear. It’s impossible to stand by idly as America’s politicians and pundits feign soul-searching in the wake of the report when those same individuals largely ignore the ongoing and severe affront to the rule of law that is Guantanamo Bay.
How is it possible, for example, for The New York Times editorial board to say that the CIA report depicts “a portrait of depravity that is hard to comprehend and even harder to stomach” while remaining silent on the ongoing depravity that is Guantanamo? The Los Angeles Times editorial board writes that the CIA torture program was “immoral, illegal, [and] out of control,” and I think to myself: don’t those same words apply to the detention of the inmates at Guantanamo? And then my spirit just breaks in two when The Guardian editorial board proclaims that the CIA report ensures “the full story of America’s shame and disgrace was at last laid bare.”
Laid bare at last?
Let’s cut the bullshit—America’s shame and disgrace has been ongoing for years. It’s really not that hard to understand. All you need to know about Gitmo is that habeas corpus is one of the oldest principles in the common law, and it essentially affords you the right to challenge your unlawful detention. What’s happened at Guantanamo, however, is that the United States government has kept numerous individuals detained for years on end and many of them have never been charged with anything at all.
But it gets worse. In a scenario so preposterous that not even Joseph Heller or George Orwell could’ve imagined it, the United States “now holds 67 men at Guantanamo who have been cleared for release or transfer but … can’t go home because they might face persecution, a lack of security[,] or some other reason.” Can you imagine a scenario more horrible? Imagine being taken from your homeland, flown to a prison thousands of miles away on an island, and kept there indefinitely. Better yet, then imagine that you’ve been cleared for release by the very people holding you, but yet those same people still won’t release you for another two, three, or four years—perhaps even longer than that. Talk about immoral, illegal, and out-of-control!
And yet the nation’s political debate on the CIA report only serves to contrast against the overwhelming silence regarding the human rights debacle that is Guantanamo Bay. We pretend as if we’re shocked and awed by the crimes catalogued in the CIA report, while at the same time ignoring the indefinite detention of those at Guantanamo, many of whom were simply guilty—and I’m not joking—of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Keep in mind these men are still detained there, and in some cases have been held for over a decade.
It’s enough to make one cry.
In fact, I did just that yesterday while preparing to write this piece. I came across a letter from Fahd Ghazy, a Guantanamo inmate who has been detained since age 17. He’s now 30. You can read his letter for yourself, but all you need to know is this: Fahd’s uncle was so pained by his nephew’s illegal imprisonment that he could not bring himself to contact him. Finally, one day, Fahd managed to secure a videoconference with his uncle. Fahd’s uncle was only able to say three lines—“We love you. We are waiting for you. We will keep waiting for you.”—before he collapsed and died, right there on the screen in front of Fahd’s very eyes, live and in color.
There are no words to describe the pain Fahd must have felt in that moment and the pain he surely feels today. And then when you remember that Fahd remains imprisoned in Guantanamo even though he has been cleared for release since 2007, you want to cry, scream, and fall to the ground on your knees, wondering how the fuck the world ever became so unjust, so absurd, so Orwellian.
And so, while our political and media elite engage in moral soul-searching over the CIA torture report, Fahd’s imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay continues with no end in sight. What he sees each night are not the stars and moon but the ceiling of his Gitmo cell. That has been his home for well over a decade, it has been all he’s known for every year of his 20s. The cognitive dissonance is too much for me, and (I hope) it is too much for you. We cannot take discussions about the rule of law seriously if the human rights catastrophe that is Guantanamo Bay continues. We just can’t.
That being said, we can—no, must—try to make a difference. As someone once said, all that’s necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. Or as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. putit, “[T]he hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality. There comes a time when silence becomes betrayal.” And since the debate about Guantanamo has primarily been one conducted in utter silence, I want to close by giving Fahd one more chance to speak:
“I want to have the honor to speak out in my own voice and reach you directly—you who are thinking people. I want to say thank you for caring. You are willing to view me as a human being and that is something so precious to me.”
—Winston A.
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