Commentary:

An extra-legal prison is not the way to lead the world to democracy

    By Jack Grant

A small delegation of journalists has been allowed inside the detention camps at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. I'm sure there will be much written in blogworld about how well we're treating the prisoners, but those commentaries will be missing the point entirely.

The fundamental basis of any democracy is open, transparent government. Having a prison where those designated "enemy combatants" can be thrown with no appeal and no contact with the outside world is complete anathema to the principles upon which the United States was founded. Unfortunately, this has been the situation with the "Gitmo" prison from the beginning, and it troubles me that the government of the United States has set up a prison of this nature.

I find some small hope in the fact that journalists were shown limited parts of the prison camp, but I fear for the reactions that I've been seeing over and over, that "there's a war on". Saying that phrase seems to some a magic mantra to justify almost any action of the government, no matter how egregious an intrusion upon our dearly bought freedoms. People say that government "needs the tools to find the terrorists" and "if you're doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear with the government being able to know all about you". It calls to mind something said by the President who recognized the dangers posed by the Soviet Union and started the policies that gave us the Cold War:

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.    -Harry S Truman

The Bush administration says it wants to lead the oppressive governments of the world to democracy. Starting and maintaining a prison whose population never stood trial, have no system for appealing their imprisonment, and have no way to contact the outside world does not illuminate the path to democracy. Governmental power MUST be restrained, because it is far, far too easy for those think they know what is best for all to abuse those powers and subsequently abuse the citizens in an effort to maintain and expand power. This was recognized by the Founding Fathers in writing the Constitution, and we must be continually on guard against the slow, subtle erosion of the protections embodied in our governing document. Allowing journalists to visit the prison at Guantanamo Bay is a start in adding transparency to this process of imprisoning those labeled enemy combatants, but it is not sufficient. Since we are naming United States citizens as enemy combatants as well, there needs to be some type of judicial or legal review of this status, with standards of evidence and proof required to follow the fundamental principle of "innocent until proven guilty". Otherwise, it is too convenient to name troublesome opponents as enemy combatants and "disappear" them. Then where would we be?

Did you think all those movies you've seen of dystopian futures were too extreme and unrealistic? Recall that Orwell's 1984 was intended as a cautionary tale and seemed all to realistic in the most frigid and dark days of the Cold War. It can ALWAYS happen here...

Posted by Jack Grant at 15:20 on 6 July 2004