News that three Guantanamo Bay detainees had hanged themselves quickly became propaganda. “It was the inevitable result of creating a netherworld of despair beyond the laws of civilized nations,” thundered a New York Times editorial. Critics of the Bush administration pointed to the suicides as though they were proof positive that Guantanamo must be closed. This response is predictable and should be resisted.
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Is Guantanamo too awful to tolerate? Scores of politicians, journalists, lawyers, and activists—over 1,000 people—have visited the camp and attested that the detainees are treated well. They are given culturally sensitive diets, freedom to worship, exercise opportunities, and the best available medical care. Guantanamo certainly compares favorably with most foreign facilities, even in Western countries. Reuters quoted the deputy head of the Brussels antiterrorism unit as saying, “At the level of the detention facilities, [Guantanamo] is a model prison, where people are better treated than in Belgian prisons.”
Nor do the suicides show that the guards at Guantanamo weren’t diligent in performing their duties. They have succeeded in stopping over 40 suicide attempts by 23 separate detainees. That things worked out differently last Sunday only demonstrates that even the most diligent and watchful guards will not always succeed. This is particularly the case when, as at Guantanamo, the authorities attempt to strike a balance between the imperatives of security and the provision of privacy.
In asking why the suicides happened, we should acknowledge the simple reality that incarcerated individuals sometimes get depressed, no matter how humane the conditions of their confinement. This is not unique to Guantanamo or military detention facilities in general, but is endemic to all prisons, whether civilian or military, and occurs in every country in the world. The recent suicides don’t prove that practices at Guantanamo are unjustified any more than suicides in other prisons prove that practices there are unjustified.
There are, of course, procedural differences between the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo and the treatment of civilian criminals. The Left frequently deplores the detainees’ uncertainty about how long they will remain confined, and their inability to get a day in civilian courts. But it has long been standard — and has not been considered inhumane — for a country at war to detain enemy combatants for the duration of hostilities, primarily to ensure that they don’t pick up arms and return to the battlefield. Wars often last a long time; running a revolving-door detention operation is a sure way to make them even longer. The Guantanamo detainees don’t know how long they will be held, but neither did POWs in World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam, and dozens of other conflicts. The main difference between those wars and this one is that hundreds of Guantanamo detainees have been released before the cessation of hostilities.
As for due process, the detainees have received opportunity aplenty to challenge their classification as unlawful enemy combatants. Between the combatant-status review tribunals, annual review boards, and habeas petitions, they have gotten more due process, and more legal assistance, than any captured enemy combatants in history.
When the Guantanamo commander, Rear Adm. Harry Harris, referred to the suicides as an act of “asymmetric warfare,” he was savaged by the media. But he may well be right. The detainees who committed suicide had previously been involved in hunger strikes and other disruptive activities. And there is evidence that a number of habeas lawyers have abused their status by providing the detainees with reports on how their hunger strikes and suicide attempts were strengthening the efforts to get Guantanamo closed. Islamist terrorists have never been reluctant to kill themselves for the good of the jihad, and the detainees may have decided that a coordinated set of suicides would intensify pressure on the U.S.
If so, they probably calculated correctly. But the pressure should be resisted. Closing Guantanamo would be a psychological victory for al Qaeda. It would harm America’s ability to win in the War on Terror. It would represent a departure from the standard treatment of enemy combatants. All of these considerations might be outweighed by compelling moral reasons to close the detention center, if such existed. But they don’t. Many on the Left no doubt feel compassion for the detainees. But the peculiar exhibitionism of their compassion is probably motivated by a simple desire to club the Bush administration, as usual.
