Selling Your Soul For Safety: John Oliver Argues To Close Gitmo
John Oliver, comedian and host of Last Week Tonight, argues for why we should finally close Guantanamo Bay. Here’s why he’s right to be concerned.
Many people, including current U.S. President Barack Obama, have called for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp for over a decade now. Since its establishment in 2002, the detention center has been the subject of debate and controversy over its legal status. However, despite the years of criticism, the camp remains open thanks to concerns about security and tricky legal wrangling. All of this has left a current total of 61 prisoners there, some with no real end in sight.
Now, late night host John Oliver has released a video laying out some of the intricacies of this situation. He called Guantanamo Bay a “dicey legal workaround”. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld even admitted that it was the “least worst place” the Department of Defense could have chosen for a detention center.
The establishment of this camp is linked to the War on Terror, the widespread military campaign that began shortly after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Following the attacks, American political discourse became awash in fear and paranoia. Terrorism, after all, is not a nation or an individual. In much of American political consciousness, it is more an amorphous concept, a general sense of peril and evil that flashes into reality on terrifying and all too frequent occasions.
It is almost too much to consider. A terrorist could be anyone, really. They could wreak havoc and end lives through simple means. For example, Oliver points out that detainees were sometimes marked for Guantanamo Bay simply because they were wearing a Casio wristwatch. That wristwatch (which was already popular) could be used to remotely detonate a bomb. So, should you then suspect your neighbor who wears the same wristwatch and perhaps has darker skin than yours? Or are they simply a standard nerd or hipster with a taste for clunky timepieces?
Better to be safe than sorry, right?
That’s the central conceit of Guantanamo. To be fair, Oliver admitted that there are some individuals detained there who were or are real security threats. However, is it ethical or even simply reasonable to detain large numbers of people, without charges or a trial, because they might possibly be “a bad guy”?
We should not need to remind you at this point that Guantanamo Bay has been the focus of torture investigations. Detainees have been subject to waterboarding, short shackling, and loud music (including Whitesnake).
GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA – SEPTEMBER 15: (EDITORS NOTE: Image has been reviewed by the U.S. Military prior to transmission.) A detainee walks through the recreation yard at the detention center for ‘enemy combatants’ on September 15, 2010 in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. With attempts by the Obama administration to close the facility stalled, more than 170 detainees remain at the detention center, which was opened by the Bush administration after 9/11. The facility is run by Joint Task Force Guantanamo, located on the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay on the coast of southeastern Cuba. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
During the course of this segment, Last Week Tonight aired a clip featuring Dick Cheney, former Vice President for George W. Bush. In it, Cheney states “I have no problem [with Guantanamo], as long as we achieve our objective”. What that objective is, or how we should achieve it, is no longer entirely clear.
Some detainees remain at Guantanamo because they pose a potential risk, but prosecutors cannot find enough evidence to merit a trial or conviction. These men are the “irreducible minimum”. They may rot away in jail because they are stuck in the midst of a legal and moral quandary.
The medical director for the camp, by the way, requested upgrades to their medical equipment. His reasoning? Aging prisoners will need more attention and improved facilities. From his on-the-ground point of view, Guantanamo may not close any time soon. Administrators and guards at the detention center may soon have to manage a camp full of old men.
Therein lies the central moral conflict with Guantanamo Bay. Should we potentially keep detainees there, without trial and for the rest of their lives, because we are afraid? Is it permissible to betray the basic tenets of what it means to be an American if we might preserve our society and save lives? Should we sell our collective soul for the promise of security?
Oliver argues that closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay would instead be an act of strength and bravery. At the very least, we should close it before the specter of a Trump presidency makes itself real.
Trump, who threatened to jail Hillary Clinton, has said what he would do with Guantanamo. He certainly wouldn’t close it. Instead, Trump said that “we’re going to load it up with bad dudes”. Like dictators throughout history, how he defines “bad dudes” may come down more to people who disagree with him and his administration.
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We don’t know if the next President of the United States will close Guantanamo Bay. However, John Oliver and reminds us that it is more than a legal quandary on a piece of paper. There are very real human beings on both sides who are irrevocably affected by this situation.