The Black Hole of Gitmo

The New York Times reports: "Senior Defense Department officials said Thursday that they were planning to keep a large portion of the detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, there for many years, perhaps indefinitely."

When the U.S. government denies people access to the courts and further declares that it is not bound by the Geneva Convention, this is pretty much what you would expect. Without the rule of law to restrain the government, it will be arbitrary. That is why courts and the procedural protections of the Bill of Rights and international legal agreements exist: because those who hold absolute power do not cede it willingly.

We hold ourselves out as a nation that believes in human rights and the rule of law, and we repeatedly state that we want our values to spread to other nations, particularly those with histories of arbitary arrest, detention and confinement. The best way to show why our values are important is to practice them ourselves. For if we cannot be bothered to protect human rights and the rule of law when they are inconvenient for us, how can we persuade other countries to adopt them?