Life Inside Guantanamo Bay

The Washington Post has an essay by a Saudi man who was held in Guantanamo Bay for five and a half years. He was never charged with any crimes, and he was released with little explanation in 2007. It’s a pretty harrowing read. Guantanamo Bay and the Bush administration’s decision to hold people in indefinite detention are certainly abhorrent. Jumah al Dossari’s story of being swept up by the Pakistani military and shuffled around until finally arriving in Guantanamo Bay is full of details that ought to give anyone pause: being kept in freezing metal rooms, suicide attempts, beatings and the inexplicable legal proceedings where he was unable to see the evidence the government was using against him.

In all the things I’ve read about Guantanamo Bay and the way the government has pursued the “war on terror,” the biggest question I keep asking myself is, what was this supposed to accomplish? What did the Bush administration think they were going to get out of this? They kept a man who had done nothing wrong in prison without charge for over five years, and then just let him go. When in that time did they discover that al Dossari was no threat, either to himself or to others? Presumably, by releasing this man, the government is admitting that he is not a terrorist. If he isn’t, why did they keep him? If he is, why did they let him go? Why did it take over five years to determine this? This whole operation, Camp X-Ray, the military tribunals, keeping “enemy combatants” in indefinite detention – to what end? These people are not super villains. Even the people in Guantanamo Bay who are terrorists, the lengths that they go to – al Dossari was transported to the camp on a plane, shackled to the floor, wearing black-out goggles and ear muffs – makes no sense. Did they expect him to use superpowers to take over the plane? This central incoherence is what I find truly perplexing about our reaction to terrorism. The mentality that says, “even if it’s wrong, we’ve got to do something” doesn’t make any sense to me. On an individual level, that may be understandable, but as a governing philosophy it creates travesties like the one we find ourselves in now.