Follow us on social

991485-scaled

GITMO at 20: A token of impunity

Two decades after opening, the Guantanamo Bay prison is a microcosm of the militaristic policies that brought it to life.

Analysis | Military Industrial Complex

It’s difficult to conclude that the U.S. military is, from top to bottom, subject to the rule of law when considering the privileged status that its leaders and policymakersenjoy: their lies go unchallenged and their failures go unpunished. America does not recognize the authority of the same international institutions that we insist others join and Pentagon spending is never the target of deficit and inflation hawkery. Most importantly, U.S. military policymaking — and its impacts — has been rendered wholly inaccessible and invisible to the American people.

Perhaps nowhere is this impunity more evident than at the Guantanamo Bay prison, the military detention center which opened 20 years ago today.

On January 11, 2002, the U.S. military brought 20 terrorist suspects to Guantanamo for imprisonment.. These detainees, military officials said then, were the “worst of the worst” — al-Qaida and Taliban members captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan.  

Three months after the devastating 9/11 terror attacks, Americans were proving themselves capable of supporting just about anything done in the name of our collective safety and security: only 4 percent of Americans opposed the Bush administration’s indefinite, unlawful detention of “enemy combatants” when GITMO opened.

It would become abundantly clear over the ensuing decades that GITMO was at best inconsequential to America’s counterterrorism efforts, and at worst a potent recruitment tool for terror groups like ISIS. Yet, as Mauritanian author and former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mohamedou Ould Slahi said recently, “When the military is in motion, the truth can’t keep up.” 

Winning the “Global War on Terror,” we were told, required the operation of an extrajudicial military prison in Cuba. To advance the Freedom Agenda — to win the battle between democracy and dictatorship — America had to subject 119 foreign Muslim men to the CIA’s rendition, detention, and interrogation program, and torture at least 39. We had to detain, interrogate, and even abuse the 780 Muslim men and boys brought to GITMO since 2002, and some even say now that we still have to keep those remaining 39 detainees there  — 27 of whom are being held without any charges against them. 

From Vietnam to Iraq and beyond, a defining trait of America’s post-WWII U.S. military actions is their complete disconnect from compelling American interests. Our leaders entered these conflicts in the name of American security — and they were repeatedly extended and perpetuated long-after it became clear that they would fail to deliver on any of America’s strategic interests (to say nothing of the vast and bloody civilian toll caused by America’s overt and covert military actions). The creation of the Guantanamo Bay prison has followed a similar trajectory. 

Over the last 20 years, the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force that the Bush administration used to justify GITMO’s opening has also been used to justify U.S. military operations in at least 22 countries. GITMO is a perfect microcosm of the Global War on Terror that birthed it — its evidently ineffective and contrary to America’s stated values, yet it appears to be a permanent fixture of U.S. foreign policy.

This is why President Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan seemed so remarkable: He was squaring a broken U.S. military policy (spending billions of dollars and risking American lives indefinitely in pursuit of a long-failed nation building project) with what was in the best interests of the American people. Yet Afghanistan was the exception that proves the rule; Biden has largely re-committed America to bloody, ineffective militaristic foreign policies — like spending $778 on the military while failing to invest in climate action, or pursuing the beginnings of a new Cold War with China — that make foreign policy elites very happy, while delivering few tangible benefits, and plenty of risks, to the American people.

Subjecting the U.S. military to the rule of law will be no small task, so those of us taking up the fight against America’s pursuit of military hegemony must be clear-eyed about the challenges ahead. The last 20 years at GITMO, which were marked by torture, abuse, and political promises made and broken, are an important reminder: even our most evidently flawed military policies are not “up for debate” in Washington. Despite relentless, fearless organizing and activism against GITMO, neither Congress nor the president has felt the political risks of closing GITMO outweigh the benefits of kicking the can down the road. But those of us standing in opposition to the war machine should also consider the Afghanistan withdrawal, and take heart: This impunity does not last forever. These policies are sacrosanct, right up until the moment that they aren’t, when the calculus changes.


An overgrowth of bushes and weeds is what remains of Camp X-Ray today, but back in 2002, it was established as a temporary detention camp for detainees. Still standing today is a reminder of Guantanamo Bay's past, continually serving as a historical site. (Army National Guard Photo by Sgt. Cassandra Monroe/120th PAD)
Analysis | Military Industrial Complex
POGO
Top image credit: Project on Government Oversight

The non-empires strike back

Military Industrial Complex

The Bunker appears originally at the Project on Government Oversight and is republished here with permission.

keep readingShow less
Trump Netanyahu
Top image credit: noamgalai / Shutterstock.com

Trump appears all in for Netanyahu's political survival

Middle East

On March 25, Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu’s government passed its long-delayed 2025 budget. Had the vote failed, it would have automatically triggered snap elections — an outcome Netanyahu appears politically incapable of surviving.

While Israel cited stalled hostage negotiations and ongoing security threats as reasons for ending the U.S.-backed ceasefire in Gaza, Netanyahu’s decision to resume large-scale military operations just days before the vote also appeared aimed at shoring up support from far-right coalition partners such as Itamar Ben Gvir. The budget, framed explicitly by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich as a “war budget,” includes record levels of defense spending and a dramatic increase in funding for Israeli public diplomacy, a nod to the government’s attempt to counteract ongoing international condemnation of Israel’s military actions in Gaza.

keep readingShow less
JFK wanted to splinter CIA ‘into a thousand pieces.’ Why didn't he?
Top photo credit: Unredacted memo by Arthur Schlesinger (JFK files) and President John F. Kennedy, 1962 (public domain/Donald Cooksey)

JFK wanted to splinter CIA ‘into a thousand pieces.’ Why didn't he?

Washington Politics

When the final, declassified records from the John F. Kennedy assassination files were posted on the National Archives’ website last week, the first document researchers and reporters searched for was White House adviser Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s June 1961 memorandum to the president titled “CIA Reorganization.”

ABC News led its initial coverage on the release of the JFK papers with that document, quoting Schlesinger’s now unredacted, dramatic, statistics that showed that the "CIA today has nearly as many people under official cover overseas as [the] State [Department].” The New York Times also featured that document with a headline “A Kennedy aide worried that the C.I.A. threatened the State Department’s power.”

keep readingShow less

Trump transition

Latest

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.