Financial Times Editorial Comment: Time to abandon the absurd charade at Guantánamo Bay

Financial Times Editorial Comment: Time to abandon the absurd charade at Guantánamo Bay
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: June 5 2007 20:59 | Last updated: June 5 2007 20:59


For five years, the administration of President George W. Bush has sought to weave a cloak of legality to clothe the wrongs it has committed in the “war on terror”.

Earlier this week, that threadbare veil was pierced yet again – as it has been so often in the past – when two military judges at the US detention facility at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba rebuked the administration for failing to follow the law.

Civilian courts, including the US Supreme Court, have long looked askance at the way the administration has warped and twisted national and international law to give it a free hand to combat terrorism. Now military judges seem in no hurry either to play their part in this absurd charade of justice.

This week’s rulings are, on the face of it, merely technical: according to a new law rammed through Congress (with bipartisan complicity) last year, the alternative justice system at Guantánamo Bay can only try “alien unlawful enemy combatants”. But the administration failed to comply with that law when it brought two Guantánamo detainees before military tribunals on Monday. Even though the administration all but wrote the relevant provisions of the law – and must have been familiar with what it required – the government did not classify the two men as “unlawful” combatants, as the law demands. (The law does not cover “lawful” combatants, such as uniformed government soldiers.)

It is unclear whether this blunder reflects stunning incompetence or arrogant disregard for the law, but either way it could prove very costly. There can be no further military tribunals until the government either gets the law rewritten, gets a special appeals court (that has not yet been created) to reinterpret the law, or takes other cumbersome steps to recharge the suspects. Either way, there will be more delays, and the path to spurious justice will again be blocked.

Taking the law back to Congress for revision could be risky for the administration: opponents of the court-stripping provisions of the law might seize this opportunity to try to rewrite that part too.

It is high time Mr Bush faced reality. For five years he has struggled to construct an alternative justice system for foreign terrorism suspects. Yet in that time he has convicted no one – and dragged America’s reputation through the dirt.

Mr Bush should abandon this farce and bring the suspects before traditional courts martial. That will doubtless be harder than trying them in kangaroo courts. But it is his only hope of salvaging even a shred of credibility.