Guantanamo Bay
Terrorist Detention Centre
The alleged atrocities committed by the Bush administration at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Centre is a highly contentious issue for the new president to deal with, but Human Rights activists perhaps have good reason to home for a positive outcome.
Obama has signalled that he and his advisors have begun looking into how the now infamous Camp Delta may be shut down, although despite the Presidents statement that he aims for this to happen within his first 2 years of office, he is stressing that no concrete decisions have been made as yet on how to go about this.
Al-Qaeda Terrorists
At present, there are about 50 prisoners – some who are allegedly high ranking terrorist members of Al-Qaeda – who may face trial, out of the 255 or so in the camp. For those who have campaigned against Guantanamo Bay for years, the fact that around 200 of the detainees are effectively innocent in the eyes of US law is true proof of the illegal activities of the Bush government.
Precise details about what Obama’s security team aim to do about Guantanamo Bay are sketchy, and at present all possibilities are only theoretical. Perhaps one of the more likely theories is that Obama will look to gradually and progressively shut down the detention centre, releasing those who are thought to pose little or no threat to the UA, before eventually trying those whom the US authorities have enough evidence to prosecute.
Obama has also publicly stated that American voters may judge him on how well he manages US security issues, such as terrorism, after his first two years in office. In terms of Guantanamo Bay this means he has to balance keeping a tight control over counter-terrorism operations, against the US Constitution; which has been so fundamentally broken by the Bush administrations actions in Guantanamo Bay.
Terrorist Radicalisation
One major argument against the torture and illegal imprisonment of what the Bush administration had termed ‘enemy combatants’ is that it has meant Guantanamo Bay has acted as a beacon of terrorist radicalisation, and has only served to strengthen Al-Qaeda and Islamic fundamentalist arguments about the hypocrisy of America, and the West more generally.
Whatever Obama and his team choose to do about this highly contentious issue, nearly all American Democrat supporters, and many, many other liberals around the globe, will be massively relieved to see such a beacon of Western hypocrisy and cruelty shut down, and will hope that this will spell and new, more successful period of American political history.
Guantanamo Bay
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