How to Close Guantanamo
How to Close Guantanamo
By Tom Hayden | 10 / February / 2015
President Barack Obama once again has made it plain that he intends to close Guantanamo. Those who doubted his previous promises on immigrant rights and Cuba should realize that he is serious about Guantanamo as well.
Most of the remaining 122 Guantanamo detainees, including 47 of 54 already cleared for release, are from Yemen. Obama cannot realistically send them back to that unstable center of civil strife and chaos. He therefore is proceeding to release small handfuls of detainees to places like Uruguay while asking congressional Republicans to lift their ban on sending Guantanamo detainees to high-security U.S. prisons. If those efforts prove fruitless, there now is a new way to achieve his promise:
Return Guantanamo to Cuban sovereignty, where it belongs historically.
Arrange to release the remaining detainees to Cuban soil under Cuban security. Involve regional diplomats, the United Nations and the Vatican in working out the arrangements.
With changing times, there is no national security or commercial argument for Guantanamo remaining under U.S. control. The base is a complete anachronism on the one hand, and a constant blight on America’s global reputation.
The 45-square mile Guantanamo base was taken as a consequence of the 1901 Platt amendment, over the objections of a Cuban constitutional assembly. It was meant to locate coaling or naval stations for the projection of American military power in the region. The underlying strategic reason was declared by the island’s American overseer, Col. Leonard Wood, chief commander of Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, in 1901:
With the control which we have over Cuba, a control which will soon undoubtedly become possession … we shall soon practically control the sugar trade of the world … the island will gradually become Americanized and we shall have in time one of the richest and most desirable possessions in the world.
More:
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14563
