In news sure to distress former chief,
George W. Bush, President Barack Obama has signed official
orders today, closing Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and CIA secret
prisons all over the world.
I am in agreement with this move. As I wrote
two years ago (here
and here and
again here), this type of behavior needs to stop. Torture is
terrible and a violation of the Geneva Convention. Transparency
is needed.
Furthermore, Bush held prisoners as young as
15 years of age. Coupled with the fact the prisons have the
international stigma of anything goes in terms of evading
international law, it was not a good world image to possess.
People became afraid of America for all the wrong reasons –
suspicion and doubt.
If you are going to prosecute someone, do it
right out in the open on U.S. soil. Guantanamo Bay is not deterring radical
terrorists from killing anyone, as they don’t value anyone’s
life, including their own.
Therefore, prison is not a factor
terrorists weigh when plotting against innocent civilians around
the world, as their
doctrines are demented.
The government also needs to be careful when
they close the prison, to ensure no prisoners are injured or
killed during transfer.
Obama shuts network of CIA 'ghost
prisons'
Rendition and torture are banned
The Guardian, Friday 23 January 2009
Barack Obama embarked on the wholesale
deconstruction of George Bush's war on terror, shutting down the
CIA's secret prison network, banning torture and rendition, and
calling for a new set of rules for detainees. The repudiation of
Bush's thinking on national security yesterday also saw the
appointment of a high-powered envoy to the Middle East.
Obama's decision to permanently shut down
the CIA's clandestine interrogation centres went far beyond the
widely anticipated move to wind down the Guantánamo Bay
detention centre within a year.
He cast his scrapping of the legal apparatus
set up by Bush as a way for America to reclaim the moral high
ground in the fight against al-Qaida.
"We are not, as I said during the
inauguration, going to continue with the false choice between
our safety and our ideals," Obama said at the signing ceremony.
"We intend to win this fight. We are going to win it on our own
terms."…
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