The Other Guantanamo
There's been a fair amount of speculation in recent days surrounding Obama's plans for the detention facility at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. He has recently reaffirmed his commitment to closing the facility, but has yet to propose a comprehensive alternative system for handling detainees. And events seem likely to outpace the new administration's plans. Just yesterday, conservative Judge Richard Leon ruled from the federal bench that the government had held five Algerian men for seven years without cause, and took the unusual step of urging the government not to appeal his ruling: "Seven years of waiting for our legal system to give them an answer to a question so important is, in my judgment, more than plenty," he said. The rebuke was particularly stinging because Judge Leon had previously been extraordinarily deferential toward executive power; it was his ruling against these same detainees in Boumediene that was overturned by the Supreme Court.
There are, in fact, two Guantanamos: the notorious detention facility, and the Naval Base in which it is housed. On their surface, they bear each other little resemblance. One is an international symbol of inhumanity and injustice, filled with wire cages and guard shacks. The other features well-kept homes with neatly manicured lawns, and a town center, complete with a McDonalds and a new coffee-house serving Starbucks. But the key to understanding what went wrong at Guantanamo lies not in the wire cages, but in the idyllic community with which they coexist.
More than seven thousand soldiers, sailors, civilians and their families reside on the base. Young service-members tend to find the station mind-numbingly dull and oppressively small. But senior enlisted personnel and civilians who live on the base with their families more often speak of the base in glowing terms. The high school principal recalls her first impression: "This is like going back to the 1950s." And indeed, that's the reference most visitors to the island employ. It reminds them of "small-town America," a "1950s-style enclave," "a scene from the 1950s," an "Eisenhower-era town," or "kind of an Andy Griffith-Mayberry thing."
It's that final quote which is most apt, because what the community in Guantanamo Bay most closely resembles is not the actual American past, but rather, our collective fantasy of what that past was like. The 1950s brought us Korea and McCarthy, Rosa Parks and Brown v. Board, but that's not what these folks have in mind. They're invoking an imagined past, viewed through the hazy glow of nostalgia. For permanent party, Gitmo is an escapist theme-park, as isolated from the rip-tides of mainland modernity as a Mennonite village. Their expenses are heavily subsidized, allowing them to enjoy a high quality of life. They depend as well upon the exploitation of cheap labor, another point of congruence with the 1950s; those lawns are kept tidy and houses well-swept by a large migrant labor force, mostly composed of Filipinos.
So Guantanamo has, for decades, existed as a sort of conservative fantasyland. Its isolation and ambiguous status enable its residents to ignore the conflicts, tensions, and demands of modern life. Residents on the base don't face the challenges of the modern world; they simply deny them. "No man is an island," wrote John Donne, but that observation seems entirely out of place at Guantanamo.
This is why Guantanamo seemed like an ideal solution for the Bush administration's detainee problem. Few subjects are as complex and tangled as dealing with prospective or actual terrorists and other non-state violent actors, and if there's a perfect solution to the problem, I have yet to encounter it. Civilian trials, ad-hoc tribunals, mass releases - each solution presents its own drawbacks. Life is complicated that way. But instead of grappling with complexity, instead of making tough compromises, instead of coming to grips with reality, the Bush administration chose escapism. The wire cages are every bit as much a denial of reality as the manicured lawns with which they coexist. The Bush administration even advanced a novel legal theory, claiming that the United States does not enjoy sovereignty in Guantanamo - seeking (and to a large degree, securing) juridical sanction for its never-never land.
But sooner or later, everyone stationed at Gitmo rotates back to the mainland, and has to deal with modernity in all its complexity. And as a string of legal decisions (and now, a decisive election) have made clear, so will our government. Denying complexity, retreating from the world, taking shelter on an island - these are not viable long-term solutions. "Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main," Donne reminds us. "Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind."
Our eight-year island vacation from reality is now at an end.
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And didn't we have the same kind of US fantasy world of the the 50's in Saudi Arabia? Or is it still there? That's a whole other kettle of fish, isn't it?
Excellent post! (as always)
November 21, 2008 11:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'll not recommend another post of yours until you get an avatar. :-)
The "other Gitmo" is a living, breathing American ostrich, its head buried in the sand up to its jowls, hoping no one notices it while the world just rolls on. I knew about it, but never considered writing a post on it. Well done.
November 21, 2008 2:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
If anyone wants to design an avatar for me, I'd be happy to use it. But I have to say, I rather like the image of the coffee-shop patron - coming to a common gathering place to pass around the papers and engage in reasoned discourse and conviviality. It'll be tough to top.
I should also acknowledge that Jonathan Hansen of Harvard has a forthcoming history of Gitmo, which I anticipate with great eagerness; his work planted the seed of this post in my mind.
November 21, 2008 2:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nice post! You must be a veteran.
Also, you could also mention how Guantanamo is a great example of a living and breathing socialist commune. When I served in the Air Force, I frequently pointed this fact out to my fellow zoomies, which of course caused them to deny they were indeed socialists.
November 21, 2008 4:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry, but there was more to our 50's than Rosa Parks (1955), Brown v Education (1954), Korean War (1950-53) and McCarth (censured in 1954). It is also the decade of Las Vegas, Route 66 and the Beatniks, the US Highway sytem, the growth of suburbs, the beginnings of the Mercury space program, a car for every family, Breakfast at Tiffany's, cool jazz, Florida vacations (and the New York alligator myth), Elvis and Chuck Berry, and so on.
Really, there's more to American history than the civil rights struggle and vicious white men.
November 22, 2008 2:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thought I might add Lenny Bruce, West Side Story (read: Puerto Ricans in New York), the setting of The Last Picture Show, the transistor radio, Muscle Beach, TV, Bear Bryant, Let's Go to the Hop, Invadion of the BOdy Snatcher
November 22, 2008 3:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well said, Desi! (And I wasn't even there!)
November 22, 2008 4:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
Nor was I, but I saw the movie AND read the book.
November 22, 2008 7:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
All true. And I'll be the first to admit it. But the point of that line was to emphasize the difference between the postwar years as they were, and the 1950s as we have come to imagine them to have been. So I deliberately selected some of the more difficult and controversial events of the decade, not because they ought to overshadow everything else that occurred, but because they represent the sort of events that nostalgia tends to exclude. I might well have added, say, the Beatniks and Las Vegas to the list; it's worth emphasizing that non-conformity and consumerist excess were also key elements of the decade conspicuously absent from Mayberry re-imaginings.
November 22, 2008 9:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is a brilliant essay. I'm very glad to have discovered the "fly".
I would add one thing that I'm a little surprised was not mentioned. The "other" Guantanamo is also a symbol of American imperialism because it was established during the US colonial domination of Cuba prior to the Communist revolution.
November 22, 2008 7:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
And the "other" Guantanamo is also a symbol of Spanish imperialism because it was established during the Spanish colonial domination of Cuba prior to the Spanish-American War.
November 22, 2008 9:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for your response. It's perfectly true that you can't come to terms with Guantanamo without wrestling with American imperial aspirations, and with our long and tortuous struggle to reconcile our rhetoric and record in Latin America. But this was a short post, and imperialisms past and present are a complicated topic. It's also a point that's been made repeatedly; I try to focus my postings on my own observations. But if the charge is a sin of omission, I plead guilty and throw myself before the mercy of the court.
November 22, 2008 9:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Don't be silly. You're right not to go into imperialism. It was just itching me from the point when I read the title of the post.
November 23, 2008 12:54 AM | Reply | Permalink