Guantanamo 2.0: Bad Dudes and Ideological Production in the Trump Era (original) (raw)
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Captured by the camera's eye: Guantánamo and the shifting frame of the Global War on Terror
In January 2002, images of the detention of prisoners held at US Naval Station Guantanamo Bay as part of the Global War on Terrorism were released by the US Department of Defense, a public relations move that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld later referred to as ‘probably unfortunate’. These images, widely reproduced in the media, quickly came to symbolise the facility and the practices at work there. Nine years on, the images of orange-clad ‘detainees’ – the ‘orange series’ – remain a powerful symbol of US military practices and play a significant role in the resistance to the site. However, as the site has evolved, so too has its visual representation. Official images of these new facilities not only document this evolution but work to constitute, through a careful (re)framing (literal and figurative), a new (re)presentation of the site, and therefore the identities of those involved. The new series of images not only (re)inscribes the identities of detainees as dangerous but, more importantly, work to constitute the US State as humane and modern. These images are part of a broader effort by the US administration to resituate its image, and remind us, as IR scholars, to look at the diverse set of practices (beyond simply spoken language) to understand the complexity of international politics.
Encountering the Muslim: Guantánamo Bay, Detainees, and Apprehensions of Violence
Canadian Journal of Law & Society , 2019
This article focuses on the underlying sensorial entanglements that linger in spaces and moments of encounter between state violence and its targets. It argues that in Guantánamo Bay, these entanglements become routed through the bodies of the camp’s detainees, and they rely upon a particular reading of religion as being borne by bodies in such ways as to necessitate the use of specific techniques of detention and incapacitation. This discussion is framed using the notion of “apprehension”, in its affective and material forms, wherein perception, dread, and physical encounters in the camp unfold within a framing of Muslims as ontologically and materially distinct, and as being embodied in particular ways. In these processes of apprehension, the techniques and logics of violence deployed in the war on terror become further legitimated, and work reflexively to shape the ways in which the Muslim is known, encountered, and met with violence.
Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 2023
The military detention facility at the Guantánamo Bay naval base is the most enduring manifestation of the US “war on terror.” It is also materially and symbolically central to US torture, war crimes, and other egregious violations of law in the post-9/11 era. Since the first detainees arrived in 2002, Guantánamo has been the subject of controversy and debate, as well as a key setting for legal challenges to government policies. This article traces the legacy of the prison and the military commissions across four administrations. It demonstrates that the lack of a common understanding or shared narrative about what Guantánamo means or has meant is a product of entrenched partisanship that characterizes contemporary US politics more broadly. Guantánamo’s confounding legacy reflects the lack of a national consensus about the role of laws and courts as guarantors of even the most basic rights.
Obama’s Guantánamo: Stories from an Enduring Prison by Jonathan Hafetz, ed
Human Rights Review, 2018
With the eruption of President Donald Trump on our political landscapes, a book titled Obama's Guantánamo: Stories from an Enduring Prison may seem already out-ofdate. Such thinking would be a mistake. A sequel to the 2011 volume, The Guantánamo Lawyers, Obama's Guantánamo serves as a testament and crucial link in how the United States has arrived at its present place in both the geopolitical world and in the world of human rights. For those readers who lament the war on terror and rebuke the roles played within it from those at the very top (especially Vice President Dick Cheney, President George H.W. Bush, and Attorney General John Ashcroft) to the soldiers, interrogators, CIA, medical personnel, and bureaucrats involved in Abu Ghraib, black sites, torture memos, extraordinary renditions, and other Kafkaesque scenarios, none of this will be easy reading. Yet amidst the harsh reality of American political and military engagement and support of torture, these accounts also testify to lawyers, law professors, and other legal staff who believe in the value, basic rights, and dignity of all human beings and the right to a fair trial and hearing. Thus, this collection of fourteen essays by the lawyers involved in defending Guantánamo detainees should also not be forgotten. All the essays are valuable. Sabin Willett's BTwelve Years After^and Frank Goldsmith's BThe Taliban Five and the Prisoners Exchange,^for instance, are exceptional in their clarity, narrative verve, and moral acuity. Obama's Guantánamo cannot be recommended enough. As of this writing in June 2017, there remain 41 prisoners at Guantánamo, from a high number of 779. So far, 721 individuals were released or transferred and nine people died in custody. It may have been Bush's creation (and is now Trump's Guantánamo), but as these chapters widely argue, President Obama
Journal of Terrorism Research, 2011
Some miles off in the distance on a swelteringly hot and sunny day, as the waves of the Gulf of Mexico lazily lap at the shore, a group of individuals are held by the U.S. Government without access to the most basic right of Due Process amongst others. Most readers will assume that this description refers to the infamous detention of individuals in Guantanamo Bay at Camp X Ray and now Camp Delta as enemy combatants in the aftermath of 9/11 terrorist attacks. Indeed, readers could be forgiven for thinking this given the extensive media coverage of this topic. However, the picture just painted is not of those held as enemy combatants but rather the plight of a lesser known group of individuals known as the Marielitos who also have been detained by the U.S. Government; not for days, not for weeks, not for months and not just in the years since 9/11 but rather in a continuing program of indefinite detention since their arrival 1980. The Marielitos are Cuban refugees who first came to the U.S. via a boatlift on what was referred to as the Freedom Flotilla. This misnomer aside, since then some of these refugees have been held as part of an ongoing program of indefinite detention. Yet despite their thirty-one year plight, the Marielitos barely garner mainstream media attention when compared the situation of Guantanamo Bay detainees. Indeed, such headline domination by the latter looks set to continue given that September of this year marked the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers and the ensuing and now all too familiar war on terror. [1] Inevitably, academia has played host to countless conferences and special editions to mark this occasion reflecting upon the significant changes that have followed in the past decade. Without a doubt, the war on terror has worked numerous changes worthy of such attention and in particular the law has witnessed more than its fair share at both the national and the international level. However, in this flurry of analysis it has been overlooked that in certain and significant ways the war on terror presents nothing new. Regardless of the legal framework, whether it is one of peace or under the rubric of the war on terror, the U.S. Government successfully has waged a campaign to deny Due Process to these individuals which effectively amounts to their indefinite detention. This article explores what explains the plight of these seemingly disparate groups despite provision in the U.S. Constitution for Due Process and its broader implications.
how to restore the credibility of a country whose foundations and self-understanding are based on the universality of freedom and human rights, but that has violated precisely those rights by practicing torture in guantánamo and other prisons around the world? the image of the united states as a role model of liberal democracy has suffered tremendously over the last eight years. in the name of the global war on terror, former President bush suspended the law for those detained as possible terrorists. even though President Obama's promise to close guantánamo is recognized by the international community as a first step towards restoring u.s. credibility, several problems require comprehensive policy solutions: how to proceed with detainees that are considered to be dangerous? What to do with detainees who are cleared of suspicion, but might face torture in their country of origin? how to cope with evidence that is derived from torture? thomas c. hilde outlines several post-guantánamo detainee policy proposals -and their difficulties -that address these distinctive sets of issues, such as military commission trials, continued preventive detention, a national security court or u.s. criminal court trials. in the long run, however, restoring credibility through a reformed detainee policy is only one component of post-guantánamo credibility; the second indispensable element is accountability. Prof. hilde discusses the functions of different forms of accountability in the process of reestablishing u.s. credibility on human rights. Whereas legal accountability requires the formal investigations of human rights violations, public-moral and pragmatic accountability refer to the need to address the norms on which international society is based. Moreover, a public discourse is needed that confronts the stories of those who have suffered human rights violations and the empathetic aspect of human rights. A more comprehensive form of accountability can serve as both a means towards regaining u.s. credibility and a strengthening of human rights culture.