By MAJ (RET) Montgomery J. Granger @mjgranger1
The publication Responsible Statecraft has memorialized the US military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in an article by Connor Echols titled, “Why won’t Biden close Gitmo?” Well, to answer the question, Biden won’t close the US military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, because he can’t. Congress won’t let him, not least because closing Gitmo would not have a positive effect on the outcome of the Global War on Terror.
In their story, Echols and Responsible Statecraft take the easy way out by regurgitating false narratives on Gitmo conjured over the past 22 years, including erroneous statements calling for the closure of the institution from the likes of retired Marine General Michael Lehnert, the first commanding general of JTF 160, which was the governing unit at Gitmo and Camp X-Ray when the mission began on January 11, 2002.
As a soldier stationed at Guantanamo Bay at the time, I had a front-row seat to Lehnert’s leadership of the camp. Upon his appointment to the position, Lehnert had no experience with military incarceration, nor was he trained in the discipline that only the Army has experience and expertise in. He was selected for the job because he had run Camp X-Ray in the early 1990s during the Haitian boat crisis—a dubious distinction, as anyone who remembers the crisis knows.
Apparently unfamiliar with the Geneva Conventions, Law of War, or US military Enemy Prisoner of War doctrine, Lehnert blindly guided operations at Gitmo in early 2002. If the Army had had sole control over the mission, there might have been tribunals, convictions, and executions on par with the Nuremberg trials after World War II, when Nazi war criminals were tried before an international commission.
But Responsible Statecraft claims detainees were treated inhumanely at Gitmo. Nothing could be further from the truth. Lehnert, himself, was known for coddling prisoners, as exemplified by the final act of his tenure—a farewell tour through the prison in which he handed out candy to the unlawful combatant Islamists who wanted to kill us. Aside from him, International Committee of the Red Cross physicians who worked with us there and later in Iraq told me, “No one does [detention operations] better than the US.” In fact, Gitmo is the finest military detention facility on earth.
Tens of thousands of unlawful combatant Islamists were apprehended in the early days of the Global War on Terror, but just under 800 ever made it to Gitmo (the “worst of the worst,” terrorists according to then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld), and more than 745 have been released. None were ever beheaded, executed, blown up, hacked to death, dragged naked and lifeless through the streets, drowned, or burned alive, but those are all things our enemies have done to us and our allies. There is no moral comparison between Gitmo and our enemies’ treatment of their captives.
Gitmo detainees enjoy free Qurans, prayer rugs and beads, directions to Mecca, white robes, halal and Muslim holy day meals, services of US military Muslim chaplains, world-class health, dental, and vision care, recreation, correspondence, legal representation, books, DVDs, TV, video games, sports, and more! There is no other place on earth where these men could receive such quality treatment.
As for waterboarding and other Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EIT), they were only “performed on a handful of detainees in order to obtain valuable information that saved many lives,” according to then-President George W. Bush in his memoir, “Decision Points.” EIT were approved and legal and did not meet the internationally accepted definition of torture at the time. Only after the fact did President Obama unilaterally declare EIT torture outside the accepted definition.
Responsible Statecraft has further claimed that the CIA was in charge of these interrogations, and they were also the only US personnel trained in EIT, not the US military or any DoD personnel, according to Secretary of Defense, Don Rumsfeld in his memoir, “Known and Unknown.”
In fact, the only institutional abuse at Gitmo was by the detainees, who regularly sucker punched guards and used their bodily fluids, including urine, feces and semen to “splash” unsuspecting guards, who, after a time, began to wear face shields when handling detainees.
Although some detainees have spent decades at Gitmo without charge or trial, even lawful combatant POWs may be held in this manner “until the end of hostilities,” according to the Geneva Conventions and Law of War, two essential documents Gitmo detractors, including Responsible Statecraft, never mention.
The truth is that according to President Obama’s 2009 Military Commissions Act (MCA), unlawful combatant Islamists accused of war crimes who are held at Gitmo have virtually the same rights you or I would enjoy in a federal court of law. This is an unprecedented policy that undermines the Law of War, which requires those accused of war crimes to be tried under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) under the same standards that US military personnel would be tried.
It is the MCA that is responsible for hamstringing the legal proceedings for the ten detainees accused of war crimes, including those who admit to planning and facilitating the attacks of 9/11 – another subject Responsible Statecraft avoids in their story. Instead of trying to explain these details, the publication simply pretends they don’t exist.
Gitmo is a small but important piece in the big puzzle of how we win the Global War on Terror. At least 30 percent of all released detainees have returned to the fight, including five Taliban leaders released by President Obama in a prisoner exchange for one US traitor. Keeping captured suspected war criminals and other dangerous terrorists in detention makes everyone safer and would move us closer to ending global terrorism.
On the other hand, arbitrary calls to close Gitmo, combined with false narratives, lies, and myths about what goes on there, do a disservice to American interests in the Global War on Terror. Keeping Gitmo open and “filling it up with bad guys,” as President Trump has promised, gives us the best chance for security and victory.
MAJ Granger was the ranking US Army Medical Department officer with the Joint Detainee Operations Group, Joint Task Force 160, from February to June 2002 at Gitmo. He is the author of the memoir, “Saving Grace at Guantanamo Bay,” and narrator of the short documentary YouTube film, “Heroes of GITMO,” based on his book.