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February 5th, 2021 
Awake Goy 
Gitmo is Still Open
Back in 2008, the Guantanamo Bay detention camp was rightly regarded as a symbol of everything that was wrong with the Bush administration’s “War on Terror” policies. Torture. Indefinite detention. Violations of the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments. A brazen disregard for anything resembling international law. As a Democratic Senator running for president, Barack Obama vowed to close the camp if elected.
On his second full day in office, Obama signed an executive order to shut it down. Of course, this never actually happened and at a certain point Gitmo went the way of the memory hole. The occupation of Afghanistan hardly gets mentioned these days, let alone Guantanamo Bay. When pressed on this issue, former members of the Obama administration (and Obama-supporting liberals) will tell you that the former president was stonewalled by the GOP congress. This is partially true, but it’s an insufficient explanation and lets Obama off the hook.
In 2016, the New Yorker published an incredibly thorough investigation by Connie Bruck on why Obama was unable to close the camp. Republican obstinance is certainly part of that story, but Bruck shows how a series of miscalculations (and a lack of political will) are central to the story. Here’s an excerpt:
By the end of 2009, the effort to close Guantánamo was “like watching a slow-motion train wreck,” a former Obama Administration official said. In the fall, Holder had pushed to try the five 9/11 defendants in federal court in Manhattan, in what he called “the trial of the century.” But, after Rudolph Giuliani and other politicians attacked the plan as unmanageably expensive and dangerous, the White House abandoned it. On Christmas Day, an attempted suicide bombing on an airliner over Detroit reignited fears of terrorism. Because the bomber was linked to Yemen, Obama forbade the repatriation of Yemeni detainees, which kept eighty-six of them stuck in cells.
As Obama’s self-imposed deadline for closing Guantánamo passed, the Administration seemed increasingly at odds with itself. Clinton offered to use her contacts on Capitol Hill to help broker a deal with critical figures in the Senate and the House. ‘At that moment, before the ice hardened, you might have been able to work out some deal with Congress,’ a senior Administration official told me. “Transfer the ones you can. Try others in federal court. Find some supermax prison for the ones you had to hold. There are all kinds of variants of a deal, and she was saying, ‘For God’s sake, cut some damn deal!’ The White House didn’t authorize her.”
Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign featured criticisms of the Iraq War (which the former president originally supported), but that stuff was almost always framed in a vague, nativist way. The Middle East was supposedly a cesspool full of madmen and the United States had been tricked into getting bogged down in the region. The wars might be dumb, but closing Gitmo would send a message of weakness to the world or something.
At the beginning of 2018, Trump signed an executive order to keep the facility open. ““I am asking Congress to ensure that in the fight against ISIS and al Qaeda we continue to have all necessary power to detain terrorists wherever we chase them down, wherever we find them. And In many cases for them it will now be Guantanamo bay,” he declared.
A year later, Trump’s tuned had changed. The cost of keeping the camp open was “crazy” and he was allegedly looking into alternatives. It obviously remained open.
Now with Biden in charge, there have been renewed calls to shut it down. A group of over 100 organizations have sent the president a letter urging him to act. “It is long past time for both a sea change in the United States’ approach to national and human security, and a meaningful reckoning with the full scope of damage that the post-9/11 approach has caused,” it reads. “Closing Guantanamo and ending indefinite detention of those held there is a necessary step towards those ends.”
A number of former Gitmo prisoners recently published a powerful open letter to Biden in the New York Review:
Most of the prisoners currently or presently detained at Guantánamo have never been to the United States. This means that our image of your country has been shaped by our experiences at Guantánamo—in other words, we have only been witnesses to its dark side.
Considering the violence that has happened at Guantánamo, we are sure that after more than nineteen years, you agree that imprisoning people indefinitely without trial while subjecting them to torture, cruelty and degrading treatment, with no meaningful access to families or proper legal systems, is the height of injustice. That is why imprisonment at Guantánamo must end.
In testimony to the Senate, Biden’s defense secretary nominee Gen. Lloyd Austin has said that he believes it’s “time for the detention facility at Guantanamo to close its doors” and that “he would work with others in the administration to develop a ‘path forward’ to closure.”
So once again there’s hope, but it remains unclear whether we will actually get any change this time.
Gitmo Vaccine
One more note on Guantanamo Bay. You might have seen that the Pentagon paused its plan to vaccinate the 40 men still held at the facility after Republican outcry. This was the perfect vehicle for right-wing outrage: the image of shifty Dems rushing to assist terrorists while Americans languish.
There’s one problem with this narrative: the prisoners were scheduled to get vaccines under Trump. As Politico points out, “Under the Trump administration plan, the Pentagon first offered the vaccine to health care workers and their support staff, followed by those with critical national security jobs, and then the workforce over 65 years of age or with prior medical conditions.” Based on its unique status, the prison cleared these hurdles quicker than most places.
This fact didn’t deter from Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy from tweeting, “President Biden told us he would have a plan to defeat the virus on day 1. He just never told us that it would be to give the vaccine to terrorists before most Americans.”
Two GOP Reps (Ashley Hinson and Elise Stefanik) introduced a resolution to oppose “any plans by the United States Department of Defense to deliver COVID-19 vaccines to prisoners held at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay and detained during operations conducted during the Global War on Terrorism until all Americans have had the opportunity to be vaccinated.”
This is obviously comically stupid, but the fact the Biden administration immediately caved is even more disheartening. Incarcerated people and correctional staff have an increased chance of being infected. Amnesty International’s Daphne Eviatar told Middle East Eye that there’s even a higher chance of disaster at Gitmo. “It’s particularly problematic at Guantanamo because the detainees are aging and many are in bad health already, some due to US torture, and the naval base isn’t sufficiently equipped to handle a serious disease outbreak,” said Eviatar. “On top of that, detainees are forbidden by US law from being taken to the United States for treatment.”
When your opponents accidentally do something good, then claim its awful and blame it on you? You have to concede immediately. That’s bipartisanship baby.
Odds & Ends
🇺🇸 US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kara McDonald declared that the Biden administration “embraces and champions” the controversial IHRA antisemitism definition.
📱 New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman sent a letter to the acting Israeli consul general, calling on the Israeli government to assure that Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are given the COVID vaccine. “According to the Fourth Geneva Convention, which obligates an occupying power to provide ‘adoption and application of the prophylactic and preventive measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics,’ Israel, as an occupying power, has a responsibility to provide vaccines to the Palestinian people,” the letter reads. On Twitter, Bowman criticized the Israeli government for depriving Palestinians of the vaccine. “This cruelty is another reminder of why the occupation must end,” he wrote. For some reason, Bowman has since deleted this tweet.
🇮🇱 NPR asked the Biden administration about Israel demolishing homes in the West Bank. This is the response they got: “We are aware of the issue. We believe it is critical for Israel and the Palestinian authority to refrain from unilateral steps that exacerbate tensions and undercut efforts to advance a negotiated two-state solution, such as annexation of territory settlement activity, demolitions, incitement to violence, and providing compensation individuals imprisoned for acts of terrorism.” In other words, they’re cool with it and will do absolutely nothing to stop it.
🇮🇷 According to Axios, Secretary of State Tony Blinken apparently asked Special Envoy on Iran Rob Malley to “bring in people who are more hawkish on Iran.”
📖 Why is Alicia Garza speaking at a gala for Shmuley Boteach’s organization?
🇾🇪 The human rights group Reprieve has filed a petition through the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on behalf of two Yemeni families who have had dozens of family members killed in U.S. drone attacks. This is the opening paragraph of a Vice report on the family: “The day was supposed to be joyous. On December 12, 2013, the al Ameri and al Taisy families joined together in Yemen’s al Bayda province to celebrate the marriage of Abdullah Mabkhout al Ameri and his new wife Wardah al Taisy. During the traditional wedding procession from the bride’s home, a United States drone launched four missiles and killed 12 people. Seven members of the al Ameri family and five members of the al Taisy family were killed; six more were injured.”
🇵🇸 Just catching up to this In These Times piece by Palestine Legal’s Dima Khalidi on steps the Biden administration can immediately take to promote Palestinian freedom: “If Biden does show the courage it takes to listen to Palestinians, he will hear that we are a people who have been denied self-determination and freedom for far too long. He will hear that we live under a military occupation in the West Bank and Jerusalem, a deadly siege in Gaza, an unequal and discriminatory system for Palestinian citizens of Israel, in perpetual statelessness and in refugee camps around the world, all with the complicity of the United States.”
🗽 New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang made headlines last month when he compared the BDS movement to “Nazi fascism.” These ridiculous, offensive remarks predictably generated criticism and backlash. When asked about the controversy on The Brian Lehrer Show recently, Yang doubled down on the comments. “When I looked at the BDS movement, the thing that really, to me, made it so that it was difficult to not come out against it is that the BDS movement has refused to condemn violence against Israel, including groups that are regarded as terrorist groups by various government organizations – including our own,” he said. “And to me, if you’re not able to condemn violence then that’s a non-starter.”
💻 The International Christian network Global Kairos for Justice (GKJ) has launched an online BDS Toolkit. Here’s GKJ’s Ranjan Solomon of Global Kairos on the project: “Palestinian Christians have always been key players and partners with our Muslim neighbors in resisting oppression and calling for freedom and a just peace. Launch of the ToolKit connects the indigenous Christians to those times when the Palestinian church has provided remarkable leaders of the nationalist movements in Palestine.”
🇶 Democrats are trying to oust Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (the racist conspiracy theorist who once blamed wildfires on a Jewish laser beam) from her committees. This has prompted some Republicans to draw an equivalence between Greene and Rep. Ilhan Omar, specifically citing Omar’s AIPAC tweets from 2019. If Greene is antisemitic the logic goes, then why isn’t Omar? I feel compelled to point out that pro-Israel lobbying groups are real and the Jewish laser beam that causes wildfires is not.
🇾🇪 As I was typing this newsletter, it was announced that the Biden administration will U.S. support for the Saudi-led war on Yemen. This is fantastic news, but it remains to be seen what this actually ends up meaning. Does it mean an end to all weapons sales? Will the Houthis still be classified as a terrorist organization? While we wait on details, I thought this tweet from Jeremy Scahill was worth reflecting on: “If Biden ends US involvement in the Saudi genocidal campaign in Yemen, that’s great. Never should have been. But never forget it was the Obama-Biden admin that started this including key figures in Biden’s cabinet. They started the fire they now say they will stop pouring gas on.”
I wanted to thank Phil for doing a great job with the newsletter over the past few weeks. It’s good to be back. Hope you’ve been well.
Stay safe out there,
Michael
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