So, no surprise really that Amnesty “singled out the United States for particular criticism over the detention of suspected terrorists at a military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba”.
I'm not even going to address whether Guantanamo is ethical, involves torture, etc. There are enough tailspin wagging dogtags on that. Instead, let's ask the only question Jack Bauer would care about, does it work?
Well, does it?
On Meet the Press (May 21, 2006), Condoleezza Rice defended the prison in this way: She stated that there were hundreds of dangerous criminals in the prison and then asked the question, “What else can we do with them?” By phrasing the problem in this way, she tacitly acknowledges that the question of obtaining viable intelligence from the captives is moot. These guys have got nothing to offer us, anymore.
And so we keep more than 400 men close to our vest to prevent them from slipping away into the murky terrorist network and attacking us again. Which some of the release prisoners have done.
This sounds logical, but when you break down the way network structures work, it starts to break down. Networks coalesce around volunteers motivated by ideas. They are pull organizations, not moved (as the U.S. military is, say) by push recruitment centers. (See Marc Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks).
Tactically, imprisoning these people creates 400 martyrs in the eyes of the world. This, then, gives exponential juice to both the global terrorist network and our other global detractors. It pulls those networks closer together and speeds their growth. The damage is worse than it would be if all 400 of these men were allowed to be foot soldiers, even active foot soldiers, in the terror network.
I'm not saying we give them $100 bucks and a suit and let them off in Miami. But an extradition program makes sense. And even if some of them slip through the cracks--even if some of them commit successful attacks, God help us--it still makes sense. Because, long term, the idea of the 400 martyrs is too strong, it provides glue to the very networks we're trying to dissolve.
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