Story of a journalist

The Columbian Journalism Review has an article about an Al Jazeera cameraman who has been held in Guantánamo Bay since 2002, without access to legal aid until 2005. The story of Sami al-Haj should make the blood boil of every American who truly believes in the ideals of democracy. And yet this is a story repeated over and over again at Guantánamo Bay: someone gets picked up in Afghanistan or Pakistan or Iraq and is handed over to the American military and assumed guilty. Sometimes the person is mistaken for someone else. Sometimes the person just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sometimes the person is an "enemy combatant" with no real military threat. Sometimes the person is indeed a member of Al-Qaeda. But none of these people, no matter what their level of guilt or innocence, has had access to adequate--if any at all--legal aid. They disappear into the black hole of Guantánamo Bay, and most Americans don't seem to care.

Why should we care? Because what happens at Guantánamo Bay reflects on us, on our legal system, on our sometimes indignantly righteous claims of freedom. Over 300 detainees from Guantánamo Bay have been released or transferred to prisons elsewhere. Do you think they are returning to their countries with stories of the greatness of democracy, of their fair treatment under a just legal system? How do the practices of Guantánamo Bay differ from any dictatorship?

Here's something that really struck me, as it also struck Glenn Greenwald: Although al-Haj was a journalist with Al-Jazeera, the Arab news organization didn't press the U.S. much for release of its employee at first. A spokesman for the organization said that right after 9/11, a great number of people thought that the horror of the terrorist attacks gave the U.S. some justification for detaining people. Also, people just didn't believe at first that the U. S. would torture prisoners. The rest of the world understands what democracy is; the rest of the world understands what the Statue of Liberty represents. As Ahmad Ibrahim, a producer for Al Jazeera says, ". . . in the Arab world, the situation at Guantánamo was difficult to comprehend or believe, even—that any kind of torture would be perpetrated by the U.S. A lot of people didn’t comprehend what Guantánamo stood for, and the legal arguments that were used to justify it."

That naiveté is long gone. With Guantánamo Bay, the Bush administration has voided the democratic ideals that this country has long represented. And I can't help but wonder: if the administration can get away with suspending legal rights of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay with little outrage from ordinary, voting Americans, when will our government realize that it can import those practices for use against American citizens? Oh, wait. . . .that's already happening. . . .

Morris, Rachel. "Prisoner 345." Columbia Journalism Review. July/August 2007. Online: http://www.cjr.org/cover_story/prisoner_345.php?page=1