Is Closing Gitmo Worth the Price?

On Tuesday, February 23, 2016, President Obama announced his intent to submit his formalized plan to Congress to effectively close Guantanamo Bay as soon as possible. There are still a couple of hurdles looming on the horizon before this can occur.

President Obama must first obtain Congressional approval to move forward with his plan, which includes transferring and re-locating the remaining 91 prisoners still on base. The search is on to identify countries willing to accept and accommodate these prisoners. As a last resort, the current administration wants to bring those prisoners not accepted into the U.S. to take up residence within our borders. One potential site under consideration to house these prisoners within our country is the U.S. Navy brig at Charleston, South Carolina. This facility sits on 4.4 acres and has a maximum bed capacity of 479 although there are only 121 prisoners currently on the campus.

The re-location of these prisoners has generated vigorous debate on both sides of the aisle among those for and against, while closing Guantanamo Bay has been a primary objective of the Obama administration since taking office in 2009. President Obama sites the need for his administration to exercise sound and fiscally responsible measures as a “good steward of taxpayer dollars,” as the motivating reason behind the push to close the base. President Obama offers that continuing to keep Guantanamo Bay operational is extremely expensive. According to recent figures provided by the Pentagon, operational costs for last year alone cost the taxpayers roughly $400 million, which breaks down to a cost of approximately $4 million per detainee. During his media release on February 23, 2016, the President stated he expects to see significant cost savings from this closure over the next 10 to 20 years. He anticipates approximately $300 million in savings over the next 10 years and a staggering $1.7 billion in savings over the next 20 years.

At the center of much of the debate is determining if the closure will make our country less secure or not given the plan to re-distribute the remaining prisoners to various countries around the globe. Some of which, do not necessarily share the same values and ideologies as the U.S. and its Western allies. After all, we must remember the clientele we are referring to when we look at the remaining 91 Guantanamo detainees. Over the past months and years, the lowest risk detainees have either been released or transitioned to other facilities outside the U.S. Those who remain are those individuals who are deemed the most dangerous and pose the highest level of risk and include the likes of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Given their assigned level of risk, these prisoners cannot be in just any detention facility. They must be transferred to maximum security facilities capable of providing the level of security controls and monitoring necessary to prevent escape. The ability to ensure this level of consistent security measures will be difficult if not impossible for some countries that lack the level of resources to ensure the secure confinement of this caliber of prisoner they have agreed to accept. A recent example includes the escape of renowned drug cartel leader, Juan “El Chapo” Guzman from a prison in Mexico, where multiple requests and efforts from the U.S. to provide incarceration was repeatedly denounced with the assurances the prisoner would be secure.

The Obama administration contends that closing Guantanamo Bay will not weaken our national security; it will in fact enhance it. Instead the administration has focused on the fact multiple terrorist organizations have demonstrated their effectiveness in using Guantanamo as a recruitment tool to encourage the further radicalization of terrorist supporters to engage in the terrorist fighting abroad.

Another aspect of the discussion is the growing concern over rate of recidivism by those prisoners who have been released and have actively taken up arms and reengaged in the war on terror against the U.S. and the West. Under the previous Bush and now Obama administrations, data on detainees have been collected in two distinct categories. Those who have been confirmed to have re-engaged in the war and those who are merely “suspected” to have re-engaged, but are unconfirmed. In a report released by the Director of National Intelligence, it was expressed that there are some detainees, “who are determined to reengage will do so regardless of any transfer conditions.” Subsequent data seems to support this sentiment. Under both the Bush and Obama administrations, twelve detainees have been confirmed to have reengaged in the war on terror; six under Bush and the six under Obama. Overall, the number of confirmed and suspected detainees who have reengaged in the war currently sits at 28.6%, or nearly 1 in 3 who will reengage. It is difficult to predict what will happen once these remaining detainees are no longer under the watchful eye and direct control of the U.S. Navy guards standing watch over them in Guantanamo, but it is likely these numbers will increase sharply.

Nevertheless, the closing of Guantanamo is still not a forgone conclusion. Should Congress elect not to support this effort, it remains to be seen if President Obama will attempt to force the issue through executive action, while his political opponents will continue to argue the legality of the plan as presented. Under current law, the transfer of Guantanamo Bay detainees to the U.S. is prohibited by the defense policy bill; however, others argue the President retains the ultimate authority to transfer these prisoners implementing Article 2 considerations.

So the question remains. Is it likely our national security will be enhanced through the closure of Guantanamo Bay? If so, can we as a nation afford to put the responsibility for securing these detainees on the shoulders of countries around the world with varying ideologies and an expectation they will provide the same level of secure incarceration that the U.S. provided in Guantanamo? For most of us the jury is still out and there are many obstacles yet to be navigated, but the consequences of not engaging on this issue could be met with catastrophic outcomes down the road prompting us to ask the difficult questions today in order to guarantee a secure tomorrow.

Additional details on this topic can be found by visiting the following links:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2016/01/12/closing-gitmo-could-save-money-cause-grief/7...
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2016/02/23/obama-announce-guantanamo-plan-morning/80...
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/02/23/obama-releases-plan-close-guantanamo-bay/8...
http://thehill.com/policy/defense/policy-strategy/234725-intel-community-gitmo-detainees...
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/05/guantanamo-detainee-recidivism-rates-1.

This article was submitted by a member of the Plugged-in Team