On Wednesday of last week, three members of the Class of 2008 stepped up for their time in the sun. It was our moment. Our destiny. The most competitive, challenging and talked-up debate in WIP history. Georgetown vs. WIP. The motion? Guantanamo. The players? Phil, Cliona and myself vs. three of Georgetown’s best. The stakes? Honour, pride, and our place in history…
Ok ok, perhaps it wasn’t quite as important as all that, but it certainly felt that way as we took our seats to begin the proceedings! All in all it went very well. Our opponents were as competent as expected, if not more, but since no one on our team had ever been at a debate in their life, we really rose to the challenge, which resulted in a fascinating and highly competitive evening for all involved. In the end there were no judges to call a winner, but at the risk of sounding horrendously cliché, I think everybody, organizers, audience members and debaters alike, can consider themselves the fortunate winners of this unique event. Below, if you are interested, I have included a copy of the speech I gave in favour of the immediate closure of the Guantanamo Bay facility.
Mr, Esteemed Opposition, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Freedom is a powerful word. It is a word that has been employed with conspicuous frequency by the Bush administration to explain and justify a variety of practices and goals in the so called “War on Terror.” It is a word which conjures up a variety of associations. These range from Mel Gibson’s somewhat over-dramatised depiction of bottom-bearing Scotsmen winning freedom from colonial oppression, to the more contextually relevant notion of civil, religious and human freedoms within a democratic state. There is one aspect of the word however, that we should be very conscious of avoiding. Freedom within today’s society does not mean freedom from international accountability. It does not mean freedom from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and it does not mean freedom from commitment and strict adherence to the Geneva Conventions.
As recently as February of this year, the Bush administration instructed American diplomats to defend its decision to seek the death penalty for six Guantanamo detainees by recalling the executions of Nazi war criminals after World War 2. Obviously, President Bush hasn’t been doing his history homework.
One of the most serious lessons learned from the Second World War was that the heinous crimes perpetrated by the Nazi state were not illegal, because there were no international laws to prohibit them. The spirit of Nuremberg gave birth to a new era of international humanitarian law. One that sought to redress such a legal deficiency through a new international framework, based on the ideals of consensus and universalism. Six decades on, far from taking Nuremberg as a precedent, the actions of the Bush administration at Guantanamo transcend the bounds of these international laws in the name of national security. The idea that absolute security is the foremost legal right of the state contravenes the legal principle, established by the Geneva Conventions, that certain practices are universal crimes, and that their perpetrators are subject to punishment. It undermines the very basis of post- World War 2 legal developments, and its consequences for the future of international law could be devastating. It is for this reason that an institution such as Guantanamo has no place in a society that holds the preservation of immutable individual freedoms, backed up by a solid framework of international laws, as its guiding principle. It is for this reason that Guantanamo Bay must be closed with immediate effect.
Furthermore, the Bush administration chose Guantanamo Bay because it considered that its actions there would be beyond judicial review under the United States’ Constitution. However, since the Supreme Court ruled on the 12th June in Boumedeine vs Bush that the Constitution does apply even in de facto US territory, there is clearly no further need for the facility at Guantanamo. The Court has granted the detainees the basic right to habeas corpus, a corner stone of liberty since the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215, and a right enshrined in the 5th Amendment. The future of the detainees is thus henceforth to be subject to judicial scrutiny under the auspices of the Constitution, and as such all further treatment of their cases must be removed from the shadows, and incorporated into both the US and international judicial systems, where there can be no further ambivalence regarding their rights as established by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Conventions. An essential indication of this new intent would be the closing of Guantanamo and the transfer of its occupants to US soil-proper as they await either their release, or their trial.
The lasting outcome of Nuremberg was the institutionalization of individual liberty at an international level. If we are prepared to compromise this liberty through a back-door assault on the very principles which uphold it, as is being done at Guantanamo, how can we be justified in waging war against an enemy whose alleged crime is an assault on that very same liberty? Guantanamo is an abhorrent affront to the laws and values that govern modern day international society, and as such, must be shut down with immediate effect.
I support this motion.
