Scientists Propose Biodiversity Lab To Redeem Guantanamo Prison Camp

HughPickens.com writes: The American presence at the Guantanamo Prison Camp has been deeply contentious since even before terrorism suspects began to be housed there beginning in 2002. Now as President Obama prepares to make the first presidential visit to Cuba in almost 90 years, ecologists Joe Roman and James Kraska have published their case in the influential journal Science for creating a Guantanamo-based research center to study biodiversity in the Caribbean. The primary benefit of a Guantanamo Bay research station is symbolic. "The main goal is trying to take Guantanamo and make it an inspiring place, and redeem it," says Roman. But the case for Guantanamo Bay as a science lab goes beyond political optics. According to Roman and Kraska the land and the sea offer an ecosystem uniquely worthy of study. The research hub of Roman's dreams would be a state-of-the art facility to help understand how biodiversity loss can be prevented across the Caribbean. "A parcel of the land, perhaps on the developed southeastern side of the base, could become a 'Woods Hole of the Caribbean,' housing research and educational facilities dedicated to addressing climate change, ocean conservation, and biodiversity loss. With genetics laboratories, geographic information systems laboratories, videoconference rooms — even art, music, and design studios — scientists, scholars, and artists from Cuba, the United States, and around the world could gather and study. The new facilities could strive to be carbon neutral, with four 80-meter wind turbines having been installed on the base in 2005, and designed to minimize ecological damage to the surrounding marine and terrestrial ecosystems" Hugh Pickens continues: According to Roman, the main idea is that science can be healing: a way to bring diverse nations together, a way to rectify a complicated history, and a way to help better the lives of all people through research. The biggest roadblock won't be the Obama administration but Congress. Republican lawmakers have derided Obama's preliminary framework for closing the prison, so for the foreseeable future, the status quo will remain. But Roman can still dream. "At a certain point, I don't know when, that base is going to close. It's going to return to Cuba at some point. This is a great use of that property. You don't have many places in the world like that."

Comments

Give it back?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about just giving it back to Cuba?

It's as anachronistic and wounding to national pride as it would be for Americans having to tolerate a foreign military base on Manhattan island.

The Brits gave Hong Kong island back to China for a good reason. Shit like this belongs in the 19th century, not the 21st.

its not that convenient.

[nimbius]

to Redeem Guantanamo Prison Camp...

there is no redemption in a torture camp. Auschwitz and Dachau didnt find salvation in an agricultural or a climate research institute. Instead they perist in silence, discipline, and remorse as a sterling reminder of some of the most profound human genocide mankind has ever committed. Many israeli jews, including new IDF troops, make a pilgrimage to these sites yearly to remember.

Prisoners at Guantanamo have been beaten, waterboarded, subjected to forced intubation and rectal feeding, extreme temperatures, and have experienced some of the most brutal and least reported abuse under the US governments authority that any human has seen in the 21st century outside of Darfur. Some prisoners have been kidnapped from their home countries under extraordinary rendition, and others simply scooped up during the occupation campaign in Iraq. Once theyre free, many are in limbo as their home countries no longer want them and no foreign nation will consider them for immigrant status.

Re:its not that convenient.

[rmdingler]

Guantanamo is not a source of pride for many Americans, and yet, the bulk of the human rights violations that did exist there were flushed out by the American people and the US press.

Yes. Obama was unable to fulfill that campaign promise, and the base should be converted to something else, but comparing this to the WWII concentration camps is a bit much.

These people are being held without American constitutional protection, but they are, by and large bad guys, and they were not indiscriminately rounded up man, woman, and child because of their race.

Re:its not that convenient.

[argStyopa]

"most brutal and least reported abuse under the US governments authority that any human has seen in the 21st century"
And this is why nothing happens with Guantanamo. Serious discussions are impossible when the starting point is such ridiculous hyperbole.

FIRST:
It's almost inevitable that you'd go straight to Godwin the thread, of course. But I'd remark there's a pretty substantial gulf in agency and innocence between Nazi death camps (where people all the way down to children were rounded up and ultimately exterminated solely because they were Jewish, gay, or any number of other 'negative elements' in the Nazi schema) and a US detention facility which was largely used for COMBATANTS seized in what is effectively a war zone, but whose status was questionable as they chose not to wear uniforms.

BIG fucking difference, in fact.

I agree Guantanamo should have been closed a long, long time ago. I felt from the start that the US was wrong to take and hold prisoners in such a conflict; by the rules of the Geneva Convention, combatants seized in such circumstances should have been wrung for information and then summarily executed as they were nothing more than bandits, having failed to comply with the characteristics b, c, and d that would have required them to be treated as captured POWs:
(a) That of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
(b) That of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance; ---
(c) That of carrying arms openly; ---
(d) That of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war. ---
Had they done those things, they would have been entitled to treatment as POWs. For the Bush administration to allow them to persist in this gray area left the US vulnerable to these ongoing histrionics.

SECOND: "...most brutal and least reported abuse ...that any human has seen in the 21st century"
Not even close to true.
You must have missed ISIS, then? Or did I miss the mass executions at Guantanamo? The videotaped beheadings?

THIRD:
You might want to review that list of inhumanities; the forced intubation and rectal feeding had to do with prisoners hunger-striking. Should they have been allowed to kill themselves instead? Extreme temperatures: people working minimum-wage jobs in the US regularly suffer worse conditions.
NONE of the what, 9 deaths at Guantanamo have been caused by the US government. 7 were suicides, 1 was heart attack, and 1 was cancer (and those last to I almost guarantee got BETTER health care and end-of-life care than they'd have gotten in whatever pestilential 3rd world country they came from).
Ultimately, it's pretty clear that as prisons go, the Cuban ones outside Guantanamo's walls have been FAR worse for 50 years. Curious that you haven't complained about that?

FOURTH:
You skip quickly past the point that many (2 score) are in fact free today. They can leave BUT THEIR HOMES DON'T WANT THEM, NEITHER DOES ANY OTHER COUNTRY - even countries inimical to the US like Venezuela or North Korea. Why do you suppose that is? These are troublemaking, BAD people.

Again, I agree with you in the basic point: Guantanamo should never have been used as a detention camp. That was ridiculously dumb. What you fail to recognize is that camp is in fact probably the only reason those men remain alive today. It wasn't "whistling a merry happy tune at the playground" vs "internment at Guantanamo"; it was "be shot dead" or "internment". I'd have strongly recommended the former on the basis of costs and long term policy impact on the US.