Obama Deserves Our Support in Closing Guantanamo Bay

U.S. president Barack Obama is clinging to the announced closure of the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But to get the necessary support in his own country, Obama has to make concessions.

The military tribunal system that Obama’s predecessor, George Bush, installed at Guantanamo to bring terror suspects to justice now do not seem to be disappearing; Obama wants to reform it. And the new U.S. president now says that some of the 240 suspects held at Guantanamo are such a threat to U.S. security that they should remain detained even though they cannot be brought to justice.

These concessions were conceivable; the resistance to either transfer terror suspects to American territory or to release them is enormous. That brought the U.S. Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, to deny Obama the financial resources necessary to close Guantanamo.

Obama must make concessions, but at the same time he ignores the heart of the problem: there are still people being held without a fair trial and without the ability to exercise the right to defend themselves.

In the race to the White House, Obama has always shown his outrage over this injustice, and he spoke this week of the mess that Bush left him.

That outrage is justified and widely shared outside the United States. Guantanamo has, together with the invasion of Iraq, undermined the moral authority of the U.S. in the world. The recovery will be difficult now since it appears that Obama will not clean that mess up completely.

Nevertheless, he deserves our support. Instead of similar resistance like in the U.S., the rest of the world should express its support to shut down Guantanamo. That support should include the willingness to grant asylum to some of the 240 prisoners. Several countries, even European ones, are willing to do so, and it seems that Belgium can be added to the list.

On grounds of principle, the Netherlands has always refused: the Americans have created this injustice, so they should solve it. That is a good argument, but since the Americans have helped Europe out several times over in the last century after European mistakes, the right thing for the European countries to is to reach out to the U.S.