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Guantanamo: the bigger picture.

Article Excerpt
The U.S. base at Guantanamo has been called many things. The "gulag of our time" (Amnesty International General Secretary Irene Khan, May 2005). "The key strategic intelligence platform in the war on terror" (Charles Stimson, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, January 2007). The "legal equivalent of outer space" (unnamed Administration official). The right place for "the worst of a very bad lot" (Vice President Dick Cheney, January 2002) and for the "most dangerous, best trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth" (former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, January 2002).

Guantanamo is now best known as the home of oversized iguanas, banana rats, and the more than 700 "enemy combatants" who have been detained, tortured, and interrogated there over the past six years as part of the Bush administration's global war on terrorism. But, the history of the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay stretches much further back--to the beginning of the last century--when the United States wrestled this prime real-estate from Spain to become the colonial power in the hemisphere.

Twenty-first century experiences at Guantanamo have now been exposed in a sheaf of books, including difficult, vivid memoirs from former detainees and powerful poetry, and dramatized in plays and films, such as the best-documentary Oscar winner Taxi to the Dark Side and the critically-acclaimed Road to Guantanamo. The iconic orange jumpsuits are on display at every anti-war protest and the word "Guantanamo" is often used as shorthand for the Bush administration's whole system of indefinite detention, rendition, torture, and abuse of power established since September 2001.

Harold and Kumar Escape Guantanamo

Calls to "shut down Guantanamo" from legal and human rights experts, politicians, and the international community are now strong, irrepressible and growing louder each day. At the same time, the facility has finally penetrated pop culture. This spring, movie-goers can enjoy the sequel of the 2004 slacker-stoner Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. In the new film, the two friends are arrested after smuggling a bong on a flight to Amsterdam and end up at Guantanamo. Yep, the movie is titled: Harold and Kumar II: Escape from Guantanamo Bay. Promoted with the tagline: "This Time, They're Running from the Joint," the film is described as "an irreverent and epic journey of deep thoughts, deeper inhaling and a wild trip around the world that is as 'un-PC' as it gets."

Guantanamo is getting more attention (both outraged and outrageous), but the question of how the United States came to control a swath of Cuban territory is worth more discussion. If the Guantanamo prison is shuttered tomorrow, and the prisoners get their day in court, the U.S. base will continue to exist as a key colonial outpost in a post-colonial world. Now that Fidel Castro has turned over power to his brother Raul and the United States is again poised to "democratize" socialist Cuba, this question has even greater resonance.

Booty from a "Splendid Little War"

Perched on the south-eastern corner of Cuba, the U.S. Naval Base straddles...

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