Humanitarian Intervention

The Vicar of Downing Street, who has been known to advocate detention without trial for up to three months, today took a firm moral stance on the public relations problem posed by Guatánamo Bay. "I have always said it is an anomaly, and sooner or later has to be dealt with," he said. The moral indignation was no doubt palpable, but it seems one had to be there.

In fact, the Reverend has one or two small grounds for comfort. The USA has one of the largest prison populations in the world, and is a well-known supporter and outsourcer of torture and assertive information-gathering techniques short of organ failure; so Guatánamo Bay may not be quite so anomalous as, to the innocent, it seems.

The Reverend was asked about Guatánamo because of some comments made by his chum, Peter Hain, in the wake of a United Nations report politely requesting the US government to refrain from "torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment". Hain said that he would "prefer [Guantánamo Bay] was closed", and that the British government had always been "uncomfortable" with the camp's existence. "We've always said that Guantánamo Bay was something that should not have happened," he said; which is certainly more forthright than saying the Bush administration should not have set it up.

Still, it's all for somebody's own good, no doubt. Several British residents - some of whom have relatives here and thus could be interpreted in a sense as very nearly qualifying as genuine people - are still incarcerated; and, according to Labour MP Mike Gapes, "the British government was reluctant for a long time to make very strong public statements because we had British citizens still in there." Thus, when British citizens are kidnapped in Iraq, the British government never makes strong public statements condemning the practice.

However, now that no actual citizens are left in Guatánamo, Mike Gapes feels able to take a less equivocal moral stance: "I think anybody who reads this report will see that in many respects there are aspects of the Guantánamo regime that are very, very open to criticism," he said. In other respects, of course, some aspects of the Guatánamo regime are wonderful; the US administration itself has said that the UN's findings are "largely without merit". Even so, the frustrating ethical kernel of the problem remains. "It is not in America's own interests to maintain this place." Rice and Rummy must be trembling with contrition.