When President Obama promised five years ago to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, he recognized the blight of an American regime of indefinite imprisonment. All of the fundamental principles of American government abhor the imprisonment of people without trial and without the opportunity to confront the charges against them. Even the current Supreme Court, which includes staunch security-state advocates like Samuel Alito and John Roberts, has repudiated the claim that the executive has the power to hold people at its whim.
Today, prisoners at the camp continue a hunger strike in protest of their 11-year detention. That the United States government is a target of such protests is itself shameful. Only people in the weakest of positions, facing the most egregious abuses, resort to such tactics. They should never be necessary against a government committed to individual liberty.
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