Gitmo

I once visited Guantanamo Bay as part of the personnel of a light cruiser. In those days it was just another limited navel station, although an odd one in a foreign country. The terrain was desert-like, and there was a chain link fence around the place, if memory serves--I'm thinking back 65 years.

Today Gitmo houses about 40 prisoners who are serving life terms without a trial. Holding them in Gitmo is expensive. Their food has to be brought across a sea. Major surgery means flying in a specialist. 

Maybe the justification for imposing life without a trial is that the men are prisoners of war in the war against terror, a war that by definition cannot end. I'm almost certain that imprisoning 40 people for life won't make a dent in the events to come, in which millions have enrolled in the other side. 

Meanwhile the life-without-trial prison at Gitmo makes us look as primitive as kings in West-Asian folk tales.