Gitmo and Democracy

Yesterday, in the wake of a 54 page report by a U.N. panel calling for detainees in Gitmo to be released or brought before an independent court, Kofi Annan declared that the prison itself should be closed. Besides questioning the accuracy of the report and of public comments by U.N. officials, the Administration also implied that the U.N. and its NGO supporters have no popular basis for interfering in local decisions. A consistent criticism by both the White House and its think tank allies has been to say that neither international human rights groups nor UN institutions and bureaucrats enjoy democratic support -- they don't have a political constituency and thus no public standing to call on "democratic" states to shift policy. While we may agree with the thrust of Kofi Annan's argument against Gitmo, the Administration's basic point is a powerful one. A commitment to ensuring that local communities make decisions about their own internal politics surely extends to the U.S. as well as developing countries.

But if U.N. bureaucrats have little claim to democratic legitimacy, exactly what right do White House officials have to claim the mantle of popular support? Have U.S. citizens had any meaningful opportunity to make decisions about whether we should be in the business of running an international prison system? How much basic information have we been provided about the nature and extent of detention practices? And, what actual avenues exist for asserting popular opposition and reclaiming political control?

If anything, the Administration's anti-U.N. rhetoric underscores its own public isolation. The word democracy has itself become a ritualistic cant for the Bushies. Internationally, it seems to mean little more than reproducing elections, regardless of whether those elections embody any real links between publics and so-called representatives. Domestically, it serves as a cloak for concealing state activity -- again under the guise that an occasional election justifies virtually any act of power. In each case, the Administration's own claim to democratic authority reinforces the hollowness both of its idea of democracy and its own public support. Just who are the mobilized "people" clamouring for the war on terror? Whose real interests are expressed in detention practices or war policies? No one's. What we have instead is a disconnected elite, whose attempt to combat foreign criticism exposes its own lack of a meaningful democratic mandate.