Editorial: Stop stalling, we need to close Guantanamo

President Obama is finally preparing to fulfill an eight-year-old promise.

Tuesday, the President announced his administration’s plan to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The President’s hopes of bringing congressional Republicans on board with his proposal in the middle of both a campaign season and a Supreme Court battle seem dismal. But closure of Guantanamo Bay’s military prison is more appropriate now than ever. It is a waste of resources that today does little more than symbolize a United States dominated by fear.

Since the prison opened in 2002, the U.S. government has imprisoned 780 people in Guantanamo Bay, also known as Gitmo. It is currently home to 91 inmates, 35 of whom are already on track to receive transfers to foreign prisons by the summer. President Obama’s plan recommends transferring the remaining 65 to unspecified maximum-security facilities in the United States if foreign alternatives fall through.

That Guantanamo remains open at all is a greater testament to American partisanship than our care for security. Both 2008 Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and President George W. Bush — who opened the facility — have supported Gitmo’s closure.

Yesterday, though, within hours of its announcement, the plan had already received massive backlash from Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates. Following President Obama’s announcement, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) tweeted, “I’ll use every tool at my disposal to stop this illegal, reckless plan from moving forward. Period.”

The backlash ignores Guantanamo’s complete lack of value.

As its presence in political stump speeches has grown, so has Guantanamo Bay’s drain on the government. According to the White House, keeping the prisoners at Gitmo costs the federal government $65 to $85 million more than it would cost to detain them domestically. Nearly 2,000 guards work at the facility, which works out to about 20 guards per prisoner — in comparison, the guard-to-prisoner ratio at most federal prisons is around 4-to-1.

The current system is unsustainable. Republicans’ primary argument against closure has been that domestic processes are insufficient to handle the inmates housed at Gitmo, but that is demonstrably not true. Multiple terrorists, including the Boston Marathon bomber and the 2001 shoe bomber, have received convictions in civilian courts and serve their terms in domestic prisons.

It has been nearly 15 years since the 9/11 attacks. We will never forget what happened and the lives we lost, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t move forward. Guantanamo opened when Americans had no idea when to expect another terrorist attack. ISIS has continually grown, creating uncertainty in the Middle East not dissimilar to the effects of the initial rise of al-Qaeda.

In many ways, the climate of post-9/11 America is similar to the post-Paris one we live in now. That doesn’t mean we should uphold our handling of the situation.

There is simply no defense for continuing to waste Americans’ time and money with the Guantanamo Bay prison. The sooner we board up the windows, the better.