On Saturday, September 12, 2009 news reports surfaced that prisoners being held by the U.S. Military in Afghanistan will be given the right to challenge their detentions. According to the Pentagon, prisoners will be given the opportunity to go before a “Detainee Review Board” to have their cases considered. Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn signed the order creating the review boards in July. Congress was given 60 days to review the new policy according to The Washington Post and New York Times, which reported on the new program late Saturday night on the Web. 

According to reports, the process appears to be similar to the procedure used for detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Unlike GITMO, detainees at Bagram have had no means to challenge their detentions or to hear allegations against them. According to a Fox News report citing an unnamed Pentagon official:

“The initiative is more like a system used in Iraq than in Guantanamo. In Iraq, authorities used review boards to help manage the prisoner population and reduce it by distinguishing which detainees posed the greatest threat and which could be rehabilitated and released.” 

Various Human Rights organizations have consistently argued that the prisoners in Afghanistan should be given the same rights as those at Guantanamo, but the U.S. military argues that Bagram detainees should be treated differently because they are being held in an active theater of war. 

The opinion of the military is the correct one in this case. The detention situations cannot be compared to one another. The U.S. Military should have a process in place to identify both high risk, and high value detainees, and re-locate those detainees outside of the active theater of war. 

Increased Troop Levels in Afghanistan

The United States Congress needs to take the war in Afghanistan more seriously than the leadership appears to be doing at this time. President Obama appears to understand Afghanistan’s importance. According Susan Rice, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations  

"What the American people and members of Congress need to understand is that we have a very crucial stake in Afghanistan , and if you need any reminder of that it comes today, on the anniversary of 9/11," says Rice. "This is a place in which the 9/11 attacks were planned and hatched, and those that committed those atrocities remain active in this very region."

We need to follow through with a troop surge in the spirit of the surge in Iraq in 2008. Speaker Pelosi and the Democratic leadership in the Senate need to support the President’s request to increase our troop levels in Afghanistan. The Democratic leadership would find a fair amount of Republican support on this issue.  The United States cannot afford to be driven out of the country that launched the 9/11 attacks. By stabilizing Afghanistan we also stabilize Pakistan. Both are in the strategic interest of the United States. The Obama Administration understands this to be true and I urge him to stand firm on this issue in the face of pressure from the anti-war far left.