The Guantánamo prison occupies only a tiny fraction of the base

Evidence

From a hilltop at the Guantánamo Bay naval station, you can look down on a secluded part of the base bordered by the Caribbean Sea. There you’ll see thick coils of razor wire, guard towers, search lights, and concrete barriers. This is the U.S. prison that has garnered so much international attention and controversy, with so many prisoners held for years without trial. But the prison facilities take up only a few acres of the forty-five-square-mile naval station. Most of the base looks nothing like the detention center. Instead, the landscape features suburban-style housing developments, a golf course, and recreational boating facilities. This part of the base has received much less attention than the prison. Yet in its own way, it is far more important for understanding who we are as a country and how we relate to the rest of the world. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 6

Categorization

• SEED: Day-to-day ordinariness of American military bases abroad — suburban life, golf, bowling — is an under-covered lens on U.S. global footprint.