Goodbye Gitmo?

Reading James Wolcott tonight made me do that which I rarely do anymore: read a Tom Friedman column.

Before 9-11 and perhaps for awhile thereafter, I used to read Friedman fairly regularly, thinking I was being educated by someone who travels in the Middle East, etc. But then I got a little more educated on the subject elsewhere and realized Friedman isn't great on the subject.

Then, in the leadup to the Iraq War, I saw his hand-wringing, his flip-floppiness and read his arguments to go to war and decided it wasn't just the Middle East Tom didn't know all that much about for a supposed "expert". I'm actually angry with myself at my naivete for so long, reading various publications and assuming that the writers were always so knowledgeable. Oh well.

Really, this is the long way around presenting Friedman's latest opinion - which Wolcott points out he had first: namely, the dismantling of Guantanamo Bay. From Friday's Times:

Shut it down. Just shut it down.

I am talking about the war-on-terrorism P.O.W. camp at Guantánamo Bay. Just shut it down and then plow it under. It has become worse than an embarrassment. I am convinced that more Americans are dying and will die if we keep the Gitmo prison open than if we shut it down. So, please, Mr. President, just shut it down.

If you want to appreciate how corrosive Guantánamo has become for America's standing abroad, don't read the Arab press. Don't read the Pakistani press. Don't read the Afghan press. Hop over here to London or go online and just read the British press! See what our closest allies are saying about Gitmo. And when you get done with that, read the Australian press and the Canadian press and the German press.

Oh, Tommy Boy, I DO read them.

I know exactly what is said, and the opinion isn't new. It predates our first published stories of torture and abuse from Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, and similar facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq and our "outsourching" to known brutal countries like Syria of our political prisoners.

In a way, I support the dismantling of Gitmo. But like the early idea of tearing Abu Ghraib down and pretending it never existed, it WON'T change people's minds about what America is and has become. Destroy the symbol and you won't destroy what the symbol meant.

Only here in the U.S. are memories so short that Mr. Bush doesn't believe Americans will recall that he had like 5 or 6, ever changing reasons for going to war. Only here in the US did we forget that on the morning of 9/11, Bush just sat there while planes hit four separate times and then re-elected him because we "liked" the way he handled that day on which, when he finally stopped reading "My Pet Goat", then hid away on Air Force One, flying all around the country.

Separate from what Gitmo is today, it's always been just a place where we sat thumbing our noses at Castro. Just as we thumb our nose - and look down our nose at the same time - to the rest of the world.

By all means, close Gitmo. But only if you change the system and don't just move Gitmo to somewhere else and do the same thing. We certainly didn't learn from Abu Ghraib. Now we're blaming Newsweek for the Arab world hating us (ha!).

I don't know what the hell's wrong with us, but I know it's never going to get any better until the current administration is not only removed, but possibly stands charges for war crimes and beyond. There is considerable evidence of their culpability, but America has become a place of short term memory. No one seems to remember any bad news they heard the day before.

But the rest of the world? They'll remember. They'll remember long after the Bushies are gone. We planted one hell of a toxic crop four years ago. It didn't only poison everything now.. but the effects will be seen for generations to come. The sooner we stop sowing the same damn poisonous seed, the sooner perhaps we can recover. But it won't be overnight.