Bury Me Broken

Friedman in NYT - "Shut Down Gitmo Prison"

Thomas Friedman in a New York Times editorial [via Truthout] had this to say:

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.

Tell me, how is it that over 100 detainees have died in US custody so far? Heart attacks? This is not just deeply immoral, it is strategically dangerous.

This has been the rationale for so many of us for so long. The President is misinformed if he truly believes that "they hate us for our freedom." I am not saying that the hatred and violence against America and Americans including soldiers is in any way justified. I am saying that there are real stimuli to which violence is the response.
The United States hasn't seen an inkling of the civilian deaths, the wailing mothers carrying dead babies, the wailing husbands carrying dead wives and brothers in Afghanistan or in Iraq. The U.S. hasn't seen the destroyed homes, neighborhoods, bodies lined in the street for removal but the world has.
The Newsweek typhoon is nothing in comparison to the eyewitness testimonies of ex-detainees telling stories of what we considered torture when it was done to our prisoners of war in WWII. The next generation of terrorists are training right now, fueled by a diet of sexual and physical abuse at the hands of Americans, many of which are not soldiers, but private contractors from Halliburton and the like.

posted by niteskolar @ 2:10 PM