Gitmo, and Other Tales

Today the AP reports on the state of the US detainee camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and finds that the camp is taking on a look of permanence, with new facilities being structured to hold the prisoners, most of which are "no longer considered of significant intelligence value." Allegations of abuse and the fact that most detainees are denied access to an attorney have generated some outcries against the prison camp, and the AP article points to some signs that the domestic legal environment might try to mitigate some of the camp's encroachments on individual rights ("the US Supreme Court ruled in June that Guantanamo prisoners can challenge their detentions in federal court"), but in general, this camp just sits off the coast of Florida, a stubborn affront to everything we ought to stand for and a testament to the shameful disinterestedness of the American public.

In many ways, Gitmo has come to embody the difficulties of the conflicts we're facing everywhere. Like the Patriot Act and Alberto Gonzales' torture memo, Gitmo represents a willingness among Americans to set aside our ideals, and perhaps our scruples, to try and guarantee ourselves some security. While we act upset, or at least mildly disappointed when asked about specific American abuses of civil liberties at home and abroad, one gets the impression that America really doesn't care. If Democratic harping on the Patriot Act, Abu Ghraib, lack of accountability in the Cabinet, et cetera didn't oust Bush, I'm not sure what would have.

I'm not particularly worried about Bush's huge domestic agenda. My feeling is that the Dems will be stiff enough and House Republicans concerned enough about reelection that none of the pillars of our (pitiful) social safety net will be severely undermined. I am worried about how Bush has eroded our place in the world, and I am very bothered by the notion that the Bush administration, in the way it reacted to 9/11 and chose to "secure" us in the ensuing years, has changed something important in the American psyche.

I recall my first travels abroad, before September 11th, and how Americans were viewed as overbearing and gauche, but also generally kind and sort of naively cute. I think it struck non-Americans as endearing how we loved our country and viewed it through a lens of historical self-preoccupation shared by no one else on earth (maybe the Chinese). We were the fat, loud, and troublesome, but essentially idealistic and benevolent uncle of the world.

Things have changed. In international polls, Americans routinely do better than America, but Americans aren't loved like they used to be. We are, to Europeans especially (and increasingly, to me), something alien. Europe, of course, has its own neuroses, some of which are rather unsavory, but I think that where once our life philosophies differed, but our respect for life was the same, it now appears to Europe that our sense of biblical mission has warped our vision of life.

We are full of paradoxes in that sense. In the GOP, battles are daily fought to protect fetuses, even embryos, while it's no shame to cry out for the head of every last "evil doer." We're not yet completely numbed to the loss of our own soldiers, but shouldn't we also be asking questions about what must be a horrendous loss of life for the Iraqis? As I wrote earlier, Bob Novak of Crossfire posited that Florida's hurricane victims, and the families of the 17 dead deserved more aid than those lucky enough not to be one of the 150,000+ tsunami dead.

George Bush has been known to say of the terrorists, that they love death while we love life. Or perhaps it was the terrorists who said that of us. Regardless, I feel increasingly that America isn't a place that loves life all that much. Who loves life and authorizes torture? Who loves life and denies the right of due process? Who loves life and fails to give sufficient help to his soldiers? Who loves life and does not even pause to reflect on the carnage we've seen fit to deliver to our enemies?

It is important to remember in these wars that we're fighting not only for the hearts and minds of those we occupy, but for our own. I fear we risk losing both.