The Guantanamo suicides

PLEASE go on over to Smirking Chimp and read Mike Whitney's article entitled, "When suicide becomes resistance". It is biting, intense, powerful. Every American needs to read it. Here's how it gets started:

The only positive thing about Guantanamo is that no one seems particularly mystified by what Bush is doing. He's tip-toed around the law by erecting his state-of-the-art concentration camp where the compliant Supreme Court won't shut him down. That's allowed Rumsfeld to skirt the niggling issues of habeas corpus and due process and establish a neocon haven for permanent detention.

Just what the doctor ordered.

Still, no one is really taken in by the White House public relations campaign. The prison has only increased the recruiting efforts of groups like Al Qaida and fueled anti-American hatred around the world. It's done nothing to fight terrorism, as all the recent polls clearly indicate. Instead, it's just added another black stain to the already sullied reputation of the waning superpower.

By most accounts, the inmates at Guantanamo are generally low-level militants or tribesman who were scooped up by the warlords and delivered to the US for the $1,000 bounty. The al Qaida kingpins have all been bundled off to torture-friendly allies who are more skilled in the dark art.

The real purpose of Bush's premier-gulag is to familiarize the American people with the tectonic shift in American justice. By shoving Guantanamo under their noses, the public is forced to accept this new and strange reality. "Everything has changed"; principles have been abandoned, commitments discarded, liberties forsaken. America will no longer play by the rules. There are no more guarantees on personal freedom; the law is being reshaped to meet the requirements of new world order.

And here's how it ends:

Guantanamo is the face of America under Bush. It has changed how we are perceived in the world and it has eroded our moral authority. We should be grateful to the 3 men who sacrificed their lives in the struggle against barbarity and cynicism. They have nudged us ever-closer to the day when Bush and company will be held accountable for their crimes. Maybe then we can tear down the gun-towers and block walls at Guantanamo and erect a monument to the countless victims of this vile and vicious regime.

I don't think Guantanamo has merely eroded our moral authority. I think it has ended it. I wonder if we will ever win it back. I grieve the loss of the great American ideal. How could we let it be so destroyed? How could we?