The Soviet Union was once known the world over for horrific prisons with terrible conditions, and no sense of justice or fair trials for the accused. The USSR as government entity is now gone and so it its mantle of running the pernicious prisons that were called gulags.
Now in the eyes of many in the world, the US has that distinction. Once known as a nation that was a freedom fighter against the Soviet system, and a champion of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the US now owns the reputation of cruel jailer and torturer; and of denier of civil rights, legal representation and fair trials for those it accuses
Let that settle in for a moment. The US won the cold war. But now, in the eyes of much of the world, once-beautiful America has come to represent many of the ugly things it purported to decry and detest in the old Soviet block.
(Crossposted at NION)
Of course we on the progressive left know that there is still goodness in the US. We're sickened by the fact that George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Abu Gonzales have been allowed, in our name, to sully our great reputation in the eyes of the world by condoning torture, extraordinary renditions and a secret prison system that some likely still exists (hat tip to OneCrankyDom).
So how can we begin to fix our reputation?
I propose that it's time to think big and that it's time to think different. It took radical and seemingly crazy actions to ruin our nation's standing in the world and drag our reputation through muck and mud. It's going to take equally radical actions to begin to win our honor back. But don't worry, because I think I know just the action we can take to accomplish this.
My proposal is that the Democrats should take the lead and act boldly to eliminate the two biggest symbols of US oppression and torture in the world.
Yes I'm talking about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.
And yes I'm saying we should shut them both down. For good.
The idea is not so radical. Even new Secretary of State Gates has advocated to shut down Guantanamo:
quaoar's diary :: ::
WASHINGTON (NYT)— In his first weeks as defense secretary, Robert M. Gates repeatedly argued that the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had become so tainted abroad that legal proceedings at Guantanamo would be viewed as illegitimate, according to senior administration officials. He told President Bush and others that it should be shut down as quickly as possible.
At the time that the horrid pictures from Abu Ghraib surfaced there was talk among television pundits of shutting down the prison for good. But as time went on, nothing of the sort ever happened.
Well I say we do it now.
Close Guantanamo Prison Now!
Shut Down Abu Ghraib for Good!
As I see it, there are two options with Abu Ghraib. The first option is to blow it up - demolish it completely - as a strong symbol to Iraqis and the world that it will never be used as a prison again. The second proposal, if feasible is this: convert Abu Ghraib into a state of the art, public hospital, with treatment available for free or very inexpensively to Iraqis. If the second option is not currently workable, due to security concerns, then we should use option number one - destroy it. Then when it becomes do-able, we should construct the hospital at the site of the former prison.
In terms of timing, the effort to shut down Guantanamo should probably come first. The prison has outlived it's usefulness and should be shut down as soon as possible. An alternative to giving up the Cuban base completely, would be to consider the idea of this delusional left wing dreamer/diarist:
The 45 square miles of Guantanamo Bay Naval Base are replanted with a crop that grows well in Cuba: sugar cane. The US taps the know-how of Brazil, the single largest producer of sugar cane in the world, and experts in converting sugar cane into ethanol.
And President Gore declares that Guantanamo Bay will be the home of the worlds first and foremost international ethanol production facility.
Shoot, maybe we could even take a page out of the Hugo Chavez playbook and offer the ethanol at a low cost to Latin American countries that need it.
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Okay, so that last part is a bit of a fantasy. But closing down Guantanamo is very real and very do-able. I would suggest attaching it to the next war supplemental or introducing it as its own bill...which ever strategy works best politically for Dems. If Gates backs it, it surely has at least some Republican support in congress.
Would these 2 undertakings cost a lot of money? Absolutely. But it's a small price to pay to begin to buy back the integrity and good will that the name United States of America once held in the world.
Are these ideas the hallucinations of a crazy lefty? Of a hopeless dreamer? Of an incurable Idealist?
Maybe.
But just think how much goodwill they would buy us, and I'd venture the price would be much less than that of waging war, conducting torture and imprisoning without trials.
Close Guantanamo Prison Now!
Shut Down Abu Ghraib for Good!
That's my modest proposal. Thanks for listening.
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Update [2007-3-24 23:4:10 by BentLiberal]: The NYT weighs in. The secret prisons may be filling up again. Thanks to OneCrankyDom in the comments:
The C.I.A.’s proposed interrogation rules are part of the first major overhaul of the agency’s detention and interrogation program since the agency began jailing terrorism suspects in 2002. The agency has already decided to abandon some past interrogation techniques — among them "waterboarding," which induces a feeling of drowning — that human rights groups and some lawmakers have argued are torture.
Although it is unclear whether the C.I.A. has any prisoners in custody, the White House has not repeated its earlier statements that the secret prisons are empty. The C.I.A.’s proposed interrogation methods remain highly classified, but they may include exposure to extreme temperatures and sleep deprivation.