February 10, 2004
Guantanamo: The Whole World is Watching
by JeremyFormer Afghan prisoners of Guantanamo are talking -- they will not be silenced. Let no one claim not to have known what went on behind the barbed wire fences under the watch of our American soldiers (via Randal Robinson):
"They gave me a good time in Cuba. They were very nice to me, giving me English lessons...the Americans were so nice to me. They gave me good food with fruit and water for ablutions and prayer..."...
"They treated us well. We had enough food. I didn't mind [being detained] because they took my old clothes and gave me new clothes..."
When one person is given nice fruit and English lessons, the whole world is given nice fruit and English lessons. When will this administration see that all it has wrought is the birth of yet another generation of clean clothes wearing, fruit eating, English speaking Muslim youth.
A serious aside: I'm not one to deny that Guantanamo needs to come under scrutiny. One of the people quoted above was the famous 14 year old prisoner who goes on to say that 14 months of his life were taken away from him and that U.S. authorities failed to notify his family that he was O.K. But one U.S. official puts some context on the kids at Guantanamo:
The official said last week that one of the three boys had told of being conscripted into an anti-American militia group; a second said that he was abducted by the Taliban and forced to train and fight; while the third was studying in an extremist mosque and captured while preparing to obtain weapons.
One wonders how much of this boy's life would have be taken away from him had he not been taken into custody by U.S. troops.
-Jeremy
Meanwhile, Kim Jong-il maintains prison camps of his own in which the detainees are not treated nearly as well.
About this, the world seems neither to notice nor care.
Posted by: Bernard at February 10, 2004 08:22 PM
Mr. Brown,
This is a good entry. I know hardly anything about this particular issue, so I do not have the background information to form a substantive opinion one way or the other.
That last sentence in this entry is a very good point.
Also, this is probably the first time that I've been to this blog. (I've been to so many since I started my own, in the fall of 2002...) It would have been nice if I had come across this blog sooner; it looks interesting. I notice that you have some books featured on the right sidebar, of liberals who support internationalism and warfare. I recently did a lengthy blog entry on pro-war liberals; it comes from my perspective, of a strong conservative who opposed the war in Iraq, and who opposes the neoliberal and neoconservative foreign policy agenda. I mention Roger L. Simon and Christopher Hitchens in that entry. One of the blog entries that is topically related to my entry is this older one by Michael Totten, in which he features Paul Berman's book. I see that Mr. Totten's comment about this blog is featured at the top of your right sidebar. Are you of the school of thought, regarding foreign policy, of the pro-interventionist liberals, such as Michael Totten and Christopher Hitchens?
This site is well-designed, and has a nice color scheme and format. I hope to be back here soon. Keep up the good work.
Posted by: Aakash at February 11, 2004 02:22 PM
Welcome Aakash -- I'm grateful for your kind words and I'm glad you found us. Yes, I'd say I -- and my wife Cara who also writes here -- are cut of the same general ideological cloth as Michael Totten, Roger L. Simon, and Christopher Hitchens. In fact it was after reading those three for a number of months that we decided to give it a go ourselves.
I would only tweak your definition a little to say that we don't favor militaristic internationalism as a template for U.S. foreign policy as a general rule, but we think these are extraordinary times and that such an approach is preferable to the alternatives, at least with respect to countries where terrorist and/or totalitarian movements threaten the safety and stability of the world (and where intervention is a conceivable option -- don't know what to do about North Korea. Containment may be the necessary evil in that case, though it's an option that is every bit as bloody as a military intervention, given the brutality of that regime).
I'll read your blog entry as soon as I get a chance; it sounds interesting.
Regards,
Jeremy
Posted by: Jeremy at February 11, 2004 03:20 PM
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