Guantanamo Inmates and Fear Itself
By Al Giordano
The debate over whether prisons on US soil should house those one hundred or so Guantanamo prisoners that will be leftover when the disgraced US military lock-up on the island of Cuba shutters its doors is not rational, and yet it exists. Let’s shine some sunlight on those fears and identify them accurately, before we waste too many pixels and brain cells arguing against what they are not.
Republicans – new polling data in hand that tells them it’s potentially a hot issue for the 2010 midterm Congressional elections - are driving the debate. And many Democrats are cowering, fifty of them with the title of “Senator.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid engaged in a bizarre set of illogical twists and turns last week, saying, “We will never allow terrorists to be released in the United States.” When pressed, his rhetorical gymnastics included this gem: “You can’t put them in prison unless you release them.”
Say what?
What are the fears to which they are pandering with such crazy talk? Many highly rational people – including the President during his Thursday speech on closing Guantanamo – have apparently misinterpreted the fear as one that these international prisoners will somehow escape. They’ve centered their argument around the obvious: that if the Unabomber – who outwitted the FBI for 17 years - can’t escape from a federal Supermax facility, nobody is going to be able to do that. True enough, but that’s not really what people are afraid of in their gut.
One of the fears that hasn’t been addressed – perhaps because it involves scenarios so apocalyptic that they must not be spoken of aloud – is that the prison that houses, say, an alleged member of Al Qaida, and the neighborhood around it, could become the target of a terrorist attack. This conjures images of anthrax and (Cheney’s favorite), gasp, nuclear attack, but take a deep breath and think for a moment through the lens of an ally of those prisoners: If you are going to go to the trouble and expense to bust one of your own from a prison, you’re not going to use a weapon that will kill him in the process. That would sort of make the whole commando raid moot, no?
Seriously, there are plenty of symbols of American power (a la the World Trade towers and the Pentagon) – not to mention nuclear power plants and chemical factories across the fruited plain that would provide the most kill, and thus, terror, for the buck – that, as Mr. Spock would say, “it would not not logical” to go to all that trouble to blow up a high security prison in rural Marion, Illinois, or Cañon City, Colorado. What was so terrifying to so many about the events of 9/11 was that the attacks were on targets with highly emotional payloads: the Manhattan skyline and the seat of US military power.
There would be no logic, rhyme or reason in guerrilla warfare or terrorist tactics that would support a deadly assault on a prison facility by forces sympathetic to the prisoner or prisoners held inside it, unless it were to free those inmates. But if freeing them were to be the mission, a weapon of mass destruction would not be the adequate surgical tool for the task. If there are one hundred martyrs and prophets in what some see as The Great Satan, the place where they reside, contrary to conventional wisdom, would probably be the safest spot on US soil from such attacks. If the American people were rationally afraid of another 9/11, they’d be clamoring to put the Guantanamo prisoners right next door to their homes and schools: It would be, if anything, an insurance policy against such harm to their locale.
Those two scenarios – escape and highly destructive attack – now put to bed, let’s figure out where the nightmares really sleep.
The New York Times sent reporter Kirk Johnson to Cañon City – home of the state-of-the-art Supermax prison that is Arkham to our national Gotham – to interview the neighbors. He did not find panic in the streets. He found a community – much like America as a whole – divided on the matter, and rather shoulder-shrugging and civilly so.
It is a county, the reporter tells us, that is home to 5,000 state and federal prisoners; there, slammers are viewed as a source of jobs and local economy. The arguments made by some against bringing Guantanamo prisoners there are likely closer to the initial fears of the national populace at large:
“People here are good Christian conservatives,” said Tom Baron, who described himself as a struggling small-business man, co-owner with his wife, Marie, of Donuts and Dogs, a coffee shop. Mr. Baron said he thought that large numbers of Muslims — the family members and friends of inmates — would move into town if the transfer occurred. Property values would fall, he said, and some family members of terrorists might be terrorists, too.
“That would destroy this community,” Mr. Baron said.
In other words, the fear is more closely aligned with the debates over immigration than those regarding the so-called “war on terror.” It is a fear laced with racism and nativism: “those people,” even if they are not themselves “terrorists,” would “destroy this community” merely by showing up at the local supermarket and purchasing a carton of milk, or so the fear conjures.
Another neighbor said:
“These people hate America; they truly hate America,” said Glen Morlan, a disabled welder. “Why would you want to bring them here?”
Well, golly gee whiz! They "hate America," unlike those current local inmates, say, the 1993 World Trade Center bombers Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman and Ramzi Yousef, or, say, the late Timothy McVeigh, who blew up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City and resided there before sentenced to death. Them, or the run of the mill serial killers and such that reside in the Supermax pokey who, even if they kill Americans, must be presumed to love America deeply and profoundly.
The other half of the town, according to the article, takes the idea completely in stride. There’s no functional difference between housing the prisoners they host now – including other convicted Al Qaida members – and those that could be coming in from Guantanamo.
The story also notes that it’s a highly Republican area, where two-thirds voted for the McCain-Palin ticket, and politics surely plays a role: “I wouldn’t expect people in Fremont County to favor the president’s positions,” said the local Democratic state representative. Had President Bush proposed moving Guantanamo inmates there, a lot of the opposition would simply not materialize.
Beyond the fears – rational or not – something else is at play in the GOP gambit to make electoral hay that mixes fear of terrorism with (completely rational) not-in-my-backyard sentiment in many areas toward having any kind of prison sited there. And it comes back to the nativist sentiments that fuel the anti-immigrant hysteria in many parts of white America.
It’s the mythology that American soil is this somehow “pure” and undefiled promised land into which all things bad are external to it. The literary scholar Harold Bloom wrote a masterful work 16 years ago, The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation (1993, Simon and Schuster), in which he analyzed the theological precepts of those sects that were born on US soil: “Pentecostalism, Mormonism, Seventh-day Adventism, Christian Science, Jehovah's Witnesses, Southern Baptism and Fundamentalism, and African American spirituality.” (And before you presume that this was just another Bill Maher-style beat-up on Christianity, Bloom devoted his final chapter to the genre of “New Age” ideology, demonstrating that the philosophical underpinnings of so much of the "self help" book and talisman charm industries come from the same boiling cauldron of fears and manias that gave birth to the aforementioned faiths, and that their tenets can’t be pulled apart from the others: The New Age wounds and infantilizes its practitioners in so many of the same ways as right-wing Evangelical cosmology does.) And Bloom offered keen analysis of why the Southern Baptists and Mormons, in particular, have grown so rapidly as to dominate the cultures of the regions where they flourish.
Bloom argued convincingly, with considerable documentation, that these American-born religions are, if anything, something other than the traditional Christianity of the Old World. That they tend to view the United States itself as the biblical promised land and at the same time as a kind of fetus: pure, helpless and uncontaminated in its Eden-like womb, and threatened by forces outside of it. Immigration and all things foreign are thus viewed as akin to the abortion doctor’s scalpel, coming to relive the story of Genesis and “the fall” over and over again, ripping Adam out of his garden. (And this, according to Bloom, explains the religious right’s overweening obsession with the abortion issue overall.)
What the Republican pollsters have hit upon with this fear of Guantanamo inmates on US soil is thus much more connected to the debates over immigration reform than to those of safety and national defense. And yet it’s a more difficult needle for the administration to thread because, unlike with the immigration issue, which counts with 35 million Hispanic Americans and others as a potent political force and counterweight to the nativist tendencies, there is not presently an organized constituency that views its own self interest in imprisoning the current residents of Guantanamo on the mainland. (The civil libertarian and human rights organizations that, if they took their mission statements seriously, would be doing that job of facilitating an end to Guantanamo, are instead caught up in the more lucrative direct-mail and online fundraising ventures of making themselves look useful in seeking justice - read: revenge - on past crimes rather than assuring that the crimes don't continue into the present. Ask not for whom the blog tolls: I'll have more to say about them shortly.)
Yet this, too, can be solved the old fashioned American way: with money.
Take the rural town of Hardin, Montana, which saw economic opportunity in the construction of a 464-bed prison within its borders, only to find there weren’t enough convicted criminals in the state with which to fill it. And without prisoners, there are no jobs for guards or the service industries that would provide for them. The town has been lobbying for months to become the New Guantanamo (and double shame on the state’s Democratic US Senators Max Baucus and Jon Tester for ill-serving their constituents to the extreme of voting last week against making their dream possible). The Town Council voted last April to issue an invitation to Washington to bring the Guantanamo inmates there.
See? Not everybody is whipped up in a frenzy of irrational fear regarding the Guantanamo prisoners: Not in the nation which has more prisoners and prisons per capita than any other.
The solution is to locate a town or towns, like Hardin, that want the economic benefits of hosting personae non grata behind impermeable walls, in states where the Congressional delegations won’t be as boneheaded as that of Montana’s. That’s an attainable goal. But it is one that likely requires some local community organizing to pave its way.
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Threading the needle
Submitted on May 23rd, 2009 by Lucidamente (not verified)Thanks, Al. Ed Shultz mentioned the Hardin, Montana story on his radio show the other day in the same terms, as a way of joining legality and economic interest, so maybe common sense will rule, as he likes to say.
As part of any future organizing around the issue, I think Obama's point about cleaning up the messes of the previous administration (and of its Republican enablers in Congress) should also be in the mix.
Supermax
Submitted on May 23rd, 2009 by Erin RosaAs someone who continues to talk to the workers inside that prison on a regular basis, they don't see a problem with it, so long as Obama will fund the prison properly. And it looks like he's already on his way to doing that. I wrote a Daily Kos diary about this very issue yesterday, an issue that is very close to my heart.
(Sidenote Al, Supermax is in Florence, not Cañon City. They're actually about 10 miles apart.)
Lizard-brains versus Wallets (& corrected link)
Submitted on May 23rd, 2009 by Michael (not verified)First, fwiw, here's a link to the newer edition of the Bloom book (the one in the post is out of print).
I think Al's pretty spot on wrt the lizard-brain politics of this one. I suspect at least some in the admin have a grip on that too, but are unsure how to play it.
The thing that I find most appealing about Obama is also, I think, possibly his political Achilles' Heel: namely his tendency to speak with respect for his audience's intelligence, and to appeal first to their reason. He's been much ridiculed for vague, lofty appeals to "Hope", and portrayed as having a Messiah complex, but it seems to me that his default strategy in most situations is to make a practical, rational argument.
While I love having a President who treats me as an adult, I came of age in the Reagan years, and tend to take a more pessimistic, Menckenite view of the prospect of Reason's triumph in our politics. BHO won election largely thanks to his own enourmous personal appeal, and of course a campaign that outclassed his rivals', but winning these kind of battles, over non-bread&butter issues (where it's harder to muster the political troop), and which pit the politics of logic against the politics of fear, is I think another matter.
Al's solution -- to make it a bread-and-butter issue, has two flaws AFAICT: 1) The lead time on building a Supermax-type prison something like 2-3 years, minimum, and BHO has already committed to a much shorter timeline. At best, then, you'd have an indirect argument that this might grow the Federal prison system and necessitate building more capacity after the Gitmo people are moved here. 2) Even then, the numbers are small enough that the pork appeal would be highly localized; it's hard to see how enlisting the parochial interests of one or two Congressional districts will trump the base fear of the rest of the country (combined with the cravenness and cowardice of hundreds of Congresspeople). In other words, there may be money, but likely not enough money in enough places.
gitmo, etc.
Submitted on May 23rd, 2009 by munira (not verified)I'll be really interested to read your blog on the human rights group, Al. It's amazing to me that they've been actually invited to the table to help close gitmo, but they prefer to remain in an adversarial position. Do they realize that if you take their arguments to their logical conclusion that they're essentially trying to push Obama to release potentially dangerous people in the US? And this when you have the Democratic majority leader in the senate going on TV spouting Republican talking points because he's politically afraid not to join the fear mongers. People are freaking out about having detainees in their prisons - imagine if they were coming to their neighborhoods. Do these groups want to drive people into Cheney's arms or are they just not thinking? Is it possible, however, that they (and the ranting liberal bloggers) actually help in a weird way by countering the insanity from the right and making it even more evident that Obama's is most rational voice out there - especially, when some of the moderate Republicans like Ridge, Hagel, Gates and probably Powell are starting to come to Obama's defence?
The Genesis Machine
Submitted on May 23rd, 2009 by coneyx (not verified)Bloom's linking of the politicization of the Book of Genesis and in particular the "Creation Poem" is brilliant. The so-called "Fall" is the ultimate tool for some very dangerous superpositioning.
There is another interpretation of this "Poem," which was originally written by the prophet Jeremiah in respect to the intrinsic equality of the Hebrews during the Captivity. A certain progressive theology reads this story as an allegory of the process of human intellectual maturation: when The Fall happens, it is the event wherein humans (created equally if the focus is on the idea of creation from the image of one creator rather than the "rib" image) suddenly reach that point in their lives when they no longer are satisfied with the perfect world their Father Figure has created for them, and they are compelled to make a decision on their own -- giving up childhood and entering the adult world. God's casting Adam and Eve out of Eden therefore is a natural, necessary part of human life, the "leaving home" of the human intellect in search of its own methods.
Granted, even this interpretation requires a big reach, and it certainly does not eliminate that nasty paternalism, but it is a somewhat better reading than the usual one. Of course, none of this particular storytelling at all would be the best way to go.
Can't wait for your post on the Civil Lerbertarians et all
Submitted on May 23rd, 2009 by Sandy in Chicago (not verified)I know exactly what you're going to say, and I can pre-emptively agree with you whole-heartedly.
Did you see that interview with Michael Issikoff on Rachel Maddow about BHO's pow-wow with the civil libertarian groups? Issikoff's sources told him that those groups were pleading for at least one prosecution of a Bush official, so they could display it as a "TROPHY".
Now, why would these groups seeking "justice" settle for just a trophy? Hmmm, I imagine you'll be answering that question in your next post, so I'll save myself for then.
P.S. it should be "personae non gratae." I'm a stickler for my Latin, Al.
Thanks Al
Submitted on May 23rd, 2009 by JoAnn JonesThis post and the ones preceding have given me so much to think about. The idea of differentiating religions of the old world with the ones formed here is fascinating and not something I had heard before. This is why I keep coming here; it's like experiencing the fun part of school every day. And, Sandy, the correct form is persona non grata, which is the plural form of personum non gratum. I actually was a Latin major, many eons ago.
JoAnn
Sen McCaskill talks vote against funding Gitmo closure
Submitted on May 23rd, 2009 by Joel Wienswith Ana Marie Cox (second half of podcast):
I'm also not inclined to
Submitted on May 24th, 2009 by bob h (not verified)I'm also not inclined to be critical of Obama on the issue of the military commissions and preventive detentions. He has dangerous, unrepentant prisoners whose prosecution has been corrupted by the Bush people. They cannot be let go. As long as he gets a decent number of convictions in our regular courts, he can be excused for this less savory stuff.
Another red herring
Submitted on May 24th, 2009 by Jim (not verified)As I type this, I'm listening to Newt Gingrinch on Meet the Press introduce yet another bit of nonsense: the terrorists can't be housed in prison because they can still plan attacks from there. He claims that one terrorist helped plan the WTC attacks from Attica prison (a NYS prison).
The fact is that mail and phone calls are routinely monitored and intercepted in federal prisons. Attacks cannot be planned and furthered from inside your average federal prison - let alone a supermax facility - without the government knowing about it. In fact, it would be great if inmates were so stupid as to plan attacks while in prison, as that would lead to greater intelligence.
I will probably hear another complete bit of nonsense from Newt before the show is over.
@ Joel Wiens
Submitted on May 24th, 2009 by Lorie CavinThank you for the link to the McCaskill interview. If not for your post, this MO Mama would have not known about it.
I disagree with her vote on the $$ for No Gitmo, yet I am thrilled with her plain speaking about other issues that are as important to the health of our nation. I particularly appreciate her "Show Me" dedication to the Bybee Impeachment and the "Claire"ifcation of disbarring offenses by working on a variety of Bills.
I was at the press conference when Claire threw her hat into Obama's ring. After the event, I walked up to Sen. McCaskill and said, "Thank you for supporting Barack. You must have had some interesting phone calls."
She closed her eyes, opened them a second or so later, looked at me and said, "You have no idea."
In the primary election, here in MO, the MSM called it for Clinton. I went to bed. I woke up. Obama had won by a razor thin margin. Sweet, indeed.
In the General Election, Barack Hussein Obama lost by 3200 (=/-) votes.
In my world, that is amazing.
Stupidest "Human Rights" Headline So Far
Submitted on May 24th, 2009 by Erin RosaObama Assumes The Rights Of A Dictator
Keep in mind, this wasn't written by the GOP or Glenn Beck stalwarts. No, this came from the Progressive Review.
Durbin Says IL SuperMax Can Hold Them
Submitted on May 24th, 2009 by Jason YoungDurbin: Illinois' Supermax Prison Can Handle Gitmo Detainees | Progress Illinois
I've been extremely proud of Durbin and the way he's been handling this entire Gitmo issue (and the economy issue for that matter).
Sam Smith runs ProRev
Submitted on May 24th, 2009 by Phoenix Woman (not verified)And is a useful idiot for the right wing, much as HuffPo is alleged to be by The Politico.
He gleefully served as the token "liberal" conduit for Whitewater smears, doing the right-wing's dirty work much as Joe Lieberman did by giving a fake "bi-partisan" feel to the Republican witchhunt against the Clintons.
Colin Powell not shy
Submitted on May 24th, 2009 by Joel Wiens...about letting Gitmo detainees into American prisons. He says do it, and do it yesterday. No need for 80 million dollar bill to set it up (or was it 80 billion? numbers don't make sense to me anymore) Section on Gitmo about 8 minutes in. Also states that America has the highest incarceration rate in the world...great to hear that admitted by high profile republican, outcast or not.
Durbin has been lighting it
Submitted on May 24th, 2009 by IVA (not verified)Durbin has been lighting it up since Obama became president. I'm impressed with him. I imagine we will be getting polling about what American's feel about closing Gitmo and bringing prisoners to prisons here. I hope it's not that bad against doing the right thing. Gitmo is just plain unsustainable and MUST be closed for practical purposes, not only legal and ethical.
Erin@12:54
Submitted on May 24th, 2009 by bonkers (not verified)Saw a Daily Kos report yesterday with several quotes from various Repub operatives like Grover Norquist, where they're talking about stoking the Poutragers at places like Huffington Post in order to diminish support for President Barack Hussein Obama. The various Children's Table blogs are playing right into the classic Repub divide and conquer tactic.
I've spent many hours at a leading Poutragist blog trying get some of them to realize what's happening (very constructively and politely I might add), yet every single time just get dismissed and ignored and often ridiculed as a Obama rube. What a waste of time that I should've been spending organizing locally.
I used to not understand Al's rather blunt and almost extreme dislike for certain corners of Liberalism, but now I completely get why he gets so pissed. America is at a historic moment with a President who has already enacted more Liberal policy than anyone since probably LBJ (well, Nixon did sign the EPA into existence), and who is explicitly saying I'm just warming up on the big Liberal changes, yet these children are literally taking their ball and stomping home.
While certainly not TOO much of a problem yet and Obama has the skills to navigate this minefield, recently there have been signs, like this Guantanamo spat, where we can see how damaging the "Obama=Bush" Liberals could end up being as they throw their temper tantrums, and COMPLETELY ignore the incredibly positive things Obama has done so far.
Unfortunately, many of the Poutragers get on TV and radio and do influence many (BigMedia is probably happy to have them on tearing down Obama), and they're fucking up a one-in-a-lifetime opportunity we have as a country, and playing right into the Repubs hands. Funny thing is, I NEVER said this during the Clinton years however, since Clinton never did or showed any commitment to the things that make President Obama so different. Case #253 where I should've just listened to Al and ignored them from the get-go. Did I mention there's a "Make a Donation" button in the upper right of this page?
The solution
Submitted on May 24th, 2009 by Zach (not verified)I have an idea: Don't close Gitmo. Instead, send Harry Reid there as warden. Durbin can explain to him that the President needs someone with special experience to run it properly, and the only similar institution is the Senate, whose inhabitants are tortured with filibusters and keep providing unreliable information while being interrogated by the Washington press corps.
@Joel: it's $80mm not $80bn
Submitted on May 24th, 2009 by Sandy in Chicago (not verified)Joel, this is endemic of a serious side-effect of having to make $1tr+ expenditures. We start forgetting how big a billion is, let alone 80 billions.
GDP of Cuba: $52.3bn
Recognize Cuban sovereignty over Guantanamo
Submitted on May 25th, 2009 by Ben Maselwithdraw US personnel, and the detainees fate is subject to Cuban law.
Democrat for US Senate (Wisconsin 2012)
Supreme Court Pick
Submitted on May 26th, 2009 by Melissa (not verified)