For War's Success, Friedman Says, Gitmo Should Be Shut Down

One day after Amnesty International made its absurd analogy between the Soviet Gulag and the US incarceration center at Guantanamo, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman presents a reasoned and passionate plea that Gitmo simply be shut down.

Why? Says Friedman:

It's not because I am queasy about the war on terrorism. It is because I want to win the war on terrorism. And it is now obvious from reports in my own paper and others that the abuse at Guantánamo and within the whole U.S. military prison system dealing with terrorism is out of control. Tell me, how is it that over 100 detainees have died in U.S. custody so far? Heart attacks? This is not just deeply immoral, it is strategically dangerous.

As Friedman tells it, in the Arab world and even people in nations friendly to the US, Guantanamo is undermining the American case for the war on terrorism, convincing people that we aren't the nation of Jefferson and Hamilton, which they want to emulate, but of imprisonment without due process.

Writes Friedman:

Guantánamo Bay is becoming the anti-Statue of Liberty. If we have a case to be made against any of the 500 or so inmates still in Guantánamo, then it is high time we put them on trial, convict as many possible (which will not be easy because of bungled interrogations) and then simply let the rest go home or to a third country. Sure, a few may come back to haunt us. But at least they won't be able to take advantage of Guantánamo as an engine of recruitment to enlist thousands more. I would rather have a few more bad guys roaming the world than a whole new generation.

"This is not about being for or against the war," said Michael Posner, the executive director of Human Rights First, which is closely following this issue. "It is about doing it right. If we are going to transform the Middle East, we have to be law-abiding and uphold the values we want them to embrace - otherwise it is not going to work."

Food for thought from a fierce advocate not just of the war on terror generally, but of the war in Iraq specifically.