Why can't we shut down Gitmo?

[crowcalling]

I am currently reading "Hitler and the Holocaust" by Robert S. Wistrich, in order to turn to one of the times in history where we continue to ask - where were the good Germans? Why didn't they do something to stop the atrocities? Or why couldn't they do something?

Because I want to understand why now, we Americans will not stop the torture and abuse and shut down our own little concentration camp.

As if reading my mind, there is this article: "Where Are the Good Americans", Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith, http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0228-32.htm.

How many of us have thought that if we had been there, that WE surely would have done something to stop the holocaust? And I am not comparing Gitmo to that event really, because there is no comparison, but we should have learned lessons. Yet here we are, with our own concentration camp, and as the article says, "Where are the good Americans"? But it asks why McCain doesn't fly down to Gitmo. Why should we rely on him though? One man?

Where are all the other POWs that suffered? Shouldn't they want to ensure that their situation does not happen to others?

And finally, and I find this ironic, in the "Readings From the President's Council on BioEthics", there is the "Account Of Torture" by Vladimir Bukosvky, that describes graphically the practice of force feeding while he was held as a political prisoner for 12 years in the USSR. To have read this in the past, we Americans might have sanctimoniously clucked our tongues at the evilness of the practice. But reading this account today, this is what WE Americans are allowing to happen - are responsible for now - not the USSR.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. Ever consider the fact that this is practice?

With the huge Haliburton detention centers in the USA, they will need a military practiced and trained in domestic crowd control. Just how much torture before a person cracks? Just how much physical abuse before they will confess non-existent crimes on video? Just how little food, water and light can we get away with, before their teeth fall out and their bones crack?

[Radio_Guy]

10. Hammer meet nail

Exactly. There will be hundreds of "Gitmos" across the country to hold anyone and everyone who dares speak out against Bushco. Might as well burn your copies of the Constitution. It will be rendered meaningless before this is done.

[rodeodance]

2. its part of the 'extra-legal" stystem--set up by Bushco--outside of normal

legal jurisdiction. Military and Justice Dept established and maintain the 'system"---and Congress has allowed it to exist.--its war you know.

[crowcalling]

3. And the mass media..

that do not really highlight what is really going on. There have been news stories of course, but nothing, nothing that captures the imagination. Somehow our media sanitizes our little concentration camp for us. And I consider all of the media complicit because if America had some understanding of what it is like to be tortured, perhaps from the accounts of POWs, you know, what it is really like, perhaps we would force the shutdown of Gitmo.

[The2ndWheel]

4. We don't have the power to

"Because I want to understand why now, we Americans will not stop the torture and abuse and shut down our own little concentration camp."

I really don't care if anyone calls me a pessimist or defeatist. Name one way "we" could shut it down.

Call your congressman!

Sign a petition!

Take the streets!

Vote them all out!

We are a global military presense. We have bases in basically every country on the planet. The CIA(and who knows who else) have been doing things like overthrowing governments, testing torture methods, and who knows what else, for decades. The NSA and DARPA are a marriage made in hell(if there is one). This country was born through genocide and slavery. Why would things change now? Because it's 2006? That only means there are more efficient ways to torture. That only means there are new technologocal toys for the giant spy agencies to play with. "But if we write laws, they won't be able to!" Hahahahaha.

The ports deal is part of globalization. Nobody will stop it, because they can't. It's flowing on its own momentum.

Gitmo isn't going anywhere, and there isn't a goddamn thing anyone can do about it.

[FloridaPat]

5. What exactly can we do at this point? We've written our congress

people and they don't seem to care. We've tried to get * out, but he controls the voting machines. The news media refuses to go after anything * does. People are running for office. But that takes time. There is no country that can get involved because there is no way to force it being shut down. I am hoping that someday * and his buddies can serve their time there.

We are stuck in a nightmare where at this point I think only mass demonstrations in the streets would get this country anywhere near back on track. We are all the enemy to these people. They are attacking us on every front, and most of the public doesn't even know it going on.

[crowcalling]

6. But we have had mass demonstrations

And not just here, other countries as well. That doens't seem to make any difference either.

But here is the thing. Peta seems to be far more effective at getting in the news with their outrageous tactics. GreenPeace is in the news for direct confrontation with the whalers. It seems that for animal rights, there is nothing that will stop us.

But human rights? What about that? Where is our GreenPeace ship for shutting down Gitmo?

[TexasProgresive]

7. No amount of protests and petitions and letters to congress

ever got the School of the Americas shut down. The best that was done is they changed the name.

I don't know what could be done to close Gitmo. There was a march, peace and prayer rally in Cuba by Americans to the fence at Gitmo. They got a lot of sympathy from the Cuban people but I don't think the American military even knew they were there.

Sorry to be pessimistic. I really encourage everyone to rally, petition and protest. It can have an effect but it takes huge numbers that force the hands of those in power. Large doesn't do it, it has to be huge, so big that the media cannot play it down. An example, the peace rally in DC that began breaking the back of Vietnam war support.

[crowcalling]

8. So you can see why

I am trying to understand the parallels to other times in history where torture, and imprisonment were accepted practices, how we failed then, and continue to fail now to stop it.

[FloridaPat]

9. I have always been the most knowledgable person for current political

events that I know. That should scare you right there. I had heard of the School of the Americas and knew they were training "terrorists" but until you see the extent that people can be so cruel to others, you have no idea what it really means. For about 20 years now, every time someone talks about all the Arab or Irish terrorists, I have always pointed out that the biggest trainers of terrorists is the USA. I have yet to get a reply to that comment.

As for war - I demonstrated against the Vietnman war. Had friends that went there. I did not understand what was going on there until the Iraq Invasion. I did not realize that people are as evil as * and his buddies. The most evil were people like Idi Amin, Hitler, Stalin. It's been a long road to realize that one of the worst countries - if not the worst country on the planet - for terrorist and death is the USA. It has been that way since they started taking land from the Indians. But I guss as long as it isn't "our own people" it's OK to the average Christian voter.

[crowcalling]

11. Great post!

What you are saying is very true, but our history has been "white washed". Not to get completely off topic, but if you get a real feel for the horror, and I am not saying I have that, just trying to understand, and then you see how we the American people have been fed propaganda since day one - regarding Indian Wars? How about all the westerns - cowboys and indians. I've always said that until we can look history in the eye and take responsibility, we will continue to repeat these kinds of atrocities.

I found it interesting regarding the book I mentioned, that in the lead up to Hitler taking power, the main things that prepared the German people to accept taking rights and then life away from the Jewish people was the Clerics - preaching hatred, and other personalities doing the same - sort of like a Rush Limbaugh of the time. Very scary and eye opening.

[Jack Rabbit]

12. Closing down Gitmo is not the issue

Closing the Guantánamo prison camp would accomplish little if the Bush junta continues to violate international humanitarian law at Abu Ghraib, Bagram and other torture chambers in the offshore network of gulags set up by this regime.

The important question is whether or not Bush and the neoconservatives are going to respect international law and conventions which categorically prohibit torture and other forms of degrading and inhuman punishment or treatment of detainees. These conventions also prohibit the practice that Bush and his White House lawyers call "extraordinary rendition".

Time and time again, the indication from those in the Bush junta is that they have no intention of respecting international conventions. They have denied that what happens in Guantánamo and other detention centers is torture, at least not as long as they do it. They have relieved from command those reluctant to practice "aggressive" interrogation techniques. They have asserted that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to "terrorists." They assert the right to put to death any detainee found guilty in a procedure designed to look only superficially like a trial. They resist the oversight of Congress and any international body. They even assert that they are above any law, national or international.

The grand inquisitors in the Bush regime should be given another international body to resist: an international tribunal for war crimes in Iraq and crimes against humanity arising out of the so-called war on terror. While it is unlikely that international arrest warrants against Bush and his aides would have any direct effect in this country, the action could be supported by boycotts and divestment campaigns against US transnational corporations, especially those which have profited from the invasion of Iraq, and by diplomatic sanctions against the criminal suspects. Let's see if Mr. Bush and his aides can plan another imperialist misadventure like Iraq if at every foreign airport officers from Interpol are waiting to greet them as they get off the plane.