Gitmo

The Guards vs Prisoners soccer game at Gitmo is different than most.

So, WikiLeaks has released a bunch of documents that show that - surprise! - Gitmo was a poorly thought out, ad hoc solution to a problem that should have been remotely foreseen by anyone before the first Special Forces units put a boot into Afghanistan's moonscape.

There was "coercive interrogation"/prisoner abuse.  People were captured and held for spurious reasons.  Some people at Gitmo entered bystanders and left terrorists.

It was a really, really bad idea.

It seems better now, but that's like saying the second half of the Titanic's voyage was free of iceberg mishaps.  There seems to be a bit more transparency and the abuse of prisoners has stopped (or is likely as prevalent as it is in any institution where you give absolute power to some men over others).  And at this point, it seems pretty likely that anybody there is not someone you can safely release.

In 1971, the Pentagon Papers spelled out the disastrous clown show that was America's involvement in Vietnam.  They showed the mendacity and incompetence of decision makes in the Kennedy and especially Johnson administrations that led American into the "wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time".  Finished in 1967, they specifically did NOT mention Nixon who wasn't elected until 1968.  

But Nixon responded to the leak of the Pentagon Papers by establishing the Plumbers group within the White House.  They broke into Ellsburg's psychiatrist's office to find information to discredit him.  They failed at that, just as they failed to plant bugs in the Democratic National Committee a year later in the Watergate building.

The Pentagon Papers were an expose of the decision making in Washington, but not a specific indictment at all of Nixon, yet he reacted with law breaking and paranoia.  Thus, the Pentagon Papers ultimately DID tell us something about Nixon.

If the WikiLeaks exposures - whether the diplomatic cables or the recent Gitmo documents - show us anything about the Obama administration, it will not be about Gitmo itself.  The time period covered in the leaks essentially cover the Bush years.  The Obama administration was largely frustrated in its desire to close Gitmo by Congress - and I guess public opinion - but they at least cleaned the place up some.  While it remains a stain on the tradition of American jurisprudence and the rule of law, without the ability to hold real trials for the prisoners, the current situation seems the best of a terrible roster of options.

So far, we are getting the routine round of denunciations of WikiLeaks... blah blah blah, whatever.  But we also have word that Pfc. Bradley Manning is being transfered from Quantico, which has to be a good thing.  

For if there was any "reveal" from WikiLeaks, it was the harsh treatment of Manning.  Now, I don't think Obama was sitting, Nixon-like, in the Oval Office saying, Nixon-like, "We've got to (expletive deleted) this guy.  (Expletive deleted) his hide to the (expletive deleted) wall."

But the reveal about Obama is that his now legendary emotional equilibrium is also a form of acquiescence to the business as usual climate in Washington.  His desire not to rock the boat anymore than absolutely necessary means that abuses occur that need not occur.

While I disagree with it, I understand the impulse behind his decision not to investigate Gitmo/Abu Ghraib/Bagram and the torture regime established under Bush.  But that decision ultimately makes him a tacit, passive accomplice.  

But then again, that goes for the majority of his countrymen, doesn't it?