Guantanamo Bay

I really enjoyed the selected reading for this memoir.  The details were gruesome, but definitely shed light on a very controversial subject.  In this subject there are two different periods in which it was addressed, those being the Bush Era, and the post Bush- or rather Obama Era.  The two had completely different opinions on how to address the matter.  Bush was in full support of Guantanamo.  Well actually let me rephrase that.  Bush had actions that would make one believe that he supported the presence of the detainee camp, and supported the denial of human rights to its inhabitants.  

In a 180 of Bush we then have Obama.  Who sees Guantanamo as the poster child of everything that foreign nations believe is wrong with america, and I believe this is an easy argument to make. Obama promised to close down Guantanamo, and has begun to take steps to do so, but the matter is complicated.  Where do we put its detainee's?  A lot of the nations they come from don't want them and refuse to take them.

In summary we have Bush who calls for pretty much no change, and Obama who calls for it to be shut down. 

I would never argue that the atrocities committed at Guantanamo are right.  

Here are some straight forward morals that most people would agree with upfront....

Hurting another human being is wrong.  

Treating human beings as anything other than human beings is wrong.

Torture is bad.

Yes these are all true.  But wasn't the original point of a detainee camp to simply detain?  What Guantanamo should be holding is POW and in some cases (though surely not the ones we read about) this is what is happening.  And is that wrong? No.  We are at war and POW are a sad truth to that reality.  Do we need to treat them like they are at the Holiday Inn? No.  But do we need to torture them to within inches of their life and then bring them back just to do it again? Nope.  We don't need to be doing that either.

In essence a point I would have loved to argue would be that we obviously can't allow things to continue the way they are, but maybe we don't necessarily need to shut down the entire operation.  I would have loved to hear peoples idea's for...hmmm.. lets say... reform?

But this is a touchy subject matter, and not one I would find best suited for a blog...would have been an interesting one for a paper though.