< Continued from page 1

About.com Rating



Degradation and abuse appear to have been policy at Guantanamo Bay. The actions of American soldiers were so extreme that suicide attempts became rampant ? at the end of 2003 the official figures stood at 32 attempts. At that point, the government reclassified inmates actions so that suicide attempts became ?manipulative self-injurious behavior.? Leave it to the American government to find double-plus good terminology in order to make a problem disappear.


Why, though, did the American government sanction such extreme actions in the pursuit of the war on terrorism? Why did the American government ignore so many fundamental principles? Rose argues:

• ?How could an American administration have contemplated and executed such actions, and in so doing, as we have seen, turn its back on the very philosophies that informed the genesis of the nation? The answer has to be that Guantanamo reflects other battles being fought for the soul and direction of American society, deep conflicts that have been aptly described as a ?culture war.? On the one hand are the secular and constitutional principles of the American republic. On the other is the Christian authoritarianism of Boykin, Ashcroft and Bush, an exceptionalism that for the rest of the world means only the justice of theocratic American might, in some senses a mirror image of the millenarian obscurantism espoused by Osama bin Laden in his mysterious Asian cave.?

It is certainly true that many important figures are motivated by Christian authoritarianism and millenarianism, but not every defender of torture and abuse accepts that President Bush is being led by God in his actions.

Some are secular themselves and their involvement in these actions must have other explanations. Perhaps they are simply sadists who care nothing for others and will accept any actions so long as some alleged increase in their own personal safety is the result. Others may accept a secular version of American exceptionalism, according to which America has a destiny to bring freedom and democracy to the world, even if has to be by force and even if some people have to suffer abuse and degradation in the process.

By abandoning the principles of civil liberties and human rights, America has damaged the war on terrorism by abandoning the moral high ground. America can?t claim to be fighting for any moral values when it rejects those values whenever they become inconvenient. By authorizing abuse and torture of detainees and declaring that they have no legal status except at the whim of the president, America ensures that it won?t get good intelligence and won?t convince Muslims around the world that America?s cause is just.

Rose?s book isn?t comprehensive and doesn?t have new information. Because this was one of the first books on Guantanamo Bay, much news has been released since its publication. It is, however, easy to read and manages to draw together a great deal of what has been reported elsewhere. Thus, it provides readers with an informative, engaging overview of what they need to know about what the government is doing in the pursuit of defeating terrorism.

« Back...