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Born at the Crest of the Empire

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Shutting Guantanamo and CIA prisons is bigger than the image. It's about rewriting the model on terrorism.

Assuming they have a solid plan on how to deal with the detainees, this is a great step before the world.
President Obama is expected to sign executive orders Thursday directing the Central Intelligence Agency to shut what remains of its network of secret prisons and ordering the closing of the Guantánamo detention camp within a year, government officials said.

However, I also want to point out that this represents part of a fundamental shift in the frame of the battle against terrorism from a "war" model, back to a more "criminal" model.

The "war" model was essential as part of the executive power grab (and in "war politics",) but it also had the effect of creating and elevating the force of our enemies, setting up Al Qaeda as a great and mortal force of history, an ideology capable of threatening our own.

Within the "criminal" model, the executive power is diminished, but Al Qaeda is more accurately represented as a bunch of crooks and bandits corrupting world order, creating a broader "tent" on our side.

It is no longer a "clash of civilizations" or an ideological war against the Muslims. In the "criminal" model, there is more room for moderate Muslims and Muslim governments on our side. We are not, de facto, pitting the friendlier Arab governments against their people.

There's alot of work to do to repair the damage and the sense of "enemy," but even in the inaugural speech, Obama began to set a new tone. This, the closing of the symbols of war, is a first step along that path.

8 Comments:

  • It's too bad that Democrats didn't fight back when the Republicans launched their attack on the criminal model of handling terrorism. As I recall it was one of the mantras used in the Bush Kerry election: HE wanted to take them to court while WE want to blast them into eternity, or such.
    There has been a major abdication of the responsibility to explain the alternatives to the Bush talking points and I hope that is OVER.
    MC

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 10:00 AM  

  • It was very, very much a method of politics, and within the context of national security politics, the "criminal" position was untenable.

    Even now, even though the Obama folks made clear they were aiming towards this transition, they still wouldn't say so during the campaign.

    (Part of the reason is that McCain wasn't really in a political position to attack here.)

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 1:03 PM  

  • You are right, Mike, this is the "reframing of issues" - so necessary to dissolve the past aritifical divisions and help folks come together around larger common goals. This is hard for people to swallow but he is modeling it very well.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 2:52 PM  

  • Agreed.

    PS. This is my aunt, right? I'll address this message as if you are.

    I don't have a good current email for you, and my email just changed. I tried to email you over Christmas when you were snowed in, but it bounced back. I'll update with Susan, and get yours through her.

    Mike

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 3:26 PM  

  • You never want to create martyrs in your enemies camp. That just strengthens their local support. One of the worse things Bush did was to elevate Al Qaeda and Bin Ladin, et al. to the the level of Super Villains. In a perverse sense it validated their intolerant and violent message... it lifted them from international criminals to that of a world Super Villain.

    In a clash of ideology (rather than land occupation) it seems best to make their grievances irrelevant rather than reinforce them.

    By Blogger -epm, at 3:46 PM  

  • Very much so.

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 4:50 PM  

  • The 'criminal model' seemed to work fairly well for the British and Spanish recently... why not for us? This business of secret evidence and unspecified charges is so Stalin, yet we seem to have accepted it for 6 years.

    By Blogger r8r, at 12:38 AM  

  • There do need to be some tweaks on laws because this does require a little different approach, but those can be done within the Constitution.

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 7:13 AM  

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