Contrition in Europe

I hear how you expressed regret for Guatanamo to those European leaders yesterday, Bush. Said you wished you could close the place down. And I'm sure that's true. It's causing us much grief in the world: we're no longer that shining city on the hill, that beacon of hope--none of those inane platitudes that were once used to describe us.

The trouble with contrition is that it's never quite enough to be sorry. As with much of what you have done with your position of privilege and power, you should never have done it in the first place. The idea of imprisoning people--even "enemy combattants"--without recourse to any kind of justice was a bad one from the start. It flew in the face of centuries of jurisprudence, dating from that famous Magna Carta King John was forced to sign in 1215, the origin of much of the Western tradition of human rights.

In case you might have forgotten your history, my trusty Encarta Encyclopedia notes that "Clause 40 promises, 'To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice.' This clause establishes the principle of equal access to the courts for all citizens without exorbitant fees." Clause 39, Encarta continues, ensured that “No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised or outlawed or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor will we go or send against him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.”

Not sure what "disseised" means, Bush, quite frankly, but in the context I'd say it's not exactly kosher. Anyway, these principles were established nearly eight hundred years ago. They are the seed and keystone of what you like to refer to (often) as democratic freedom. I take some pride in the fact that they were written in my own country of origin.

I wonder if you now also regret the legalistic flouting of the Geneva convention that was justified by your Gonzales (who thought the Geneva convention "quaint") and your Rumsfeld, under whose authority the atrocities of Abu Ghraib took place? The current shameful revelations of war crimes by American military personnel are all too easily dismissed as the work of a few "bad apples". No senior officer has yet been held to account for the actions of his command. Nor has your Rumsfeld.

The tragic fallout this arrogant abrogation of the great traditions of civilized behavior, even in times of war, is that our moral grounds for condemnation of brutal acts on the other side have turned to quicksand. The dreadful story of those two captured American soldiers, tortured before they were mercilessly murdered, is uhappily a case in point. I very much fear that what you and I condemn as an act of "barbarism", Bush, is celebrated with glee by those to whom its message is addressed. My guess is that those disposed to hate us see no difference between the actions that purportedly took place at Haditha and the murder of those solidiers.

I would lay odds that if you could be honest with us--and with yourself--you would regret your invasion of Iraq as much as you regret Guantanamo. The consequences have been dire for the country and for your administration, and threaten to blacken forever the memory of your presidency. But you can't afford to be honest with us, and for that reason I doubt very much that you're able to be honest with yourself. You're condemned to put a brave face on it, to make those meaningless speeches about staying the course and "standing up and standing down", and to brand all those who oppose you as cowards and traitors to their country.

What a sad picture this is, Bush! But sorry doesn't cut it. It doesn't solve Guantanamo, and it doesn't bring our suffering soldiers home.