Gitmo & Other Sorrows

"The Road to Guantanamo" is a good movie, if unusual in its composition. It tells the story of the 3 Brithish Pakistanis who found themselves trapped in Afghanistan near the conclusion of the U.S invasion in 2001, their subsequent capture by the Northern Alliance and eventual shipment to Guantanamo. The movie is unable, obviously, to use archival film of the their actual travels in Afghanistan or incarceration as suspected al-Qaeda operatives, since none exists, so it demonstrates what happened by means of talking-head narration by the 3 Pakistanis (now at home in England) and dramatized footage based on their narration. So, to a major extent, we have to take their word for it. If 50% of what they claim is true (and independent sources suggest the percentage is probably much higher), then the United States of America has descended into a moral sewer of degradation and inhumanity which will unquestionably plague us for decades to come.

The happier parts of the movie demonstrate the close friendship and camaraderie of the four friends (one is lost in the escape from Kunduz) as they cheerfully endure the hardships of rustic travel in Pakistan and Afghanistan. One senses bonds of culture and religion that are distinctly "un-American" in their style, meaning they lack the ironic detachment more characteristic of modern American loner-ism. These bonds, I suspect, proved decisive in assuring their survival. If George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld had ever been capable of experiencing this kind of camaraderie and emotional support, it seems unlikely they would have found it necessary to preside over the sadistic freak show which the American P.O.W. system has become.

I found myself tensing up as the happy idyll in Aghanistan was apparently about to end, and I realized that my apprehension had an unusual source for a kid who grew up watching John Wayne surmount Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima, and Audie Murphy take on an entire German patrol in Europe. The three hapless Pakistani-Brits were about to be captured by the Americans. One of the captives voices this irony in his narration, saying, in effect, we thought everything would be okay once the Americans had us. "We were wrong," he said. Wrong because Bush & Co. are now in charge and they have instituted a program of always appearing as macho and unsparing as inhumanly possible, and these attitudes have been internalized by the Gestapo-like apparatus running American detention camps in Gitmo and abroad. Essentially, they treat the enemy, whether they have any actual proof or not (of the hundreds held at Gitmo for years, only 10 have ever been charged with anything), like vermin, pushing them around, abusing them, screaming at them, depriving them of sleep, tricking them with Photo-Shop pictures of the POW attending a bin Laden rally, placing them in stress positions in isolation chambers where thundering rap music is played at ear-splitting levels, binding them in unnecessary restraints, placing bug-like blackout glasses over their faces for any movement, etc., etc. Truly sickening.

All of this abuse is apparently in the service of something, although the Bush Administration never says what. The 19 hijackers who attacked America died in the operation, and the actual mastermind, Khallid Sheikh Mohammed, is somewhere in CIA custody, undergoing, no doubt, much worse treatment at the hands of American surrogates with even less humane inclinations. The war on terror is a massive exercise in guilt-by-association, but fundamentally it is an anti-Arab and anti-Muslim jihad. I doubt seriously this is lost on the world's 1.2 billion Muslims, and the anti-American feelings we are engendering with this mindless campaign will play out for a long, long time.