Gene Lyons on the Gitmo shutdown

The former Web home of the columns of the star columnist of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Gene Lyons, (nwanews.com/adj) now appears to no longer have them. I normally check it every Wednesday for Gene's column.

The Democrat-Gazette has another Web site. But that has his columns behind subscription. I think that counts as "unclear on the concept" of Internet marketing. But they didn't consult me.

So now it looks like I'll be going to The Cagle Post to read Gene's columns. His 01/28/09 column is In Closing Gitmo, We Start Winning Back The Moral High Ground:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates long has advocated closing Guantanamo. As President Barack Obama signed the executive order last week, he was surrounded by 16 retired admirals and generals who'd urged the action. Major Gen. Paul Eaton, who has a son on duty in the Middle East, told the New Yorker's Jane Mayer that "torture is the tool of the lazy, the stupid and the pseudo-tough. It's also perhaps the greatest recruiting tool that the terrorists have."

This last point can't be stressed enough. By turning tyrant and bully, placing itself outside and above the Geneva Conventions, which outlaw cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, the Bush administration forfeited the moral high ground, no doubt creating a hundred Islamic extremists for every one incarcerated at Guantanamo.

Incapable of admitting error, the previous administration preferred sophomoric debates about the existence of evil and the brutality of war. So it should surprise nobody that some Republicans appeared to see closing Guantanamo as a chance to plant a partisan time bomb under the Obama White House. [my emphasis]

What? No bipartisanship?!?

That partisan time bomb being the notion that the scary, scary brown-skinned turrists are gone git us if we close down the Bush Gulag. He goes through several reasons why that's a bogus pitch. Including:

... the United States and other civilized countries have been trying and convicting genuine terrorists in courts of law for a generation. They're incarcerated in maximum-security prisons all over the civilized world. This isn't a vampire movie, where armies of superhuman foes march impervious to harm. A strong, confident nation can defeat Al Qaeda without shaming itself. [my emphasis]

That's Gene Lyons for this week. And The Cagle Post has a more reader-friendly Web site than nwanews.com/adj anyway.

Tags: gene lyons, torture