Guantanamo: We must learn the truth and remember it always

Barack Obama has declared that he will close down the detainee facilities at Guantanamo Bay, but that long-overdue act will mean very little if we never find out what occurred there or if we are allowed to forget.

The place and the records must be preserved so that future generations may be reminded of a time when America strayed from its ideals. Justice demands that we cry out, "Never again!" We owe it to our children to preserve what we would prefer to deny, so that the lessons of the past will never be forgotten.

Our next president has asked us to all take part in the work of changing this country for the better. He has invited everyone to share their input here: http://www.change.gov/yourvision

I just sent him the following message, and I would encourage everyone who feels the same way to add your voices.

Dear President-Elect Obama,

Everything about the situation at Guantanamo Bay makes it one of the most shameful things in American history, and I do not doubt that you will restore justice and human rights to our nation by ending that disgrace. What I would ask is that when you close the down the prison camp at Guantanamo you do not let it be erased from our history. End the unlawful detention of the men held there, reaffirm the rule of law by giving them due process and fair trials, and close down that legal black hole, but do not bulldoze the prisons, do not allow the records of what happened there to be destroyed, and give the American people a chance to the know the truth about what was done in our name.

Although it is painful, the world benefits from being forced to remember such tragedies and constantly declare "Never again." It was only through the hard work of the survivors of the Nazi concentration camps that those sites were persevered to be memorials. Although its location makes it unlikely that schoolchildren will ever be able to walk those grounds and learn first-hand the lessons of one of the dark moments of American history, it is your responsibility to preserve as much as possible and allow the American people to know the truth of what happened there, no matter how much we would prefer to deny our sins.

This country is in great need of change, but it will be a great injustice if the restoration of this nation's dignity involves denial of the errors that made that change necessary.

Thank you

Breathing room

The last few days have been quite busy and stressful, with back-to-back presentations in both of my grad school classes. I think they both went well, and now I'll be catching up on the last few days.

I had the odd feeling of having missed a lot when I heard the news this morning about Castro stepping down (by letter) and Kosovo declaring its independence (and having it recognized by the US and the major EU countries). The news from Cuba has a lot of symbolic significance, but considering that the transfer of power actually took place a year and half ago, it doesn't look like much will change. It would be nice to be able to legally visit Havana in the near future, but I won't hold my breath.

The situation in Kosovo looks much more complicated than it might seem, and I hope that we don't end up with a situation in which Russia decides to flex its muscles while the US is distracted by the election. It does strike me as very interesting that this most recent result of Milosovic's attempts to create a strong nationalist Serbia out of Yugoslavia is that an independent Kosovo has received immediate international recognition that would have been unthinkable if they'd made the same declaration twenty years ago.

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When I saw this story in the New York Times about the use a semicolon in a subway placard, my initial reaction was to be pleased that it was used well in such an unexpected situation, but I ended up feeling discouraged that it became such a big deal. I also can't help feeling dubious when the story makes the following claim without providing any examples:

People have lost fortunes and even been put to death because of imprecise punctuation involving semicolons in legal papers.

I'd rather have a newspaper screw up a semicolon than to make huge unsupported claims about people being executed because of a punctuation mark.