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January 28, 2009

Gitmo: Putting A Face To A Name

By Michael Shaw

obama takes over gitmo.jpg

I realize I’m out of sync with the news cycle, last week being “Gitmo week” and this week being “Stimulus Legislation week.”

Still, I continue to think about this image, and what Colin Powell said early on about Iraq and the “Pottery Barn” rule. I always thought it was pretty much true, that you break it, you own it. Still, now that Obama has been “slotted in” as the C.I.C., there’s really no equivocating. “44″ owns it now. It would be the case regardless, but the inheritance is reinforced by the visual chain formed “up the line” by Bush’s and Obama’s Secretary of Defense Gates overlapped by the photo of Bush, which is connected to Obama through the officer’s left hand.

Of course, my solution is simple: Demo the wall.

(image: Brennan Linsley/AP. U.S. Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, January, 20, 2009)

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  • pufflehuff

    I love this photo, it captures a certain moment perfectly: the transition from painful past to a better, more honest future.
    I can see what you mean about Obama now owning this mess, but for me it’s – ha – a hopeful change of photo. Here is someone who’s actually going to do something about it.
    Also, amongst the photos of middle-aged, conservative white men around him, Obama looks like the future.

  • http://www.wvablue.com/ Clem Guttata

    In any other setting I might find it reassuring–with Gitmo’s current infamy I find it distributing–how the permanence of the picture holders shows they are meant to long out-last the tenure of the position holders.

  • lytom

    Who would want their picture put on the gates of a concentration camp?
    120 days is a long time and I do not find it a way to a better and more honest future. Bush said: “I’ve said to the people that we don’t torture, and we don’t.”
    Obama picture reassures that nothing has changed.

  • lytom

    Since the Bag initiated this important theme “Stimulus Legislation week” in with the picture of Guantanamo camp, it equates in mind the secrecy of how the money will actually be spent. A picture of stimulus money in Bremer’s hands in Iraq seems to come to mind…
    No oversight, no transparency, and money just goes… wow.

  • Marc

    Isn’t that Secretary of Defense Gates, not Secretary of State?

  • Karen H.

    I can’t look at this image without thinking of the Navy’s love of official decorative pomp….the teak wall piece with gold lettering made to look like the stern of a wooden ship. I guess it gives a little comfort that Obama will likely send this “camp” back to it’s old, more benign incarnation as an annoying sliver on Cuba’s heel.

  • http://www.bagnewsnotes.com Michael (The BAG)

    Thanks Marc.

  • Rima

    And who is the chubby, bald accountant in the lower left?

  • Sybil

    Rima–it’s the Secretary of the Navy–Donald Winter. Not sure if people realize it but every Navy command has a place near the quarter deck (front office) where photos of everyone in the chain of command are shown–from the local commanding officer, to the parent command, to the next level boss, all the up to the commander in chief. So, just before inauguration day, all over the world, we were emailed a jpg of the new boss’s picture so that we could update the change of command on the 20th.

  • Alan

    It’s interesting that the picture of GWB is obviously from early on in his administration, or maybe from when he was first elected. It’s sobering to see how much he’s aged (imagine how bad he’d look if he wasn’t certain that history will vindicate him). Maybe this image would be more evocative if the Bush portrait was a current one, so it showed the tired old guy being replaced by the energetic young successor. Kind of like those cartoons at the end of the year when they show Baby New Year coming in and the withered old man heading out the door. Then again, the image the way it is invites the viewer to wonder what shape Obama will be in when his photo is taken off the wall.

  • Vulture Breath

    I’m more struck by that strange, gilded “Guantanamo Bay” font, on that wood panelled wall. It’s quite cheesy – like the photos are of Employee of the Week, and Employee of the Month at the neighborhood tavern or mom ‘n pop hamburger joint.

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