A Day Late and a Dollar Short

I've been pondering the President's speech last night. Not much I can add to the responses already out there. Of course, I'm still hoping to hear sense cross Bush's lips. But I can't pretend I expect it to ever happen.

Still, one bizarre quote:
"A new Iraq will also need a humane, well-supervised prison system. Under the dictator, prisons like Abu Ghraib were symbols of death and torture. That same prison became a symbol of disgraceful conduct by a few American troops who dishonored our country and disregarded our values. America will fund the construction of a modern, maximum security prison. When that prison is completed, detainees at Abu Ghraib will be relocated. Then, with the approval of the Iraqi government, we will demolish the Abu Ghraib prison, as a fitting symbol of Iraq's new beginning. (Applause.)"

Now, this has been picked up in a lot of ways. But lets just look over the implications of this promise, the only substantive promise to the Iraqi people, a little closer.

1) We promise you prisons. How does that work, symbolically?

2) Given that the Iraqis will be sovereign in just over 30 days, what if they don't WANT a "modern maximum security prison?" It's the kind of proclamation ("I will build a prison") you expect to hear from a state governor... it's also doesn't sit well with the claim of imminent sovereignty. Wouldn't a sovereign Iraq be in charge of building new prisons?

3) Which, of course leads us to wonder what it means that we get to transfer all the current detainees to the new prison. "Iraqis will be responsible for their own security - except security AND law and order..."

So, to recap. We need permission to destroy jails, but not to build them. We need permission to destroy jails, but not to retain control over our detainees. We will continue to house them in a jail we have built in a sovereign country we purportedly do not control...

And all of this to symbolize a new beginning fourteen months after the new beginning has begun. Wouldn't the symbolism of razing Abu Ghraib have been so much more intense back when Iraqis were first excavating their dead from the compound? Or did Bush miss that part when he decided to turn it into our primary prison complex?

On the one hand, I welcome the gradual realization that symbols matter. But the problem is that when you've polluted your symbolic vocabulary, the stain tends to travel with the signified even when you switch symbols.

Here in Oakland we got a street named East 14th. It became infamous, and after awhile, they decided to change the name to International, to improve the street's reputation. Amazingly, now it's International that has the reputation, seeing as it still runs the course of Easth 14th.

I'm not saying that we won't change our ways. I believe we will. But there's no reason to expect that building a new prison to replace Abu Ghraib will come across as a "symbolic new beginning." I think we have to do a little more leg-work first if we want to have any meaning to impart to our new symbol.