ABSTRACT
Brittain recounts the legacy of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib under Barack Obama’s administration. Guantanamo was not an episode but an era during which Obama struggled for his hold on public imagination—the foundation of people’s political empowerment. The lack of accountability and the tortures, renditions, and secret prisons changed American reality. The American people lived with denial, lies, false justifications, military and institutional discipline, and media complacency. Obama’s Justice Department knew that the law had been broken in the Bush years, but was itself on the same trajectory in arguing before the courts in cases involving prisoners and torture. During more than a decade of the “war on terror” there was a progressive shutdown of public imagination about the enormity of this illegal and immoral reality. This illustrates how denial won the battle of public opinion, which contrasts with examples of public figures from past decades. Paul Robeson and Harry Belafonte protested and expressed fearless resistance to oppression, abroad and at home, in the most dangerous years of the US civil rights movement. Brittain concludes by recounting the grace of released novelist Mohamadou Ould Slahi, who was detained for 14 years at Guantanamo Bay prison.
