Dan

Calabrese

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May 28, 2009

Why Do We Have to Close Guantanamo? Branding, Sillies

So let me see if I have this straight: We have to close the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay, not because we don’t run it well, and not because anyone knows a better place to put the terrorists, but because Guantanamo has branding problems.

Who says that? President Obama’s Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, that’s who.

Even as he acknowledges that Guantanamo is “one of the finest prisons in the world today,” Gates says we have to close it because it has become a taint on America’s reputation, and that “the name itself is a condemnation.”

Branding 101. If your name stands for something positive in the mind of the consumer, you’ve got power to build your market share and your profits. Think Coca-Cola. Think Kleenex. Brands you know and trust. If your name stands for something negative, figure out a way to change it (GMAC), sell and re-package (Valu-Jet) or just go out of business (Arthur Andersen).

Often, it makes little difference if the standing of the brand reflects actual quality. The best-tasting breath mints might never gain traction because of a poorly conceived marketing strategy. Or the reverse may be true. All you Olive Garden fans? Do you really think that crap is better than the baked ravioli you can get at Pasquale’s in Royal Oak, Michigan? The truth is, you have no idea, because you’ve never heard of Pasquale’s until now. You just keep going to Olive Garden because you’ve bought into the brand.

As mindless as brand marketing can be, it’s an understandable approach to the pursuit of consumer loyalty. If you never thought we would develop our national security strategy on the basis of such twaddle, welcome to America in the Age of Obama.

There are two Guantanamo Bay prisons. There is the real one. And there is the brand. The real one, as my colleague Jamie Weinstein detailed in a recent column, is not only an ideal facility for the detainment of terrorists, it also is professionally operated and treats its detainees exceedingly well.

It also represents a brilliant solution to a tricky problem. Where, exactly, do you put terrorists who fight dirty, recognize no civilized rules of engagement, wear no uniforms and probably couldn’t surrender if they wanted to? You’d be crazy to imprison them on your own soil, if only because you give the terrorists’ natural allies – the litigants at the American Civil Liberties Union – the perfect opportunity to advocate for their release onto the streets of your town and mine. But if you try to put them at a military base you lease from an ally, you upset the ally. (And contrary to the nonsense you’ve swallowed hook, line and sinker, George W. Bush preferred not to upset allies.)

Answer: Put them at a military base you lease from an unwilling communist thug. That way you keep the enemy outside the reach of America’s legal system – and yes, dummies, that’s the idea – and if Fidel Castro doesn’t like it, so much the better.

That’s the real Guantanamo. Brilliant, effective and humane.

But that’s not the one that matters to President Obama or to Robert Gates. They’re concerned about the one where we flush Korans down the toilet (as Newsweek reported and later retracted), and where the poor innocent souls we abducted and took there have their genitals hooked up daily to jumper cables so as to send shockwaves of electricity up their innocent little urinary tracts.

That’s Guantanamo, the brand. And who, exactly, created this brand? Hmm. Let’s think real hard. Because we are told that the world is horrified – horrified! – by the atrocities they think are going on there. Who screamed long and loud, month after month, year after year, about these supposed atrocities?

Why, it was the Democratic Party of the United States of America, aided and abetted by the willing news media. They’re the ones who turned Guantanamo into a scandal and a cause célèbre, just as they’ve done with waterboarding – screaming about it night and day and then expressing their deep, deep concern that the world is getting upset.

Nice job, Democrats. Create a negative brand image of a facility that represents a national security triumph, then explain that you have no choice but to close it because it sadly has such a bad reputation. This is what happens when you trust Democrats with America’s national security.

© 2009 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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