A month before he was inaugurated, one of President Obama's most influential advisers on national security matters told me that his White House would find a way to reverse the harm done by George W. Bush to the United States's moral authority. He would do this, the adviser said, without compromising his ability to actively pursue terrorist threats. Central to this ambition was the immediate closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay. The world hates us, he reasoned, because of what Guantánamo represents: torture, Abu Ghraib, unnecessary wars, detention without trial, and unchecked imperialist instincts.
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