This month, I fully intended to write about the thoroughly pleasant experience I've enjoyed at the Seattle campus of Antioch University, where I've been ensconced as a "distinguished visiting fellow" for the past nine months. Unfortunately, that will have to wait -- for reasons with which I suspect my Antioch colleagues will be in total sympathy.

Earlier this month, three inmates at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba hanged themselves. The prison is where, for now approaching five years, this country has incarcerated suspected terrorists -- holding them as "enemy combatants" without bringing charges against them, putting them on trial or doing any of the things we routinely do when dealing with people dangerous enough to be apprehended and locked up.

Although few seem to know how dangerous those imprisoned at Guantanamo are -- because those who supposedly do won't tell us anything -- those inclined to give the government the benefit of the doubt must assume they are the worst of the terrorist lot. But even that assumption becomes questionable when people hang themselves. That act -- whenever it occurs and for whatever reason -- is of such desperation as to be an alarm bell of deafening proportions.

Consequently, sentient citizens can only cringe with disgust at the explanations offered by officials of the U.S. government for those deaths. A U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state -- her official title includes "for public diplomacy," no less -- called the suicides "a good PR move ... it does sound like this is part of a strategy -- in that they don't value their own lives ... and they use suicide bombings as a tactic."

Echoing her sentiments, the commander of the Guantanamo prison went the State Department rep one better. He called the suicides "an act of asymmetric warfare; these are people," he said, "who care nothing about life -- theirs or anyone else's."

War does terrible things to people. It kills and maims -- without discrimination -- the soldiers of those who launch wars and the civilians of countries targeted as the enemy. It demolishes cities, villages, farms and families; it destroys the entire fabric of a country, reducing it to chaos and rubble. It is why civilized nations in our time seek means other than war to resolve disputes and reduce conflict.

This war -- in Iraq, in Afghanistan, "against terror" -- has begun to show how much it is corrupting the very soul of our own nation. When senior people in our government publicly speak of suicides as public relations stunts and as just another act designed to throw us off course, something very ugly is starting to happen in the United States -- something no decent-minded American ought to tolerate.

On reflection, what a difference it might have made if, rather than declaring war in response to the trauma of 9/11, our country had treated it as a monstrous crime -- as Britain did after its terrorist assault two years ago. That enabled Britain to direct its focus and its resources on the perpetrators of its disaster -- not on enemies real and imagined a continent away -- and to begin to unravel the network of like-minded criminals in the British Isles rather than on a utterly failed effort to remake the political landscape of the Middle East. We're five years down a path that was supposed to bring us a sense of national security. Instead, it is eroding the few fibers of moral decency that are left in this country. We are paying dearly for this political madness.

On the local front, young Bill Gates is being hailed as the 21st century's Andrew Carnegie for his decision to step back from his role at Microsoft and devote more time to the foundation he and his wife have created. There is, however, more to the story of Gates as philanthropist. Those who know his parents know that Gates the Younger is proof positive of the old adage the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

When I got to this town 30 years ago, the Gates name graced nearly every civic or charitable enterprise worth mentioning -- from Children's Orthopedic Hospital, Leadership Tomorrow (which Mary Gates was instrumental in creating) and United Way to the Municipal League, the University of Washington and the Seattle Repertory Theatre. If more families of fame and fortune followed the Gates lead, this world might be a much different and better place.

Hubert G. Locke, Seattle, is a retired professor and former dean of the Daniel J. Evans Graduate School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington.

© 2006 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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