They're terrorists -- they're the worst of the worst, besides they're not citizens and they're not in the US so we can do anything we want to them. There is precedent and we're at war and that's the way we do it when there's a war.
You've heard it all and you've heard much more from people who don't seem to want to admit that the prisoners of war at Guantanamo aren't all guilty of anything and were grabbed from all kinds of places and for dubious reasons. The government admits it of course. In fact many have been cleared after years of suffering and isolation and "coercive" interrogation. At the moment there are 82 who have been cleared of charges (whatever they might have been) but we're still holding them for a variety of reasons including the ironic prohibition against sending them back to [other] places that use torture.
The 82 cleared prisoners who remain at the little piece of Cuba we insist isn't US territory and so doesn't have to pretend to be a free country governed by law, come from 16 countries in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. Even if these people, with what remains of their sanity, dignity and resources are ever repatriated, I'm willing to bet that no hearts and minds have been won amongst them or the families they go home to and I will bet these people who were guilty of having an unlucky name or who were in the wrong place with the wrong face won't get much in the way of compensation for their damaged or ruined lives, much less an apology. Even so, "Sorry - we were looking for the other Abdul" isn't going to matter much.
So what's my point other than giving a damn about justice and the value of human life? It's that the bar stool warriors and Brooks Brothers bully boys have been advocating the torture of innocents and don't give a damn because they're too afraid to care about justice, the rule of law, decency, ethics, morality, human life or the Christianity they profess when someone sleeps with the wrong person or doesn't feel like praying in public. "There's a war on" and accusations of being "soft on terrorism" aren't excuses for barbarism and these pillars of Republican wisdom are starting to smell like the rotten things they are.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
What amazes me is how impotent we've become. I was at a party last night (with a lot of lawyers) who shook their heads and were at a loss to understand the darkness into which we've descended over the past half-decade. I'm with them, but what can we do? I think the hysteria caused my 9/11 has receded enough by now so that we can again see with reason -- but still we do nothing, and Cheney/Bush continue to sully our image and damage our own sense of self-worth. We've surrendered, we're just not yet aware enough to realize to whom...
The dark side?
Post a Comment