Ok, i want to get a few preliminary matters out of the way.
First, i'm going to try to keep this post reasonable and composed. It may, however, veer into an all out rant as my anger on this topic is almost boundless. I'm also going to try to keep it fairly focused although, again, i may fail at this.
Second, i want to assure everyone that my love for America is unlimited. To me, America is the country that, in just one generation, took my family from poor, uneducated, non-English-speakers and turned us into a fairly successful little group. My cousin is an ultra-successful lawyer (if a bit of an asshole). My other cousin is a supervising manager at her job. Another cousin works for that same company and is raising a lovely family. I'm in law school. I don't know, the fact that all of this happened in this country makes me proud to be an American.
But the America i love isn't defined by lines on a map. Rather, the America i love is an idea that some people had almost 250 years ago. Forgive me if that sounds incredibly sappy, but that's how i feel. That idea, based in the notion that "all men are created equal," encapsulates such quaint notions as "freedom" and "liberty" and all those other buzz words. But, the thing is, i don't think those words were just buzz words back then. I think that, to one degree or another, the men that put this country together really believed the stuff they wrote in those amazing documents called the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.
America has never been perfect. It was imperfect from its inception (look at the 3/5ths compromise). But the ideal to which we have always strived is admirable and incomparable.
Third, i want to reaffirm my disgust and contempt for the attacks of September 11. The day that those attacks happened i remember thinking that everything was going to change. The last time i cried, and i mean wept openly, was on Sept. 13th, 2001. I was working at a TV station at the time and was working the overnight master control shift. There wasn't anything for me to do, since all we were doing was rerunning news coverage of the attacks. Sometime at about 2am, i sort of lost it.
I want you to keep all of these things in mind while you read the rest of this, because i want you to know where i'm coming from.
The kind of shit that America has done in response to the attacks is, simply, unacceptable. The topic of war is complex, and i can't claim to understand everything about it. What i do know is that things aren't as simple as either side of that debate would have you believe. However, i must note that i, like much of America, have begun to think we're fucked. War's complicated, and i don't know what else to say about it. What i have a lot to say about is the Guantanamo Bay prison.
The U.N. called on the U.S. to shut that facility down as quickly as possible. In what can now be properly called "Pulling an America," America gave the world community a big "fuck you" and insisted that it will not be shutting down Guantanamo Bay any time soon. Nor will it be trying the people detained there. Nor will it be releasing them. By way of an explanation, Scott McClellan offered the following:
"These are dangerous terrorists that we're talking about that are there and I
think we've talked about that issue before and nothing's changed in terms of our
views."
Well, thanks, Scott, for washing over such an important moral issue so quickly. I guess if they're
dangerous terrorists, they don't get rights. I guess that when our Founding Fathers sought to bring forth a More Perfect Union, when they said that all men "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, . . . among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness," they implicitly meant to exclude
dangerous terrorists. As a side note, i want to know
how we know that they're dangerous terrorists? Is it that they've been tried? NO! So how do we know? I guess we don't, really, other than the fact that they seem to share skin tone, religion, and location with other people that are terrorists. So, i guess it's ok to treat them inhumanely because they
look like terrorists. Have we learned
nothing from history? Do we not remember what happens when you marginalize a group by reducing their entire existence to some label? Reducing someone to a label is the first step towards horrible, horrible things. I'll spare you the illustrative examples, but you get my point.
Let's assume for the time being that each and every single one of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay is, in fact, a dangerous, America-hating, Islamic extremist terrorist who would hijack an airplane and crash it into a public elementary school if he got the chance. Does that give us the right to beat them, to deprive them of food, to keep them from praying to their God, to keep them up for days at a time, to expose them to temperature extremes, or to deprive them of their senses? Is this what the Founding Fathers had in mind? I don't think so. Nothing that those people did or would have done merits the treatment they've received. If our government thinks they're dangerous terrorists, then put them on trial in The Hague. If we can prove it, then execute them or put them in jail. Otherwise, release them to be with their families.
America has lost its way. It's convenient to blame it on Bush and Co., but i think this happened a long time ago. George Washington could have served out the rest of his life as perpetual President. Instead, he stepped down after two terms. That's what America's about. Would anyone do that now? No, probably not. What we have now is dispicable. For the first time in my life, i am ashamed of my country. And that makes me very sad indeed.
February 2006
