I started this post on March 3 and got--well, a little interrupted since then. So the links may be a little old, but check 'em out anyway. It's still important. It's all still out there.
So--you know the people who talk about the "blame America first crowd," or the "America-haters," or the "guilt-ridden liberal navel-gazers"? I wonder what they think when they hear coverage of our little torture habit. Seems like they probably dismiss it as America-hating propaganda. But this same crowd claims to have--heck, let me be nice--has a very strong moral code. They're the first to condemn immoral behavior, especially if it involves sex.
In the last few days, I've been reading a few things about torture. A harrowing op-ed in the LA Times describes the situation faced by several Guantanamo Bay prisoners from Kuwait. Now, I would be the last to argue that the 9/11 hijackers, or those who want to do more of the same, don't deserve some pretty--shall we say firm?--treatment. But it's so, so easy to imagine that--as the author argues--some warlords in Afghanistan see our terrorist-hunting program as the perfect opportunity to get rid of inconvenient competitors (or just to sell out a few poor schlubs for some reward money). And then the schlubs end up being beaten, shocked, force-fed, and left tied to chairs, forced to crap themselves.
What bothers me, really, is that we are the ones doing this. It is in our name. This is what it means to be an American now. I am American, and my country is doing this, and it's supposed to be what's necessary to protect me, and it's OK to treat a human being this way even though you don't have an ironclad way to affirm that he is evil.
If you talk to most of my fellow citizens, I believe, they will protest that there is no reason to be concerned about Guantanamo Bay because anyone there must deserve what they get. And besides, whatever it takes to prevent another attack, we should do.
Really? So it's not more important to be able to wake up in 10 years and be proud of how we conducted ourselves. It's not more important to have another "good war" like WWII, and not another My Lai. It's not more important to be Caesar than Caligula. (That one's debatable, I know, but take it.)
***
The other thing I read was a piece about the genocide in Darfur. (Link is still not available as of 4/3.) The article was about a student at San Diego State. He grew up in Sudan and watched his family die around him as the genocide developed. He spoke at a high school in Manhattan Beach, telling stories of his simple childhood (well--if you call "having all the kids called inside because lions were roaming around" simple) and its abrupt end. The stories were, of course, chilling. Shortly thereafter, the TV show ER aired an episode in which characters volunteered to give medical care in Darfur. Equally chilling scenes were depicted.
I'm not trying to tell the story here--I couldn't do it justice. But just as I'm disgusted that my nation can commit evil, I am disgusted that we so willingly and obliviously allow others' horrendous evil to continue. Our nation has so much power. We could save human beings in Darfur. Instead, we torture human beings in Cuba.
Sigh.
