DMGGuantanamo Bay
The past few weeks, I've managed to catch snips and scraps of This American Life on NPR. Every week it's something different, and every week I'm sorry to have to get out of my car and go pick up my groceries or whatever.
This week, I couldn't get out of the car.
This American Life covers Guantanamo Bay
I remember hearing that we were offering large rewards in Afganistan for terrorists and taliban fighters, and thinking, "What's to stop these guys from feeding their families for the next decade by turning in their neighbor?" It looks like exactly that has happened.
No hearing. No trial. No evidence. No way out.
Nobody who knows this is wrong has the power to help. Nobody that can help believes that it's wrong.
I remember my classes on South American history. I remember all the coup d'etats, all the disappeared people, all the horrible things that happened there, brought about by people who believed they were protecting their country. People who believed that, like fighting fire with fire, they were fighting evil with evil.
And every time I see W get up there and explain to us why the law doesn't apply to him, or why the "POWs" at Guantanamo Bay don't deserve legal protection, or why he won't outlaw torture, or why judicial oversight is unnecessary, I can't help but think of those dictators of the past, who ravaged their people to protect the country, and so rotted their country from within.
Where civil rights and the balance of power are eroded, corruption and incompetance flourish.
Halliburton. Katrina. Guantanamo. Domestic surveilance.
And that's just what we know about. The President has repeatedly refused to be sworn in when testifying before congress. He reserved the right to lie to us.
WTF happened to my country?