Holy Cyclops

I would like to think that I live in the best country in the world—the country where everyone else would like to live—the country with the highest standard of living, the fairest courts, the most just laws, the best form of government, the most enlightened populace, the best economic and social system to ensure not only prosperity but also social welfare.  I would like to think that.

I don’t expect perfection.  Really, I don’t.

But when I realize that I live in the only major industrialized nation that lacks guaranteed health care for everyone; when I realize that I live in a nation that restricts not only how many people one may marry but also whom; when I realize that I live in a nation that elected a man who deliberately ignores the scientific consensus on global warming president not once but twice; when I realize that I live in a country whose system encourages the working of overtime and the buying of completely unneeded goods while at the same time permitting some children to go to school in buildings that are falling apart; when I realize that I live in a nation whose mass media seem to care more about a presidential candidate’s preacher than about his political record; when I realize that I live in a country where the death sentence is still allowed; when I realize that European countries seem to care more about the quality of life than the United States does; well, my assessment of this “best country in the world” is tarnished.

And when I then read an article like the one in the May twenty-sixth Newsweek about the protests and resignations not of defense attorneys but of prosecutors at Guantanamo Bay—well, should I be pleased that some people are speaking up and refusing to use coerced confessions or to allow their integrity to be compromised, or should I despair because their superiors are trying to get them to do so?  It isn’t just President Bush.  It’s a subculture that says that it’s somehow OK to capture, imprison indefinitely, torture, prosecute on the basis of coerced confessions, convict, and quite happily execute people.  These are human beings, and it is not all right to deny them due process; these are human beings, and it is not all right to mistreat them, or to let their mistreatment go on for months and years.  The dearth of actual charges brought and cases tried should tell us that we’re not dealing with obviously guilty terrorists; as Newsweek puts it, “From the start, [Air Force lawyer Lt. Col. Robert] Preston says, there was a gap between Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s public portrayal of the Guantanamo detainees as the ‘worst of the worst’ and the evidence contained in the files.  Most of the detainees appeared to be low-level Qaeda and Taliban suspects whose prosecution for anything substantial would prove difficult.”  Even if we were, they would still be human beings, and human beings should be treated fairly and decently, whether we like them or not.  Even if they were obviously guilty terrorists, they’re in custody, and once in custody cannot harm us; what is the excuse for our harming them?  We reduce ourselves in so doing to the level of barbarians, who have no sense of compassion for their enemies and who have no sense of decency toward their fellow human beings and who certainly have no sense of due process. 

The entire military-commission system was badly flawed from the start.  It was an excuse to ignore the legal and human rights of detainees, which is simply wrong.  And it’s a horrible idea to show other countries how fair and just the United States is by denying detainees the very rights we publicly tout.  How can we possibly expect other countries to institute the sorts of procedural protections we say we want them to if we don’t respect the human rights of detainees?  It makes our words ring very hollow indeed.  It should have been obvious to everyone right from the start that this was a bad idea.  So, why wasn’t there more of an uproar about it?  How could these commissions not have been strongly opposed right from the start?

And why was the president who instituted them re-elected?  Did half of the American populace just not care—or, worse, agree that these commissions were a good idea?  I have to hope that Americans’ apparent apathy toward the abuse of human rights that the prison at Guantanamo represents is more the result of ignorance or of having a limited amount of energy to spend on social protest than of a lack of moral outrage. 

My only consolation is that the prosecutors written about in the Newsweek story have spoken up and have resigned—which, unfortunately, leaves the people who don’t care as much about human rights to run the show.  I would think that “the best country in the world” wouldn’t commit such abuse of human rights.  I am saddened.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 2nd, 2008 at 2:43 pm and is filed under Sociopolitical. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.