On the Contrary

I am starting to get really disillusioned.  To understand what is really going on, one has to step back from the media which is focused on their incestual chatter and conventional wisdom and look at what is really happening.  From analysis of the stimulus package to what to do with your money, we are getting advice and sage wisdom from people who are repeating the same talking points over and over again.  Barack Obama had it right when he said the earth has moved under their feet, but even he fails to understand what that really means.

I have expressed my disgust at the economic stimulus package which has been gutted as to be totally ineffective by trying to cater to the Republicans.  Paul Krugman this morning eloquently laid out that argument in the New York Times.  I guess what is most disturbing is listening to Republicans gain traction on their failed economic ideas and watch Democrats try to make nice with them while they are in the process of creating a massive economic train wreck.  It is the same tired arguments we had during the election and apparently the election settled nothing.  I guess we will have to be lying in the wreckage of the train wreck before we finally get it.

But there are other things which need to be done and I am afraid we are backsliding.  Here is my list of things that could and should be done immediately:

• Stop air bombardment in Afghanistan and Iraq – Whether by drone or by aircraft, this policy of fighting a guerrilla war with proxy bombs kills innocents and is counterproductive, not to mention immoral.  Collateral damage is by definition failure in a war for peoples hearts and minds.
• Never, nunca, torture, ever – The whole premise of torture is that under extreme pain someone will tell you the truth.  It is a false premise.  They will tell you what you want to hear and that has nothing to do with the truth.  In the movie “Taken” the hero wires up a guy to the power gird to get him to tell him where his daughter is.  The guy spits in his face so he lights him up and he spills his guts.  Really?  I would have given him a convincing lie and it would have worked out better for the bad guy.  Oh, did I mention the moral argument for you Jesus freaks who think this is a good idea?
• Close Guantanamo and no “special trials” – If you buy the argument that there is evidence that is so secret that you just have to believe the government, it is the end of justice as we know it.  Our system of justice has evolved over 2000 years beginning with the Greeks and evolving into what we have today.  This is no time to deny that wisdom.  Find out what evidence there is, prosecute or release.  I am tired of watching “good” Americans clamber for a lynching.  Note that fool Lindsey Graham, who everyone thought was such a peach coming up with the military tribunal system, is also giving us wonderful advice on our economy. Any more help from him and we will finally hit bottom.
• Iraq and Afghanistan – The war party is over.  If most of you actually knew how much we were spending over there you would be appalled especially looking at the major whining that has gone over some of the minor items in the stimulus package.  Time to set a date and be out.  We simply can’t afford it anymore and why do we want to prop up nations that don’t believe in women’s rights?  I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be part of bringing another theocracy into the world.
• Cuba – Just End the blockade and get on with normal relations.
• Marijuana – Just get over it, legalize it like alcohol, control it, and tax it.  It’s here, everyone uses it at one time or another and we are wasting precious time and resources playing cops and robbers.
• Immigration – Note this one has fallen out of view with the economic crisis.  That should tell you it was never really a problem in the sense that Mexicans were taking jobs away from Americans.  Get a reasonable program in place that legalizes those that are here, makes guest workers easy to accommodate, and does not punish their children because their parents brought them here.
• Get over the moral approach – Whether Cuba, Marijuana, or Immigration, this moral conservative approach to these issues has been bankrupt from day one and still we continue doing stupid counterproductive things.
• Refocus incarceration of criminals on rehabilitation – We have the largest gulag in the world.  Our approach to this problem is to take criminals and throw away the key.  In California the budget for prisons will soon exceed our budget for schools.  Something is not working so why do we continue to do the same stupid things.  Because conservatives use the fear card and the masses fall for it every time.
• Healthcare – I listen to more stupid discussions about how to provide universal healthcare than one can endure.  Watch my lips:  SINGLE PAYER SYSTEM.  It is the only thing that has worked elsewhere and yet once again conservative America holds us back from the obvious solution to an ever increasing problem.
• Abortion, gay marriage, and flag burning – Non-issues.  We have reasonable laws restricting abortion, but this issue is really about the basic right of women to control their lives.  Gay marriage is also a human rights issue as flag burning is a free speech issue.  If you don’t approve of any of the above, don’t do them, but don’t utilize government to take the rights away from others.
• Religion and Government – They don’t mix.  Religion is basically about faith and the definition of faith is belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.  Our government of free debate and majority rule (don’t forget minority rights) is based upon the ideas from the Enlightenment that rational thought and discourse could convince the majority to do the right thing.  Get the disconnect?  One uses reason and logic to arrive at the appropriate course of action and the other ignores reason and logic to continue beliefs that belong in the dark ages.
• High Speed Rail – Build it and start focusing all big transportation projects on mass transit.  What part of petroleum dependence don’t we get?

So we muddle on going nowhere while conservatives continue to tell us they have the right path.  What appalls me is that anyone listens to them anymore.

For most of us, closing Guantanamo is the first step in redemption.  I know, I know, it is just a place, but it epitomizes all the values we lost on the way to “winning the war on terrorism’, which of course is unwinnable.  You can’t win a war against a tactic.  It has been in use since the beginning of time, but I digress.  President Obama has issued an Executive Order (REVIEW AND DISPOSITION OF INDIVIDUALS DETAINED AT THE GUANTÁNAMO BAY NAVAL BASE AND CLOSURE OF DETENTION FACILITIES) in accordance with his campaign promise and they are coming out of the woodwork saying it can’t be done.  “Be afraid America, these are very bad people.”  “You can’t put them in my state.”  “Maybe they ought to go to Alcatraz” (Representative John Boehner). Boehner also repeated the bogus number of 61 detainees who have returned to the battle field.  More about that in a minute.  It is pure fear tactics all over again.

First and foremost let’s remember we started with 800 detainees and have now cut it down to less that 300.  Most had nothing to do with terrorism and have been horribly treated because we threw out the rule of law.  The stated figure of 61 detainees claimed to have returned to the battlefield, only one has been unquestionably identified as a fighter for al-Qaeda (Wikapedia).  There may be more, but it certainly is not the 61 they are using to scare you. But before you are shocked, shocked, shocked that a few have returned to the battle ask yourself a couple of questions:

• First considering their treatment, wouldn’t you hate the United States?
• Second, ever consider the recidivism level from our own prisons?  If you don’t think we are releasing very dangerous Americans to our own streets you are in la-la land.
• Third consider who most of these guys are in Guantanamo:  Ignorant, not well-educated peasants.  I am quaking in my boots.  You should be much more afraid of those who were recruited from the better-educated Muslim societies because we established Guantanamo and used torture.
• Finally consider why these guys were released if we know they are so dangerous?  Could we not support the charges and why not?

Okay, lets get to the heart of the matter, the really dangerous ones which are probably countable on one or at most, two hands.  The argument goes that we know they are criminals but cannot use the evidence we have because it is badly tainted and they might go free.  Therefore we must come up with a way to preventatively detain these bad guys.  I don’t buy it and neither should you.  First, if the only evidence they have may be disallowed because of the improper way it was obtained (torture), it is highly unreliable anyway.  If they can’t rebuild their cases with real evidence and try them in a real court, these people need to be released, period.

Think about it this way.  If we decide that there is a certain class of people who don’t deserve the rights and protections we hold so dear, who draws that line about who does and does not deserve them.  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights….”  Our basic values say all men, not just the ones who are specially chosen.  If we deny those rights from some subclass of men, we no longer are who we think we are nor are our rights secure.  So when do I do or write something that someone thinks makes me a danger to them (some think that as I currently write) and decides to include me in that subclass that no longer has his basic rights.

I will accept that we do preventatively detain some people deemed mentally incompetent and are deemed a threat to themselves or others.  But the process for doing this is well defined, and we are talking about provable mental impairment, well documented in law.   But when we start incarcerating people because we think they might commit a crime we are starting down the slippery slope of defining subclasses of people who don’t enjoy self-evident truths.  If you believe this is justified then 80% of our own criminals should never be released from our own prisons.

What I see in the scare tactics being used is raw cowardice.  Nobody said being an American and standing up for our ideals was going to be easy.  In order to uphold our principles some dangerous people may get released.  Some innocent Americans may die.  But what the cowards want you to do is throw away what you stand for so you won’t be afraid.  I find it highly ironic that those that support the continuation of Guantanamo and preventative detention are the first to wave the flag and the last to want to suffer the hard consequences of our beliefs.  In other words they are cowards because they lack the courage of their convictions. They are afraid to stand up for the very American Ideals they tout.

Simply put:  Charge them, try them, or release them.  It is who we are.  If they come back as terrorists on the battlefield, they will die as terrorists on the battlefield.  But if we can keep our values in tact, they will have a hard time justifying their hostility toward us and those that paid the ultimate price defending us will have died for something important.