"Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends." (J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring)
So Osama bin Laden is dead. After 10 years, we've finally tracked the bastard down and killed him (maybe: people have been claiming he's been "dead" since at least 2006).
And all it took was the destruction of two nations, hundreds of thousands of innocent lives lost, millions become refugees, turning the Middle East and neighboring regions into a free-fire zone, setting up a concentration camp in Cuba, giving Israel even greater opportunity to oppress the Palestinians (see the latest outrage here), and the continued erosion of our civil rights and the on-going militarization of our country.
And then there're the self-righteous congratulations that our state-sponsored terrorists and their political allies are spouting.
Are we getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan? How much deeper are we going to get in Libya? When's Guantanamo closing? When's habeas corpus going to be restored? When is the "defense" budget going to be reduced?
When any of these things happen, then I may consider celebrating.
Showing posts with label Guantanamo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Guantanamo. Show all posts
11 November 2010
Inter armas silent leges
A few days ago I finished China Mieville's The City & The City, which (briefly) is about two cities - Beszel and Ul Qoma - that occupy the same physical space but whose citizens occupy totally separate mental spaces. It's an extreme version of the reality people in the world deal with every day and I was reminded of it when reading this entry at the TomDispatch.com website.
In essence, the author (Chase Madar) argues that Guantanamo is not an aberration in the current American prison system:
"Prosecuting a 15-year-old for `murder' with the help of a little torture and some threats of rape may not be the kind of thing we want to show German journalists. They’ll just get upset. They lack the context. But we Americans really have no right to claim that we’re shocked, shocked. We got used to this kind of thing a long time ago. The prosecution of former child soldier Omar Khadr has been nothing, in other words, if not all-American."
It's a form of the same "unseeing" that Beszel's and Ul Qoma's citizens practice every day.
In essence, the author (Chase Madar) argues that Guantanamo is not an aberration in the current American prison system:
"Prosecuting a 15-year-old for `murder' with the help of a little torture and some threats of rape may not be the kind of thing we want to show German journalists. They’ll just get upset. They lack the context. But we Americans really have no right to claim that we’re shocked, shocked. We got used to this kind of thing a long time ago. The prosecution of former child soldier Omar Khadr has been nothing, in other words, if not all-American."
It's a form of the same "unseeing" that Beszel's and Ul Qoma's citizens practice every day.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)