I just received this link to Yahoo news from my friend via IM.
Good news: the heat is off from the global community over those pesky torture snapshots. Bush is above any and all formal and informal torture laws. In other words, he's giving the bird to the Geneva Conventions.
You have got to be kidding me.
The only semi-positive thing about this scenario is that Bush has, effectively, taken blame for it by saying, "Yeah you know what? I think it's okay. Nothing to see here folks, move along." If he had been a LEADER, national and international, he would have held the involved parties accountable for the kinds of anti-global community decisions they made.
In any other western nation, this would be enough to guarantee a loss in the Presidential elections. But here, Bush is still popular.
To condemn another country's leader for human rights abuses and then turn around and claim that you have the right to ignore basic human rights is to assure your slot in the Presidential Hall of Shame as the Most Hypocritical President in American History. What kind of "compassionate conservative" would allow this kind of heinous abuse to go on in OUR NAME? None.
Today we have seen the President's true colors. He's nothing of the goofy cartoon character we have made him out to be. No, he is, in fact, a hypocrite and a liar who takes our nation's great name in vain, and with that every name of every soldier who has ever fought and lived through or died in every war carried out in the name of the United States. And he knows exactly what he's doing. He has all along.
As a native citizen of this country, today I am both embarassed and ashamed. And although my apology doesn't mean much in terms of mending foreign relations at a head-of-state level, it's all I can do. I apologize to the entire world on behalf of the hypocritical and outrageous actions carried out in our name by the Bush Administration. Taking the nation's will in vain is the most un-American action imaginable.
To America: who can blame then, in the end, for associating us with the actions of our leaders? The democratic process is both a blessing and a burden -- with it comes responsibilities, like protesting when the popular vote is discounted by the interference of third parties. Vote. Speak up, listen, and think for yourselves. The truth is right in front of our faces, and it's not visible only to those in ivory towers. We must act. We must save OUR INDIVIDUAL global citizenships before we are cast out of the global community for guilt by association.
To the world: I'm sorry.
2 comments:
Imagine you don't know what cspan is, imagine you're 18, from blankville kentucky, and sent to some hot, muggy, uncomfortable desert. There, you are faced with the threat of people who plant bombs by the road trying to kill you, people who will try to shoot you given half the chance, and people who blow up cars and themselves for a living. Imagine along with those people, there are genuinely nice people who look and speak exactly like them. Imagine being bred for the purpose of killing the enemy and you have a guy who looks like the guy who cut the head off of the guy who was covering your rear, I don't think even the sanist of pacifists could keep themselves from beating the shit out of a person like that, given the circumstances.
I am from a farm town and before I had my fancy schmansy university education and my ticket to the top of the ivory tower, I knew that making men fuck each other in the ass was wrong, and I also understood that a good way to maintain positive relationships with the Arab world is NOT to make them eat meat and denounce their religion and look at naked women and fuck each other in the ass. Dude, that is some serious SPANISH INQUISITION SHIT. UNACCEPTABLE. NO EXCUSE.
If the United States wishes to denounce its title as a world super power and say fuck all to the United Nations, then hey, go ahead and torture everyone. But bow down from the Security Council immediately, as many have encouraged regarding China over the years. We've got prisons full of inmates here in the US to torture, why waste all the money doing it abroad when we can do it in Sing Sing?
I recognize the thin line between national security and civil rights. But I don't believe that the egregious violations of basic civil and human rights we've seen from Abu Ghraib come anywhere near that line.
Very nice site! » »
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