A Nation of Cowards

We need to change the last line of our national anthem. No longer are we the home of the brave, we are home of the frightened, cowering in fear. Fear brought on by demagogic Republicans and  spineless Democrats who go along so as not to be portrayed by those demagogues as “soft on terror.” This is the latest example that we have become a nation of cowards; “The Obama administration has all but abandoned plans to allow Guantanamo Bay detainees who have been cleared for release to live in the United States, administration officials said yesterday, a decision that reflects bipartisan congressional opposition to admitting such prisoners but complicates efforts to persuade European allies to accept them.” I have a message for the demagogues and the jellyfish in Washington, as well as the American people who polls show are so easily manipulated and frightened about releasing the Gitmo detainees, it’s time we man up and accept the responsibility for our actions. We are the country who captured and incarcerated people for 6 or 7 years without charges, without trials, without proof of any wrongdoing, just the fear of what they might do if not detained, and now the fear of what they might do if released. Now that our courts have ordered some of them set free, as in the case of the Chinese Uighurs, we are asking Palau and Bermuda to take them. Even though there is a large Uighur community in Virginia who would gladly accept them. But no, Virginia elected officials, Sen. Jim Webb and Rep. Frank Wolf, one Democrat and one Republican, opposed the Uighurs resettling there “as a matter of national security.” Our national security is threatened by people who have been proven guilty of nothing? Nothing other than being the object of irrational fear stoked by politicians with their collective moistened fingers in the wind. We are also asking Australia and Germany to accept released detainees but they are understandably balking because we refuse to take any of them ourselves. Do we owe anything to those we have imprisoned without cause or without due process? If a country held me for 7 years without charges because of mere suspicion would I feel I was owed something on my release? You’re damned right I would. But that would have to be a country which takes responsibility for it’s wrongdoings and attempts to make amends, not one whose leaders and whose population are afraid of their own shadows.