I had the opportunity to visit Andersonville, the site of the infamous prisoner of war camp run by the confederacy during the civil war. Also there is the national Prisoner of War Museum.
The museum exhibits spoke in generalities, the history of how prisoners of war have been treated, and it also spoke personally, stories of individuals and their experience as prisoners of war. And it talked about all the different flavors of prisoner.
The Japanese-Americans who were shipped to camps during the second world war, they were, in a way prisoners of war. They had committed no crime, not taken up arms against this nation, and yet they were treated as hostile foreigners. Their treatment was similar to civilians who were living in hostile or occupied countries when war broke out, interned for the duration.
But as I walked through the museum, reading the stories of men and women who had endured capture and sometimes torture, I could not help be be reminded of what a stain on our national soul is Guantanamo.
Someone in the Bush administration made up the term 'illegal combatants' to justify what would otherwise be illegal treatment of captives. In 10+ years, how many of these men (and sometimes children) have been charged with any crime? I still maintain that they must be treated as prisoners of war, or charged with some sort of crime.
We do not defeat terrorism by becoming terrorists. Terrorism is a tactic used by the powerless against the powerful. It is not an end unto itself. As long as people feel oppressed, that their hopes and dreams are being ignored or actively suppressed, there will be terrorists. You defeat that by attacking the root cause, and yet we continue to be the root cause instead.
As long as places like Guantanamo exist, there will continue to be more and more people who come to the conclusion that we are their enemy. And how do you strike out an an enemy so large and powerful as the United States? With acts of terrorism.
By our refusal to follow international convention, or even our own laws, we have become our own worst enemy.
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