Prisoners of War

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.

When Dell's mistake is your problem

My wife's printer is running low on ink, so I went onto the Dell website to order more. Yeah, their ink is over-priced but it is convenient.  We had checked a couple of local stores, and none of them carried the specific size cartridges (do they make so many different types to discourage after-market ink?) that we needed.

The following week I received this in an email from Dell:

Dear Customer,We're sorry but your order will take longer to fulfill than previously communicated and is now scheduled to be delivered on or before 6/8/2011

Because we did not meet the date previously communicated to you, we need your permission today to continue your order with this new date. If we do not receive your permission, the Federal Trade Commission requires that we cancel your order.
I also received several robo-calls repeating the same message. 

Well my wife has a lot of stuff to print between now and when she is leaving on a trip, so I decided to look around online and see if I could find someone else that would have compatible ink.  I found some and ordered it.  It was cheaper and faster too.

So just to be sure, I went online to Dell, to 'Order Status', and selected the 'Cancel' link.  After all, I had just bought enough ink for the next year, who knows if the printer will even live past that.

Two days later, on the same day my ink arrived from the alternative supplier, an email came from Dell saying they had shipped my order.

Needless to say, I was pissed.  I called them and they started to tell me how I could return it for a full refund.  My response was essentially this.  This is your mistake, not mine, your problem, not mine.  You fix it.  Call FedEx and tell them to cancel the shipment, or don't, but I'm not paying for it.  I called my credit card company, and they had not billed me.  I figured I would be nice and leave a note on the door to tell FedEx that I was refusing the shipment, and that would be the end of the it.

Last night my wife noticed that they had billed us.  She goes online to check the credit cards regularly.  I called the credit card company and told them that this was a fraudulent charge, and I am disputing it.  Their response was "Have you returned the merchandise yet?".  They are essentially siding with Dell, that is is my problem not Dell's.  This is what the FTC Website says about this:

Whether or not the Rule is involved, in any approval or other sale you must obtain the customer’s prior express agreement to receive the merchandise. Otherwise the merchandise may be treated as unordered merchandise. It is unlawful to:

1. Send any merchandise by any means without the express request of the recipient (unless the merchandise is clearly identified as a gift, free sample, or the like); or,
2. Try to obtain payment for or the return of the unordered merchandise.

I run a business.  Sometimes I make a mistake.  But here is the difference.  If it is my mistake, I own it.  My customer will not pay for my mistakes, I will.

Missed opportunity

A lot of people, left and right will disagree with me, but the killing of Osama bin Laden was the loss of a tremendous opportunity.  We lost the opportunity to demonstrate to the world not only that we are strong enough to win, but that we deserve to win.

Returning him to the United States in shackles, making him stand trial in the full public eye, would have demonstrated to the world that we are not only strong, but just.  Yes, it would have been a magnet for trouble.  His presence would have incited radical Muslims to try and free him, prolonged the ordeal not only for him but for all of us,  It would have been messy and a pain in the ass.  But guess what, that is what justice is.

He would have been exposed to the world for what he is, in the way releasing home videos never will.  And our insistence that he stand trail would have been a demonstration to the world that we are a nation of laws, even when those laws are inconvenient.  Essentially, we would be telling the world that George Bush and Dick Chaney do not represent the United States, that we are better than that.

Now having said that, I do not fault the military who carried out the execution.  I don't know what their real order were, but given the circumstances, a covert mission in a fortified facility, I believe that they are justified at the slightest hint of danger to open fire.  They found weapons caches and barricades inside the compound, it is not unreasonable to expect Resistance.  So if somebody has to leave in a body bag, I would rather it be Bin Laden than one of our troops.


Still, if Bin Laden had been arraigned on Tuesday morning in front of a judge, that would have sent a powerful message to the whole world.  It would have told them that although we are the most powerful military force in the world, we are not a lynch mob.  We practice what we preach.