Locked away

National Journal has done a survey of the inmates being held at Gitmo. Unsurprisingly, the findings are rather appalling:

Many of them [the detainees] are not accused of hostilities against the United States or its allies. Most, when captured, were innocent of any terrorist activity, were Taliban foot soldiers at worst, and were often far less than that. And some, perhaps many, are guilty only of being foreigners in Afghanistan or Pakistan at the wrong time. And much of the evidence -- even the classified evidence -- gathered by the Defense Department against these men is flimsy, second-, third-, fourth- or 12th-hand. It's based largely on admissions by the detainees themselves or on coerced, or worse, interrogations of their fellow inmates, some of whom have been proved to be liars.

...One thing about these detainees is very clear: Notwithstanding Rumsfeld's description, the majority of them were not caught by American soldiers on the battlefield. They came into American custody from third parties, mostly from Pakistan, some after targeted raids there, most after a dragnet for Arabs after 9/11.

During the Cold War, Americans were constantly admonished to thank their lucky stars that they lived in a free society which did its damnedest to protect legal rights. Sure, there were some glaring contradictions, notably in that nether region called the South where darker folk didn't quite have the full protection of the state behind them (indeed, the state was often complicit in the persecution). But there was no "secret police" here, and the chance of being whisked away by stormtroopers to some prison where there'd be no legal redress for you was marginal.

No more. Today this country openly embraces the same tactics we crucify totalitarian regimes for. Worse still, the US now openly enlists totalitarian regimes to help with the "dirty work." Most of the casualties of this policy are darker skinned peoples from the other side of the world. Thus, in our deeply racist culture, little uproar.

Nevertheless, ask yourself: what's to prevent the state from doing this to you?