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Hunger Strike at Guantanamo
poptart
Veteran
I wondered how many of you have heard about the hunger strike that has been going on at Guantanamo detention centre since February. I only heard about it on the radio this morning. I'd be interested to know how widely reported this has been in the US.
The issue of detaining prisoners indefinitely raises several ethical issues. And is it right to force feed prisoners who refuse to eat? How should we, as Buddhists, feel about these questions?
The issue of detaining prisoners indefinitely raises several ethical issues. And is it right to force feed prisoners who refuse to eat? How should we, as Buddhists, feel about these questions?
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Comments
And that's all I wanna say 'bout that.
I assume you have nothing to say on the ethical issues raised?
The question is to members regarding their personal attitudes with regard to the circumstances.
It's not a conspiracy-fuelled comment.
Chill, ok?
I see no intention of argument here....
The whole idea of a gulag is for the government to have the ability to disappear someone and be able to pretend they don't exist. It works due to human nature. Given enough time, most people can accept anything if it's justified by happening to "them" instead of us.
It's going to take some widespread deaths from these hunger strikes, I'm afraid, and even then I'm not sure this generation has it in them to stand up for the rights of strangers.
Personally, I find the whole thing repellent, from the fact that inmates have been tortured to the fact that our government has decided that it can indefinitely detain people with no chargers whatsoever, including people who have been cleared for release. This reminds me of a story I read in the Atlantic last year: "Dead After 11 Years of Despair: A Prisoner Who Proved Gitmo Is Immoral."
Adnan Latif was another senseless casualty in the War on Terror, and both Democrats and Republicans alike are directly responsible—including President Obama, whose administration appealed Latif's release and prolonged his detention after a federal judge ruled in 2010 that he was being held unjustly. And this despite being cleared for transfer out of Guantanamo in 2008 by the Bush administration, and cleared for release in 2009 by own administration.
Started by Bush in 2002 to hold 'enemy combatants' from the war in Afghanistan (and later Iraq), the hellhole known as Gitmo is still open thanks in no small part to the combined efforts of Congressional Democrats and Republicans, who joined together in the Senate in 2009 and overwhelmingly passed an amendment that kept the prison open by denying funding for its closure in a 90-6 vote (48 Democrats and 40 Republicans). And Congress has continued to prevent its closure and the relocation or release of its detainees, who seem all but forgotten by the short attention span of the fast-paced world of the 24-hour, sensationalist news cycle.
David Remes, head of a legal team that represented Latif, said "The only detainees who have been released from Gitmo in the last two years have been in caskets" (NBC News). The sad part is, I don't think he'll be the last. And the even sadder part is that very few will probably notice or care.
The other day in another thread, a couple of us were briefly discussing the validity of the concept of "the ends justify the means". And in my view, this is another of those kinds of situations.
When I look at this issue conceptually, I don't like the Guantanamo situation. When I look at this issue practically...well, it gets more difficult.
I was interested in a discussion I was listening to on MSNBC or CNN (I flip back and forth when I am driving) yesterday afternoon. It was about whether or not "young Muslim" men are ever terrorists. And from the Muslim representative, statements came out such as (paraphrased) there are no young Muslim men who are terrorists and there is no connection between the religion and terrorism. I will say that finally, late in the discussion, he did say that mosques should be dealing with extremism in the Muslim world (which seemed to totally contradict almost all the other things that he was saying). And, my conclusion about the discussion was that it seems as if almost nobody can have a honest discussion about this general topic.
There are many people is the world who are treated unjustly. To be honest, I do make an assumption that the men who are at Guantanamo are there for a reason. The part that bothers me is that it seems that they are being treated extra-judiciously.
But I thought Chris Matthews (hardly a Bush-Cheney Republican) had an interesting take on the detainees. He asked what do you do with people who saw to your face that they are going to attack your country when they are released.
I don't think there is a strict Buddhist answer on it though, nor on most issues. Every Buddhist is going to have their own take, Buddhism doesn't speak for itself.
I don't trust that everyone is there for a good reason. I don't know who all of them are, of course, but it just seems to me that it's purposely kept out of sight, out of mind for a reason. While I don't have any easy answers to the problems of what to do with people we perceive as threats, I don't agree on a human level with detaining people indefinitely with no trial no nothing where we have to prove they did something, etc. I realize as they are not US citizens they are not given those rights, but I think some rights should be inherent as human beings and I think it makes a lot of people uncomfortable because we know that yet we feel the need to go against that because we feel we are protecting ourselves. Are we really? Doesn't seem like it to me. So we detain them, and when they get mad and threaten more crimes, we further detain them out of fear. It reminds me a lot of the MN Sex Offender Treatment Program which is under fire because they basically do the same thing. Except in these cases, the criminals actually committed a crime, tried, were found guilty, served sentences and then are not released but are put into sex offender treatment until such time they believe they are cured. In the 20 or so years it's been in place, 1 person has been released.
What, you think a few more radical Islamists over there that hate our guts is going to make a difference? People act like the other fighters are just sitting around waiting for good old Achmed to be released and lead them in their next jihad.
Let them rejoin the thousands that have already sworn undying vengence, if that's what the system says we should do. It's not like they're going to be sneaking into the country now that they're in our system.
These aren't supervillians we're talking about.
But, I'm not so sure some of them aren't "supervillians"...whatever that means.
It really is that simple.
But apparently no one in Washington has the integrity to take a solid stand on the issue, including what they refer to in this country as "liberals"--which is a farce.
This all came from NPR by the way. But when they were asked what would happen if Guantanamo were closed, their best suggestion was the situation would get worse, because the prisoners would be unlikely to be released, but would be moved to other bases, perhaps Guam, where there would be even less ability for the press, the Red Cross and other to enter and see what is going on. The Red Cross has said that most of the people suffer mental deterioration and that there are dozens of suicide attempts on a regular basis.
I just wanted to catch up on what the most recent info was, since it's been coming up, just thought I'd share what I found. But this information is all pretty old news, too, and much newer information is not that easy to find. Wiki has a list of all the names that the DoD provided, and where they are from and any recent developments. You can find out a lot by googleing "current situation at Guantanamo" from the human rights commission and amnesty intl. Just not a good situation, US citizen or not. Except for possibly a few heavy hitters, keeping the vast majority of them detained is not making the world safer. Indeed, it is contributing to more anger and hatred.
It's like they think these guys are just waiting till the right moment to whip off their disguises, reveal their superpowers, all join together into the Injustice League of Islam, where they break out of the maximum security prison that successfully holds our serial killers and other dangerous thugs and rampage across America.
Let's ignore that all evidence is, a bunch of these folks are innocent. See, even if at one time these people were connected and knew anything about their organization, it's been many years now and the war against the infidels has moved on. We know everything they once knew and a lot more. The people they used to work with are mostly dead now and even if they wanted to rejoin the cause, they're just another body to strap a bomb onto or hand a gun to. And there is no shortage of people over there now willing to do that.
No, I suspect the entire reason not to put them on trial or simply dump them back overseas now is that the "other side" will parade them around where they can give speeches about how terrible the Americans are. They don't want the man's face on television over there being called a hero, because Fox News and Rush Limbaugh will start yelling about how whoever let them go is a liberal traitor and people are stupid enough to go along with it.
Probably because we unjustly locked them in a prison miles and miles from their homeland without any trial or hope for release for years and years.
You would think the power to vote in or out representatives might be some small source of mobilization, but... Obama won the youth vote in 2008 and 2012. He probably would not have won without the many young people that rallied around his message. But when the majority on BOTH sides voted to keep Guantanamo running, it's hard not to become cynical and apathetic. It's like we're trapped in this Kafkaesque rat maze in which the only choice we're given is the lesser of two evils. Martin Seligman did some pretty cruel experiments with dogs that demonstrated a concept called "learned helplessness." I think we're seeing that on a large scale now. The level of despondent cynicism has grown quite high.
When I think of the people I know well, all of whom are living at least fairly well, have had a relatively successful life, I also know that they are lonely, depressed, have made bad health decisions, are in conflict with their HOA, are obsessive about moving furniture, get in occasionally intense disagreements with friends, have rows with their relatives that have on some occasions resulted in the police being called, volunteer at the soup kitchen in part so they can take some food home, shop at Goodwill, have recently lost a job, are trying to find a part-time job because their husband's job loss/new job is for less money, are having a little trouble making ends meet, had an adult child who committed suicide...I could go on and on, depending on how far I wanted to extend the circle of people of whom I am speaking. And if you think of what we have learned about our friends here on our own forum, we have people who are currently or were formally addicted to drugs, are fighting with their families over religion, can't pay their mortgages, and on and on.
And yet, any of us (to one degree or another) in this wide circle I'm talking about, even though they can't manage their own lives truly well, are so quick to say about issues such as this one, or gay marriage, or the legalization of drugs, or the problem in Tibet, or _______________, "Oh, the President should just ________; it's so obvious." Or, "The Dalai Lama simply needs to _________." Or, "It's so clear that the Congress should __________." We can't manage our own lives truly successfully in either the short term or the long term, yet we think our leaders should be able to easy and perfectly solve every issue.
I'm not saying we shouldn't discuss and agree or disagree on topics such as this one, but maybe we should sometimes remember to have just a little humility in doing so.
And notice, I have said "we" throughout this post. I include me in the concept.
But this time, even the Republicans are discovering people have had enough. The Senators coming up for election are discovering their polls are tanking.
Also, I think it is very easy when you are a person not in the know, to think we would know how we'd react to all these situations. Yet perhaps if we had all the information, the decision would not be nearly as easy as it seems. I think Obama is mostly a decent guy with a heart in the right place. That doesn't mean he gets to make every decision from his heart. And neither would any of us if we were in charge.
If these people are suspected of doing something wrong, then try them. Or is mere accusation enough to lock away someone and we are just supposed to trust their judgement? I fair trial shouldn't be too much to ask for--it would be no different in any other circumstance.
I suspect the biggest reason why they aren't and they won't is because the US government knows they botched this up big time--along with the black sites, the waterboarding, cold cells, stress positions and other torture methods (the same used by the Soviets, the Chinese and the Khmer Rouge I might add).
The reputation of a bunch of politicos in DC matters far more than a bunch of faceless brown people from Timbuktu. Giving these people a trial means showing what a sham their "intelligence" was and their sense of "justice."
Anyone remember Maher Arar? Or how about Jose Padilla? John Yoo and the torture memos? The last thing the government wants the world to see is that The American Way (tm) is just false advertising.
The vast majority of Americans wanted the Japanese-Americans put in concentration camps for the duration of WWII.
At one point in American history, the majority of Americans thought slavery was fine.
It was thought in the early 1900s that "Negroes" should only be in segregated companies in the military.
I personally agree on the gun issue that you mention, but the fact that the majority want something does not make it right or desirable.
Also, regardless of which candidate it is, clearly not all Americans vote for the same guy, so make sure you don't lump all voters in as those who voted so-and-so into office.
In terms of the other part of your post, I like to go back to Mark Twain who said something along the lines of "Politicians are no better or no worse than the people who elect them. And a hell of a lot better than the people who don't vote at all."
I am not happy with the state of politics in the US today. But I don't see the politicians doing much of any different (other than scale) than what I see people doing at the "every day level" of American life. At our local PTA meetings I would see parents come in and rant and rave and insist that their viewpoint prevail without compromise on issues as profound as how we seated kids in the cafeteria or how long library books could be signed out for before they had to be renewed. People behave as people behave. And just for the record, government is just as poorly conceived of in every country I've gotten to know, whether it's been Thailand or Malaysia. There are periods of time I've seen governments clean up their acts and do well...and sooner or later the people allow it to degenerate.
And the one state that seems to have taken pop-rule most to heart -- California -- is a frigging mess.
The Republican position on a number of issues does interest me. It seems as if -- on a number of positions -- they are saying damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. But I think what some people don't understand -- particularly when they see the demise of the Republican party coming -- is that in red states, the Republicans remain very strong.
Sure, at many points throughout history, the status quo was firmly against the tide of human progress. However, abolition was a grassroots movement before it entered the federal sphere, as was women's suffrage, as was worker's rights (apropos of today being May Day), as was de-segregation and the Civil Rights movement, as has been gay rights more recently. The reason these intellectual and social movements were in the right was not because of how many people were behind them, but because they were aligned with a compass that has guided us time and again out of ignorance, cruelty, and objectification -- a compass that includes reason and rationality, as well as compassion.
To resign to quietism and let our representatives off the hook when they act in ways that bring harm and suffering to others, or operate under rationales that are devious, corrupt (let's be real here, although most people in Congress are good people, anyone who has followed what goes on in D.C. has seen their fair share of shady dealings), self-serving, or short-sighted, simply because they're human and have other things going on in their lives is beside the point. Yes, they're human. Yes, I'm willing to allow them some degree of leniency for that very reason. But politics in the United States, though not a democracy in its purest sense, should be a dialogue and not a dictatorship. People on this forum and in other places are simply taking their part in that dialogue.
Nor is anyone suggesting these issues can be solved simply. They can't. De-segregating schools was complicated. Gun control is complicated. Most people who have studied these topics (economists, activists, engineers, judges, lawyers, academics, et al.) are willing to acknowledge the complexity of the systems we are working with. However, simply because something is complicated does not mean we cannot hold often forceful opinions of what outcomes we ultimately would like to see.
And this particular case of Guantanamo is extremely thorny. Baldy put, we done effed up. And we've effed up to such a horrendous magnitude that we will need to eat a good amount of crow when we DO address the prisoners who have been detained there. We can't simply write these people off and hope that they die quickly so that this debacle blows over.
But, in this forum and other places, on this topic and other topics, people say all the time that politicians should simply do what their electorate want. And, although I disagree with that concept, I have to admit it seems like what politicians should do. And for those who think it should be that way, I take the example of the state where I live now -- Colorado. In issues like gun control, legalization of marijuana, and many more, the people of our state are split pretty much within that 45-55 range...meaning that no matter how a politician votes, he's going to be wrong (in terms of voter sentiment) half of the time. I've never understood how people think a politician can please their constituency when you have a polarized constituency. It's darn nigh impossible.
I'm glad you see that "most people in Congress are good people". It's popular -- and trite -- to see politicians in the always in the negative. When in reality, they're pretty much the same mix of good and bad that the whole nation is.
Now, the one place I do disagree with you is where you say, "Nor is anyone suggesting these issues can be solved simply". Actually, often on this forum, and certainly throughout the web, and throughout the country (and world), people are saying just that.
Again, I want to say what a well written post you made! Nice to see a little depth!
Most of the time when people think something is so simple, they are only looking at it from their point of view. Sure, it's easy in a lot of areas to say "Well, I'm Buddhist so obviously this is what I would do." How many times has that come up when we discuss war? "I'm Buddhist so I just wouldn't go to war if I was president." Is that really realistic? If you feel that strongly why would you put yourself in the position to have to make that decisions? In the hopes that you can force war out of humanity by using your beliefs to make the decisions? What about when others do that and we don't like it? When Christians use their beliefs to make changes that affect us all then it gets more difficult to accept. Using your personal beliefs to make changes for everyone is just as bad if you are Buddhist as if you are Catholic.
In my state, the majority of the people who support gay marriage are localized in smaller physical areas, in urban areas. The state has a very big out-state area. In many cases, these people are not in favor of gay marriage, even though the majority of the citizens are when you take them as a whole. Something like 80% of people in the Minneapolis/St Paul metro area support gay marriage. Only 40% out outstate people do. So then you have an elected representative who feels strongly on a personal level, one way or the other, and was elected by people who feel the opposite. What a hard place to be in. What do you do? Go against the people who elected you to represent them in favor of your own strongly held beliefs? Go against your own beliefs? I can't imagine having to make those decisions.
Yes, there are definitely issues in which politicians are caught in a catch-22. My impression is that this has also increased in the last two decades as we have become increasingly polarized and issues are portrayed in more black-and-white terms. I think information really is the key to both points you bring up. The dearth of good information on which to base policy positions is a pretty big tragedy. I think the internet has been both a boon and also a curse to this end: a boon in the sense that non-traditional news sources allow us much more information about many more issues than ever and provided a much-needed alternative to the shrill cable news circuit; a curse in that the quality of traditional journalism has become degraded as it has become less and less profitable. I've watched the quality of writing in The Washington Post, The Economist, and The Atlantic (among others) decline over the last decade. They can't afford as many copy-editors, articles are getting shorter and more sensationalistic, depth suffers to provide more breadth of content.
We need an informed populace so that politics isn't such a zero-sum game. I think, when people are informed about the complications surrounding a particular issues, they are less likely to begrudge their politicians for voting against them because they can see the rationale behind it. (Although, in some cases, the more you know about a certain issue, the angrier you can get.) This brings us to your second point about simplification.
I think it's natural for people to voice their desired endpoint while skipping the logistics (for example, "if only Congress would legalize marijuana"). In some cases, they are aware of the logistics, but they see the endpoint as so much more sensible than the alternative (to continue the example, "this war on drugs is causes more problems than it's fixing") that they don't see the logistics as very big obstacles. In other cases, they may not want to distract or discourage people from entertaining that endpoint. Even people like Paul Krugman, Noam Chomsky, or Steven Pinker who are well-informed and thoughtful, will often distill their message down to its most basic policy application.
On the other hand, there are definitely people like those you are talking about, who don't appreciate the complexity of the logistics of even one change in policy. Those people are usually ill-informed/ignorant and haven't done much homework. Generally, I find that the more partisan someone is, the more likely he/she is to resort to reductionism. I would say that, in such a situation, the proper response is not to write these people off as loons (which is the usual response on blogs and forums and comments sections to articles), but to provide information about the specific complicating factors that make their position ill-conceived (e.g., as you did in response to one of my posts back when we discussed education reform a few months ago). Doing so fills the gap of ignorance so that any dialogue that occurs will be more productive and based on the facts.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was, after all, a Baptist reverend. His Christianity deeply influenced his social message and it's woven beautifully and eloquently through all of his writings and speeches. Gandhi, likewise, was deeply influenced by the philosophy of Bhagavad Gita. Outside the realm of religion, the Founding Fathers of this country were deeply influenced by Enlightenment-era thought like Hobbes and Locke. Every political philosophy, from Socialism, to Libertarianism (Classical Liberalism), to Crypto-Anarchism, to Conservatism... all of these come with a set of implicit values and assumptions about what the role of government should be, what is desirable or undesirable for a country's people, etc. And all of us have certainly implicit value systems, whether they are aligned with any organized movement or not.
Part of what makes policy decisions so complicated (and a truth that your examples and the examples vinlyn has noted speak to) is that the U.S. is such a vast and politically heterogenous country. Pluralism exists in any country, but it's particularly tricky with the U.S. which is so geographically and culturally diverse. There are actually many who believe the U.S. is better off as multiple countries. This isn't so far-fetched. That's how we originally were organized under the Articles of Confederation. There are also many issues for which there is no easy answer and there is always some trade-off. Economic policy is particularly thorny in this regard: progress towards one end will often precipitate some loss at another end. Which you prefer will depend largely on the business culture and the social environment you value.
I don't think there's anything wrong with someone on this site stating their opinion from the perspective of a Buddhist, nor anyone anywhere else stating their opinion from the perspective of a Christian, or Muslim, or Communist... so long as the policy stemming from such a position is logically sound and does as few as little harm as possible (in this messy world, it's not possible to do no harm at all, unfortunately; even our greatest achievements in human progress have often come with some cost and casualty). Although my own implicit value system is built into something as basic as what I define as "harm."
We need not devolve into a Procrustean Bed of utter relativism. We HAVE tools by which to come to a decision in policy. Reason is one such tool. Compassion is another. Another is a shared value set. We actually have that in this country: the Bill of Rights. And many arguments for Civil Rights were predicated on the equitable and just application of that value set. The Bill of Rights also conveniently gives us a way of handling the plurality of religious belief systems in this country. And we have federal, state, and local law in general. That's what lawyers use to guide their cases. We also have an international value set in the Geneva Conventions. Arguments against Guantanamo and torture, etc. are predicated on following these standards.
Holding the U.S. together is hard work and policy decisions are difficult, but it's not like Congress, the Supreme Court, the President, and the populace at large is at any loss for criteria or tools for making a decision.
From my reading of this thread it seems we have reached the consensus that politics and ethics make, at best, uncomfortable bedfellows. Nothing new in that, but the powerlessness people seem to be feeling with regard to influencing political decisions perplexes me. Is democracy no better than despotism if our sense of right and wrong can be violated without any recourse? I know there are no easy answers to this, but we only earn our right to democratic freedom by considering these questions carefully.
But I think the problem in a large country may be the size of the constituency. 1 president represents 311,591,917 people, 1 senator represents 3,115,919 people. One member of the House Of Representatives represents 716,303 people. And each of those people they're representing may ideological conservatives, died in the wool liberals; Republicans, Democrats, or independents; different races with their different concerns; different religions with extremely different viewpoints of life; poor, middle class, or rich; and countless other variations.
Frankly, I don't see any way that a politician -- people who are just as flawed as the rest of us -- could possibly represent the views of their constituents. So what we really expect is that they represents our interests, rather than our views...and I think that is often forgotten.
I disagree with what you say about "without any recourse". That's what the courts (including the Supreme Court) are for.
I also have to make a comment about competence, because that is a factor here, as well. If one wants to say that Congress isn't always very competent (particularly right now), I'd have to agree. But neither were the workers who came and installed new cabinets in my kitchen...or the tire store who took 3 days to order the tire for my car...or the auto mechanic who couldn't find the problem...or the cook in the restaurant where I got food poisoning a couple of months ago, or some of the teachers in my school, or our head custodian, or some of my colleague principals, or some members of the school board, or the doctor who misdiagnosed my kidney tumor. Or, yes, me in some things I did as a teacher or administrator. I've never known a totally competent person. We all are competent in what we do in varying degrees.
And there's honesty and integrity. Sure, that sometimes lacking among elected government officials. But so was it with the church accountant who pilfered funds (and went to jail), and the school cafeteria manager who siphoned federal and state free lunch funds off the top (and went to jail), and the teachers in that Georgia district that falsified state test scores, and the colleague who took office supplies home to use in their side business, and.....
Politicians are supposed to represent "us" (whatever that means). But they're also no better than us. It is we who elect them. Again, as Mark Twain said, "Politicians are no better than the people who elect them. And a hell of a lot better than the people who don't vote at all."
I think you need to look at the bigger picture. Yes, "Post after post in this thread demonstrates that people are unhappy about the Guantanamo situation". Of course, your sample is based on people who are interested enough in the topic that they would take the effort to write about it. That's not a wide cross section of American public opinion. When I've seen surveys of the American public and what their significant concerns are, I've never seen that issue on the lists. Every once in a while when something comes up at Guantanamo that is more newsworthy (like the current hunger strike), public sentiment about the issue picks up a bit, but then quickly fades as other issues that affect the average American more take precedence. In fact, you accidentally put it in perspective when you said, "in this case "the people" are patently not influencing what government does". Yes, generally speaking, this is not an issue that most Americans care much about (although they should) and speak out much about (although they should).
I think you are misunderstanding the purpose of the courts. The purpose of the courts is not to make a decision based on the popularity of the issue at hand...although we often wish they would when an issue in which we're interested goes to them for adjudication. Their real and only job is to interpret whether the law of the land is being followed. Courts don't always do their jobs correctly. After all, higher courts sometimes overturn lower courts...implying that the lower court erred...while in reality it could still be the higher court that erred.
The average American knows little about the laws, and even less about the Geneva Convention.
And even if one is well educated on a law or the Geneva conventions, there's still interpretation. And we have all seen how justices of various courts disagree on the interpretation of a law...thus, split decisions.
Unfortunately, while we are talking about it quite loudly here, I do not see a single mention of this amongst my friends and family in person, in email, or on FB. It is not being discussed everything. Just because so many here care doesn't mean the general public is. Most of them don't bother to look into the human rights aspect of it. They believe it when they are told we are holding terrorists who are a significant threat to our country, and that we should be doing exactly that. The ones who #1 are even aware that it should be a concern and #2 give a crap about how we are treating people who our government views as a "threat" don't represent the majority.
Even the few times i have seen it come up on FB from a news organization, it has been from a strictly political point of view. Not a humanity point of view. Not that it should be closed because of what is and is not happening there. But just that it should be closed and not much thought is being given to what would happen to the people there. When someone bothers to comment, the overwhelming opinion is "who cares. Let them die. Worthless scum."
I will stop just short of invoking Godwin's Law, but I think it goes without saying that the best case scenario is one in which a country's people are conscientious about the actions of their government. "Out of sight, out of mind" is human nature, but it can lead to dangerous places. Actually, it already has. And that's not a good thing.
I was just saying that the issue is not at the forefront in America. Most people don't care. Some of that is because they just don't know much about it. Most of it is because they believe what they are told and think those "criminals" deserve to rot and die. It takes more than a handful of people on a Buddhist internet forum to care about an issue.
As for the other countries being more knowledgeable in some ways, definitely. And I think a large part of that is due to their education, which is not biased towards American patriotism like what kids in school learn. They don't learn the truth about history or politics and they spend so many years learning the same lies and mistruths that it doesn't even dawn on them to seek out anything else unless they happen to take history in college and start to learn what really happened, and still happens, in our country and government. People are blissfully ignorant.
Just because it's there doesn't mean I approve or justify it. I just don't know what to do about it. Even I have to pick and choose who I vote for based on the issues I find most important. This past election season, this particular issue was not on my list at all, nor on my radar. If I were to vote right now, it would be. I write letters to my congressmen on a state and federal level on a pretty regular basis about numerous things. But beyond that, my control over what is happening in Guantanamo is pretty limited. The only thing I can do is try to educate my kids better than simply what they get in school.
I try to have compassion for everyone, but there are plenty of times I am just unsympathetic towards our general public because they choose to remain ignorant. Trying to get them to see anything otherwise is a waste of time.
When the Iraq war started in 2003 thousands in the UK took to the streets and demonstrated against it but to no avail, so you're not the only so-called democracy where getting things changed is not as easy as it looks. And the UK had a similar situation to Guantanamo some years ago when IRA prisoners in the Maze prison went on hunger strike. That was during the saintly Margaret Thatcher's tenure, so many of you won't remember it, but it's yet another reason why she is hated by so many people to this day.
So please don't feel your government is being singled out for criticism. But whether it's our own government or someone else's we should consider these issues because of the ethical questions they raise. And you shouldn't feel powerless. As a Buddhist you are more conscious of what is going on than most people so you are a force for good.