One Nation, Under a Heartless God

On the other side of the metal detector, I caught up with the young vet
(Iraq? Afghanistan?). HomeSec was giving him the whole treatment: arms
stretched out, the wand, stern expressions and stupid questions. The
wand beeped and beeped. The TSA guy scowled. "I've got titanium all the
way up my spine," the kid explained.

You're kidding me, I thought. After what he's been through. After what
he's done for his country. I wanted to scream: Bastards! You should
wave him around the checkpoint. Here, sir, we'd like to offer you a seat
in first class. No, no, no charge.

I bit my tongue. Here in the land of the twee and the craven, I know
when to shut up. That's what we do now. Airports are nodes of
high-intensity fascism in a nation settling into authoritarianism lite. Hassle the
bastards and you might end up dead. I had a flight to catch, doncha
know.

Have we, at long last, any decency?

In one respect, the three remaining presidential candidates say, "Yes,
we do." They've promised to close Gitmo.

What ought to happen to the nearly 300 detainees is obvious. Hand each
of them an apology, a bag of cash -- a million bucks wouldn't be nearly
enough for what they've been through -- and a plane ticket home. Those
who can't return to their countries of origin because their
U.S.-backed dictatorships would murder them receive a penthouse suite in the U.S.
city of their choice.

I'd let them switch places with their guards and 300 top-ranking
members of the Bush Administration for a couple of days first. No questions
asked. Just get on the plane, and don't forget your bag o' cash.

Anyway.

Here's how messed up, how separated from common sense justice the
United States of America has become: We might close Gitmo. But we're keeping
the inmates!

"When it comes to closing Guantanamo, talk is cheap," Columbia law
professor Matthew Waxman tells The Los Angeles Times. Because, you see, the
U.S. government has violated the victims' rights so egregiously for so
long that there's no longer a legally appropriate way to process them.

"Especially vexing," says the paper, "are scores of foreign detainees:
Officials lack evidence to prosecute, but warn against setting them
free." It's an 800-year-old Western legal principle called habeas corpus:
you can't hold a person in custody without charging them. Oh, wait --
Bush got rid of that.

"Because there is little evidence against them that could be used in a
U.S. court, government officials fear that a federal judge could order
them freed," the Times continues. Heaven forbid that we release people,
even if there's no evidence they've done anything wrong. What's next?
Taxing the rich?

"Then you would have 100-plus future sleeper-cell members unleashed in
Kansas," a "midlevel official" told the Times. No grain silo would be
safe.

Gitmo inmates have been waterboarded, urinated upon by U.S. soldiers,
violently force-fed and driven to suicide. Some of the "dangerous
terrorists" (John McCain's description) were 12 years old when Afghan
warlords sold them to U.S. forces for cash bounties. They've grown up in
Gitmo. When do we finally, at long last, decide that they've suffered
enough?

Maybe we should just shoot them.

It's not just foreigners. Even for its own native-born wretches,
America couldn't find a path to fundamental decency if it were lit up like
Times Square on New Year's Eve.

In ancient Rome, executioners abided by a rule: If they failed to hack
off your head after three swings of the blade, they set you free. Not
here. Men condemned to lethal injection wake up screaming; the guards
administer more poisons and barbiturates.

Veterinarians abandoned the three-drug cocktail used to kill inmates in
most states because they considered it cruel to animals.

Many death row prisoners are innocent. Sometimes they even manage to
prove it before their executions. "At least 205 men and one woman
nationwide have been exonerated through DNA evidence since 1989, including 53
who…were convicted of murder," reports The New York Times. But what
happens to those who are set free?

No compensation is enough for someone who serves years in prison for a
crime he didn't commit. But society ought to come up with something.

There ought to be money. Millions and millions of dollars. So much that
the victim of a judicial miscarriage never has to work again. It
wouldn't bring back the lost years, the shattered relationships and murdered
moments. But it would be a start.

Then again, this is America. We don't apologize, much less try to pay
penance. Here's $24 and a cheap suit. Too bad about those 15 years.
Thank you for playing. Want compensation? Find a lawyer who'll work for $24
and sue.

Ah, but there's a catch: you need a law under which to file a lawsuit.
36 of the 50 states have laws that specifically prevent innocent
ex-prisoners from going to court to seek the damages they ought to have been
given without asking. Twelve of the remaining 14 have limits. (New York
and Maryland do not.) California caps total payouts at a stingy $100 a
day, up to a maximum of $10,000 -- even if they lock you up for 20
years by mistake.

As individuals, Americans are generous to a fault. They do the right
thing, or at least they try. The disconnect occurs when we express our
collective will, through our courts and government officials. Our laws
and our politicians are mean, cheap and callous.

How did a soft-hearted people wind up making such a hard-ass country?

Ted Rall is the author of the new book "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central
Asia the New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis
of America's next big foreign policy challenge.

© 2008 Ted Rall

If you go to this link at CommonDreams, where I found the article,
there is a discussion which anyone can join:

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/23/8481/

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