I want my country back

When I was in elementary school, I thought the United States was a great country because we never started any wars. We would fight once we were attacked, but we'd never start anything.

But then my older brother told me about the Spanish-American War. Well, okay, so we stoked the fire that became that war, but at least we hadn't started any wars in the 20th century.

Remember the invasion of Panama? That was arguably a police action, not a war. But it wasn't supported by the UN.

I supported the first Gulf War. Sure, I was 12 at the time, but the concept of allowing a dictator to overrun the small country next door ... well, I hope we learned our lesson about letting that sort of thing slide back in 1939. Plus, the entire world (practically) supported our military action to remove the Iraqi forces from Kuwait. I vaguely remember that the Kuwaiti government in exile promised to have democratic reforms and more freedom (especially for women) once re-instated. Those promises seem to have been soon forgotten.

Then came (the first?) Clinton Presidency. We fired missiles at some guy named Osama in Afghanistan and at a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. Sure the intelligence was faulty, and the motives to "wag the dog" were high, but it was again a response, this time to the 1998 African embassy bombings.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that while we have violated the sovereignty of other countries in the past decades, it's been as part of a limited police action to capture international outlaws.

And then 9/11 happened.

It was an awful, vicious, cold-blooded, cowardly act. It was also brilliant. It used our freedom and trusting nature against us. And immediately, I knew we would over-react by limiting freedoms in a vain attempt to prevent the same from happening.

I wrote then that the cost of freedom is that we will be vulnerable to such attacks. But the response should not be to limit freedom. We should not give up what defines our nation in exchange for safety -- we'll lose the former but never get the latter. The only solution for terrorism is to create a society in which no one would want to commit such acts. No, that will never happen, but we can push the fringes in such a way that planning mass murder is unthinkable. And to think plan such attacks will result in early arrest through police actions (ideally from citizens who turn the perps in). We should hope for a global society where terrorism is never a socially acceptable solution.

We are far, far from such a society. And moving farther from it on a daily basis.

I supported the invasion of Afghanistan, but not the "War on Terror". As I have written before, 'war' is fought between two states that use their political and sovereign powers to raise armies. The terrorists are not a state, nor such we grant them the privilege of being identified as such. Our incursion into Afghanistan should have been considered a police action -- we had reason to believe the architects of the 9/11 attacks were in the country. And if the (illegitimate) government of Afghanistan was unwilling to turn them over, then we would go in and get them ourselves (after getting the approval of the international community). The terrorists are outlaws who deserve to be hunted down, captured, and put on trial.

What the #@$% happened to my country?

We invaded Afghanistan, and then followed it with an invasion of a country that had jack squat to do with 9/11, or any terrorist attacks on the US.

But we didn't stop there -- we then opened up a prison on a lawless slab of Cuba, declared that they had no rights, and started torturing people.

The United States tortured prisoners.

There is no denying of this - we used waterboarding on three prisoners. And waterboarding is torture according to the Geneva Accords, our own justice system and no less an expert on torture than Senator John McCain. (Question for McCain: you believe that waterboarding is torture - as President, would you initiate judicial action against the American agents who performed it?)

My country tortures. My country has a secret police that is allowed to work outside of legal boundaries. My country has secret watch lists that innocent citizens cannot remove their names from. My country has spied on its own citizens without warrants. My country has locked up 500+ prisoners without allowing them to challenge the evidence against them.

My country tortures.

My country tortured innocent people.

The United States used to be a beacon of hope for the world. We used to represent the promise of freedom. Now we torture innocent people. What happened to my country?

I want my country back.

I want to live in a country where we try criminals in open court. Where people are innocent until proven guilty. Where we show the world the evidence that proves their guilt. Where we live by our laws.

Open trials with public evidence are harder to conduct. And they might result in acquittal. But we have established procedures for protecting the most sensitive national secrets, such as informants and sources of information. But this should not be used to hide the face that torture techniques were used. Those are not a national secret. They are a national disgrace.

We should live by our laws and our court system because it is who we are as a nation. We are an open society. We must demonstrate that we have faith in our laws and our justice system. It is how we lead the world.

It isn't the easy way; it is the right way.

It is the American way.

I want my country back.