denyingphoenix: Brian Faust - Off the Irony Mark

When it comes to politics, economics, international diplomacy or anything else remotely, err, adult? Well I’m an idiot. I have little knowledge (yet a healthily restrained desire to learn), and don’t pretend to be an armchair authority on anything. But actually, none of this is really about that. Certainly not about politics or parties.

I think it’s pretty widely-acknowledged now that the US has taken captives from around the world, and moved these people, identified as “persons of interest” to a detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. Both Fox News and CNN could agree on this, I’d say. Or at least they’ve reported it.

Going a step further, the detainees here have been treated “harshly,” whether you see that as right or wrong, justified or unfair. I restrain from weighing in on this in public. But all major news outlets (and worldwide) have reported on many of the interrogation techniques used and living conditions of these camp detainees. And knowing this (again, free of political bias), I still can’t come to grips with one thing.

If there were/are people in the world that hate western culture, hate America and whatever it seems to stand for these days, how does treating them this way make anything better? Those that are released and allowed to go back home, are they really going to just go back to living a “normal” life? Can they? Those that die in captivity, what sort of message does it send to their relatives back home? Certainly it’s not one wrapped in condolence, one claiming that they died for a good cause.

The nagging thought in my mind since watching the towers fall my senior year in college is, how is this retaliation not going to foster an entirely second generation of extreme hatred? How is any sort of heavy-handed military action not going to give justification for countless lifetime promises of revenge against our country?

I don’t know. My knowledge is too shallow and my mouth too restrained to even wager a guess. But it does not change the fact that I worry about this. I worry about it in the context of the world that I’m bringing a child into, a world that truly is far more complex than what you, I or any talking head realizes.

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I wonder if every parent-to-be ponders these questions? I know that, before deciding I definitely didn't want children of my own, that I thought heavily about things like this.

I remember a TV ad here in the UK that stopped me in my tracks - it was a teaching recruitment advert based on the idea 'could you teach these children: what, where, who, when and why'. The 'why' was a poignant image of an old man stood in an empty room, one sleeve rolled up - showing a prisoner number tattoo forced on him in the Nazi concentration camps. And I thought no - I couldn't even begin to explain to a child why that happened. I can't even explain it to myself, because there is no good reason. And that's the very evil of it all.

But, the very fact that you're worrying about this shows that you're going to be a great dad, and you're going to raise your child to be a decent person and ask questions of the world. I don't think there can be any better kind of parent! You may not know a lot about politics or diplomacy but you do know something about decency, and that's something the world seems to have forgotten to demand of its governments.

said minxlj

Off the Irony Mark

Originally posted on April 03, 2008

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