President Bush, in presenting his plan to try the inmates at Guantanamo pursuant to rules that would have made Herod, the Sanhedrin and Pontius Pilot blush, explained that his goal was to give justice to those who gave no justice to others. This is in keeping with his lengthy history of sound bite blather that never bears any resemblance to the substance behind the spin. If it were otherwise, he would have admitted it was his goal to bring swift and predetermined judgment upon the heads of those that are accused of the same.
Tragically, in his haste to salvage his flagging support, he, along with many of us, have forgotten that the America we should love and idealize, is not the America of swift judgment, of retribution, of preemptive strikes or of the short term gain at the expense of the long term ideal. Nor is it the America that labels another human being a "non-combatant" so that decency can be dispensed with and torture inflicted. It is the America that, no matter how imperfectly we had lived up to its ideals, still strives to adhere to the creed that all mankind is created equal and possesses certain inalienable rights that are not lost because of the whims of an ever increasingly strident, isolated, and out of touch leader.
It is the preservation and perpetuation of this American ideal that should be foremost in our minds and that will, in the long run bring peace more assuredly than any swift trial, conviction and execution of the rabble confined at Guantanamo. Summarily try then kill this small handful of mortals and a thousand more will spring up in their place; rob them of their propaganda by taking the higher ground, and they will fade into oblivion.
Loren M. Lambert
Sept. 14, 2006 ©
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