Outrage

When they Do it To Our People

The horrific news of Lisa Ling and Euna Lee being abducted near the border of North Korea while doing a story about North Korea was chilling. Their months of imprisonment, without contact with their families, culminating in a secret trial wherein they were found guilty of crimes against the State and sentenced to 12 years hard labor, an outrage to all Americans.

North Korea is known for its abuses and neglect of its own citizens. Known for torture and abuses of prisoners and for its slave labor camps.

The reaction of so many in our country has run the gamut from outrage, grief to the almost comically stupid, and to an extreme where some are either ready to declare war on North Korea or the other extreme of making a joke of their capture and abuse by saying "Let them do Heroic Hard Labor". That last quote was from a self-involved politically feisty Twitterer I immediately quit following. I had originally thought her "all about me" style of commenting was a joke. Silly me, she is that narcissistic.

I was not sure if I should laugh or cry when I saw so many on Twitter turning to the celebrities on Twitter to 'do something'. When they were sending pleas to Ashton Kutcher and Oprah, I was momentarily taken to that scene in "Talladaga Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby" wherein Will Ferrel's character thinks he is on fire, strips out of his racing gear and runs out on the track screaming: "Help me Jesus! Help me Oprah! Save me Tom Cruise!..."

Here we are faced with two of our own, innocent of any wrongdoing, being abducted by a brutal regime, held in secret, abused and likely tortured, given a secret trial where no one is ever found innocent... and some are screaming for celebrities to use their super powers to save them? While others apparently so self-involved, can only declare they are not worth the time?

Clearly, in the US, we are a diverse community of opinions and beliefs. Clearly, anytime it is a horrible injustice done to one of our people by another nation, it rouses some of the strongest passions in us.

Overall, our opinion of North Korea is that they are barbaric and backwards. The cries for bombings to rescue our own are among the most extreme and illogical.

I am heartened, on the other hand, by those I see speaking up for 'tough' diplomacy and not violence. There are also voices out there that point out that it is NOT the North Korean people that are doing this, but rather, a corrupt, abusive government that places no value on any human life, including that of its own citizens, many of whom must endure constant abuse from police and military if they do not show strong enough praise for the miscreant Kim Jong Il.

Clearly, bombing that country would only kill the innocent in that country.

An overwhelming feeling of helplessness, however, prevails. That is where the greatest angers well up from. That is where the radicals in our midst fill the void.

Let us, while the feelings are still fresh upon us, look at how appalled we are about the treatment of these two women. Feel your heart beat a little faster do you? Grief and sadness get shoved aside for anger and venom? Probably. It does for me, too. Anytime we hear about a bully, be it a person or a government, we get angry. We lose respect for that person, that country. Especially when the detentions are illegal, trials are secret, and sentences are torture.

Now, with that fresh and raw on our psyche, let us step back for a minute and realize that those same exact feelings are what so many in other countries feel for the US these days.

Our abuses of prisoners, torture, deviant practices against them, have enraged other nations and the people in them. People who expected more and better from us, and got instead, the monsters of unlimited sadism.

Most of the prisoners in Guantanamo, Diego Garcia, Baghram, are NOT terrorists. Yes, there are a few high profile terrorists among them, and they have been identified before the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were ever launched. But also, there are many who were wrongly rounded up, some identified as terrorists just so that a bounty could be gained without evidence or facts to support it. Some were turned in by rivals for territory, or jealousy among neighbors. Some were just rounded up because our troops were told to go and take males from their homes, regardless of age (one as young as 12 another as old as 90 who were rounded up as terrorists, without evidence or facts).

These people, regardless of innocence or crimes, but worse for those who are innocent, rounded up, tortured, given secret trials, and even when the judges under those extreme circumstances order their release, are held indefinitely because they have become a source of embarrassment for our nation at its worst behavior under the former Administration.

These people belong to families and communities in other nations. Those nations feel about us the way we feel about North Korea at this time. It is much easier for the radicals in the Middle East to now recruit young men and women, who are helpless against our government, our indifference, and whom they know are torturing their people. Radicals love that we have created for them, evidence that we are the monsters they say we are.

Being dismissive of their anger does nothing to make us safer in this world, nor even respected by other nations. Declaring the innocent to be guilty of terrorism makes us look too stupid to know the difference and too afraid to find out. We appear weak. We appear to resort to bullying and abusing other nations because we are afraid of everyone.

Fear was the theme for 8 years. It is still being sold in the more profoundly unenlightened puddles of conservatives who worship gibberish. It is what weakened us as a nation, both from within, and in the view of other nations. It is what made us vulnerable.

Nothing done in violence is ever done well. Yet, we acted in fear and violence, and lost our footing on the moral high ground. Still struggling to regain our standing, at home and abroad, we give far too much voice to the extremists in our own backyard. Far too much permission for them to speak on our behalf or act in ways that are horrifying to us all. Violence is used to recruit more who will act more violently. Violence is action without thought of consequences.

One of the consequences, aside from losing the respect of other nations, is our economic decline. That decline revealed yet another weakness in our system: Greed gave us economic feet of clay. We allowed the financial industry to demolish our economy, throw hard working people out of their homes, and tank our economy.

While we were being whipped into a frenzy of anger and hatred, fear and loathing at other nations, that which did us in came from within our own borders. They took advantage of our ignorance of their games and our distraction of fear and "today's terror alert level is Orange".. to rob us blind and leave us economically, stripped bare, and bleeding. They had been feeding off of us, and with 8 years of opportunity without oversight, our government too busy demanding we not question their activities, nor the activities of their friends, they deflated the economy into a recession near depression.

We appear, to other nations, to be run by bullies, ignore the suffering of our own people, neglect our children, and to illegally arrest, detain and torture whomever we please.

I am sickened by what has transpired in North Korea. I am also sickened by how much like North Korea, we have behaved towards our own people, and towards detainees illegally held in secret locations, their secret trials, torture and abuse.

I just hope that clearer heads and cooler temperaments view my country not by how our government has mistreated others, but as a nation filled with people who want and are working towards righting the wrongs. I hope they don't want to come over and bomb us because we are mistreating theirs.

I hope this is dealt with on a government to government level and that no one makes the egregious error of attacking the people of that monstrous government.

For that reason, because we need to regain our identity as a nation of decent people, we must close Guantanamo, and put a halt to all these "outsourced" secret prisons that do our dirty work, and those who make an industry of false imprisonment and torture must be put out of commission. We must free the innocent as we want our innocent to be freed.

We must lead by example in this world. Clearly, following the worst examples of despotic regimes, has rendered us more vulnerable on so many levels.

Clearly, being abusive to others has not made us stronger. It has not made us safer. It has only made our cries for Justice and fair play, hypocritical, and our outrage anemic.