When We Become the Enemy

"When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you." -- Friedrich Neitzsche

I will confess that the night we began the invasion of Iraq, I was driving my car. When I heard it on the radio, I began to cry, and I looked for a church where I could pray. I went to a monastery purported to be open 24 hours, but it wasn't. So finally I just pulled over to the side of the road and cried, and prayed for my country, and cried some more. I have never been so disappointed in my country in my entire life.

Many people called me unpatriotic. It is thought in this country that we must be sheep, agreeing with our leaders, "supporting our troops," in order to be a patriot. How is this possible? This is a country of dissenters, was based on dissent. Our ancestors came in protest of taxes, in search of freedom, religious and otherwise.

For some, it seems impossible to understand that, to the world, the U.S. can look evil. We can look evil, and powerful, and greedy; in fact, we can do more than just look that way. We can be that way. We still imagine ourselves as the little guy, the fighter, but what we really are is the big bully.

I've spent the last seven years worrying that the U.S. will become the new Soviet Union, the new China, the new [write name of oppressive country here]. It is so easy to forget, after all, that those countries aren't full of evil, snarling Nazi's or rampant, control-hungry Communists, but of people. They're full of people -- children, mothers, aunties and uncles, businessmen and women -- just people. And we must always tread carefully, or our "Republic" will become just as Machiavellian as any other in history.

Today I read that the interrogation methods used in Guantanamo Bay were those used by Chinese communists. They were the methods used against our own soldiers; the methods we've demonized the past 50 years and called "torture" are now called "interrogation techniques." The only difference in the training materials was the title, changed from "Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance" to "Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape." Originally a training program to get our men used to possible illegal and unethical torture practices, it became a handbook for use in Guantanamo.

So this is what we've come to: U.S., the "new" China. We buy their products, ignore their human rights offenses, and then we use their handbook to train our men and women to commit those same offenses.

I was sad the day we invaded Afghanistan. I was even sadder the day we invaded Iraq on what was clearly a ridiculous premise. Today, I am conflicted; is it possible to be more disappointed? Or should I just become numb to the loss of greatness I see in my own country, which I love?

Tough choice.

China inspired interrogations at Guantanamo
The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency.(Click here for full article)