Drumwaster's Rants

June 2005
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Finrod's First Law of Bandwidth: A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it takes the bandwidth of ten thousand.


Saturday, June 11, 2005


Guantanamo? You can have it.

It’s worthy to note that whenever liberals have a chance to appease or just downright please our enemies, they’ll do everything possible to see that it’s a promise that’s carried through.

There have been several stories in the press in recent days about the desirability of closing the American detention center (prison) in Guantanamo. Jimmy Carter thinks we should; Donald Rumsfeld thinks we shouldn’t; W is apparently undecided.

It would, of course, be intrinsically desirable to shut the prison down; and it might also do something positive for international opinion about the United States—since Gitmo has become an emblem of the abuse of power by the United States.

I would suggest that we go a giant step further: we should not only close the prison, but we should return Guantanamo in its entirety to the Cubans. It is “ours” only because we seized it by force: while our troops were in Cuba a century ago, we compelled the Cubans to agree to “lease” the base to us for a nominal rent. (Castro has refused for years to cash the rent checks we send annually to the Cuban government.) The story is complex and sordid, and the details aren’t necessary here. But we should recognize that not only in Cuba but throughout Latin America, Guantanamo is known as a symbol of American empire and of mistreatment of our hemispheric neighbors. What a delightfully positive (if unlikely) step it would be for the United States to announce that it was not only closing the detention center but returning Guantanamo itself to the country to which it rightfully belongs. Now that might be a way of turning a page in history. . . .

Six years ago, I really wasn’t as cynical as I am now. Throughout the Clinton years, I figured that groups such as MoveOn.org, which was created by two Silicon Valley men as a meager attempt to “move on” passed the Clinton impeachment so everyone would forget about it, were fly-by-night groups that would be here today and gone tomorrow. Never once did I believe that the pattern of thought expressed here by Alex Keyssar, and supported by members of MoveOn.org would ever become mainstream. Unfortunately, I’m the one who has ended up with egg on my face.


Posted by Helo at 05:55 PM | (0) Trackbacks
Category: Essays |

Banned in China

(This is a Patriot’s Journey post. Others joining in are Alex, Scott, JimK, and Moorewatch. If you wish to join in, feel free.)

Yup, this site is now officially unavailable in China. Why?

Because of these two words: Democracy and Freedom.

Merely looking for those words on an Internet connection in China will get you an error message that reads, “This item contains forbidden speech. Please delete the forbidden speech from this item.”

Government control of the media is a vicious circle. For example, in North Korea, it is forbidden to own a radio or television set that has not been modified to limit its reception to only government channels. In consequence, it wasn’t surprising to me to learn that the North Koreans actually think they won the Korean War, and that the half a million tons of food and half a million tons of fuel that Clinton tried to bribe them with was a “tribute to the greatness of the Korean people”.

And that’s another of the great things about this country. I can say things like “Freedom for Taiwan!” or “Hey, let’s treat the Koran exactly how Muslims treat the Bible!” and the government can’t do anything to me. I can get news sources from just about anywhere on the planet, and research any subject under the sun, always judging and comparing what I see around me with news ideas and thoughts, weighing and choosing to find which one best fits the facts I have available to me. If I were unable to have anything to compare it to, then I would never be able to see that things might be better.

Well, even though they will never get to see it, I extend my fondest wishes that the people in China get the same kind of freedom they aren’t even allowed to know about.

God bless America.

(Oh, and Happy Birthday to my beloved wife!)

Posted by Drumwaster at 10:36 AM | (0) Trackbacks
Category: Patriot's Journey |
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