But that's not what America is about! Listen to meeeeee!
Quote of note:
Every article of this sort requires a health warning. I am not in favour of international terrorism; blowing people up and the other grievous sins of the Taliban and al-Qa'ida.
And having put the editorialist's troll repellant on prominent display I direct your attention to what drew my attention.
Robert Chesshyre: America's brutal culture of unseen oppression
Rotten apples only thrive when the barrel is rancid. Prison guards take their tone from the top
25 May 2004
Travelling in Costa Rica, I met an ex-pat, all-American American - a craggy, Lee Marvin lookalike, with a black Stetson, cowboy boots and a wide leather belt sporting a death's- head buckle. My immediate reaction was that here was the archetypal red neck, who had probably left the United States to live in central America because he found the US soft on "commies" and wanted a home where a man could be a "man".
We fell into conversation, and I asked why he had left home. To my surprise, he cited American penal policy. He didn't feel comfortable and couldn't sleep nights in a country that locked up so many of its citizens; kept thousands (mainly poor and black) incarcerated for years on death rows; and had mandatory "life means life" sentences handed down to impoverished inner city young men who fell foul of the law three times.
He touched a chord. I had fairly recently lived in the United States, and had equally felt the weight of that unseen oppression. Across the sunny uplands of American middle-class life - little league baseball, barbecues in the yard and "have a nice day" greetings at every checkout - lies a giant shadow. It is not something that concerns many citizens. "We've had enough," said an accountant, when I expressed concern that two million Americans are in jail. "Throw away the key."
This man has never been mugged, his house never burgled, his family never molested, while most Britons I know have been the victims of crime. On all else - race, feminism, gay rights - he is "progressive", and he would describe himself as a liberal. Yet the fact that black teenagers, contemporaries of his own college kids, are locked away in violent, custodial rat-holes for the rest of their lives hardly concerned him.
It came as little surprise to me that the Bush administration hit upon the notion of caging al-Qa'ida suspects in conditions few Americans would tolerate for their dogs. Nor that horrific abuses have taken place in Iraqi jails. Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, who treats the Geneva Convention much as most motorists treat speed restrictions, must have calculated that - as far as domestic American opinion is concerned - he could act with impunity.
Public complicity is underpinned by a staggering ignorance. Listen to interviews with home town folk in the places from which the Baghdad guards come. "They" - i.e. the wretched Iraqis - deserve all they get - after all, "they" did it to us; "they" blew up the twin towers.
