Blood on our hands

I remember claims that everyday German citizens were not aware of (the extent of) the Holocaust during the Nazi period. These claims are accorded less and less credence in recent years. If there was ignorance, it was largely willful.

What has happened and is happening in the name of the people of the United States at Guantanamo and other places of "detention" around the globe is not something of which we are ignorant either. A reckoning will come. Yet one more report has appeared in the September issue of Harper's, “American Gulag: Prisoners’ Tales from the War on Terror” by Eliza Griswold, as summarized by Mahablog. At Guantanamo (alone?) . . .

To date, “98 detainees have died (34 of those deaths are being investigated as homicides) and more than 600 U.S. personnel have been implicated in some form of abuse.”

600?! And, my personal favorite:

Since even the Red Cross is given extremely limited and restricted access to the prisons (and, of course, no access at all to the “black sites,” shipboard brigs, or “forward operating sites” where most abuses occur), essentially this means there is no way to find out what’s really going on.

And Israel went to war because two soldiers were kidnapped? American limitations on Red Cross access to detainees is not news, is it? If it were another nation (say, Iran) holding numerous US citizens without some sort of independent, humanitarian access and accountability, what would the mood in this nation be?

Hear the word of the LORD, you rulers of Sodom! Listen to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah!

When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow. (Isaiah 1:10, 11-17)

May as well skip church this weekend. . . .