The Talking Dog interviews David Rose, author of Guantanamo: The War on Human Rights and a contributing editor of The Guardian and Vanity Fair. Here’s the note of optimism:
Eventually there will be a pendulum change– the values that made the United States unique– the power of its Constitution– will reassert themselves. Enough people will regard Guantanamo with the same shame as the detention of Japanese in World War II… or the Red Scares… We’ll just have to see if and when this happens.
Let’s hope.
Indeed.
It puts me in mind of a Thomas Jefferson quote that I have come back to frequently since 2000, though ripped from its historical context: “…we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles.”
Oh, it’ll happen. I’m a big believer in the pendulum theory of history.
The counterpoint to that, however, is that eventually there will be a group of Americans that look back on gitmo as “the good old days”, and rewrite history to say that this was when we “got things done”, and will run on that platform … Hopefully by then we’ll have matured enough as a nation to ignore the idiots.
-me