Guantanamo Bay - Shame of the West

I've never really believed in information gathered by torture, for the simple reason that I personally am a total coward. You wouldn't have to shackle me up or force me to piss on myself, it'd be enough to show me a pair of pliers and mention the word "nipples" to get whatever you wanted out of me. Yes, I believe in a lot of things, passionately, but I doubt there's a single one that'd stand up to a bucket of water and some strategically-placed electrodes. Until recently, here in the UK, evidence/confessions/information obtained by torture were considered inadmissable in a court of law. Sadly that's changed recently, and I think we have Guantanamo Bay to thank for that. Once Mr. Bush decided to bin the Geneva Convention, it gave latitude to any regime, ranging from the allegedly democratic (UK) to the downright despotic (Nigeria), to do the same. I've read a lot about this being "The American Century": like most Brits, I'll have a private mutter about ex-colonials taking on airs and graces, but I'm realistic enough to agree that America will set the tone for the decades to come. So far (and we're only 5 years into this century) it's a pretty abysmal tone, where the powerful allow themselves unlimited latitude when dealing with the weak, and where scientific evidence of (for instance) climate change can be denied by the richest (and guiltiest) nation on Earth for politcal expediency.

When we deny human rights, we cease to be human, or humane. When our governments sanction treatment of foreign nationals which we all know we'd go to war to prevent our own citizens from undergoing, we're hypocrites. I don't know a single person in Guantanamo Bay, but they're all my brothers and sisters. The testimony of recently-released British prisoners as to the conditions there, and the guilty-until-proven-dead attitude of their captors, only strengthens my belief in this. The desecration of the Koran, for instance, should be intolerable to any thinking person (and I'm not including Mr. Bush in this category). I don't have a sacred book myself, I'm not a religious person, but I do have an ikon of the Virgin and Child which I love for it's beauty. Yes, I'd be disgusted and revolted if someone threw it to the floor and trod on it just to hurt me; yes, I'd think of them as barbarous and inhumane. God, or Allah, only know what it must feel like to see the Bible or the Koran treated in this way.

If America has the hubris to take on the political and spiritual leadership of the world, then it needs to clean up its act. Any country with the sheer gall to make such a powerful statement must first make itself irreproachable. The US needs to clean out its own Augean Stables; there have been two highly dubious elections (ahem - Florida), and now we're all subjected (by association) to the lingering shame and vileness of the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. There is no excuse for torture, no excuse for revenge on individuals for what others have done. Either try these people or free them; this is the accepted code of human rights in all civilised nations, and the US risks dropping out of this category. We have to contend with the US as a superpower, but opposition will continue to grow as democracy in America is cauterised and castrated. This could have been the American Century, we could all have made strides towards freedom and democracy, but not with the US as it is as a leader.

Coming up next: why Bush won't sign up to Kyoto, and why the US declines to help Africa - one voice in the blogoshpere.