I am sick of liberals. I am sick of conservatives. I am sick of the people who play politics with the lives of others because of the innocents who get caught in the middle.
The US base in Guantanamo Bay is just one example. Many conservatives would demand that everyone held there is guilty and should be held indefinitely without the benefit of legal counsel, without the benefit of a trial. Many liberals would demand that these people are necessarily innocent and should be released (and, almost inevitably demands for compensation for this injustice would probably follow). As with so many other things, however, I believe the truth is somewhere in the middle.
We're asked by our government to believe that the people held in Guantanamo Bay are guilty, without presentation of indictment or even the issuance of the names of those being held. A government that lied about Waco. A government that lied about Ruby Ridge. A government that has proven itself consistently and repeatedly capable of lying to cover its own rear end when the heat is on.
The truth is, I WANT to believe that every individual held at Gitmo is guilty. I really do. To believe that we have a government capable of exiling dissidents to some private Gulag, without even notifying family members of their existence is unthinkable. It is a nightmare that belongs in dystopian visions, or in Cold War era socialist governments, not in the America that I love and in which I was born, along with 14 generations of my family before me. It is not the America defined in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence.
But the truth is also that I've seen a government fully capable of lying, and willing to do so when it is politically expedient. A government that cares nothing of its people, but only of power, a feeling that manifests itself on both the right and left sides of the political spectrum, and everywhere in between. Do I trust the government that has wrongfully stolen so many children from the families of the poor who were guilty of nothing more than being impoverished? Do I trust the government that has stolen our earnings in the name of Social Security only to embezzle the funds on a level that, had it happened in a private firm, would have certainly earned not a few convictions of embezzlement and fraud? Do I trust the government that has a 230 year history of deception, fraud, and decet? Or do I ask questions of that government, and question everything they serve up to us?
I choose the latter course.
I find it entirely possible, if not plausible, that some of the Gitmo detainees may have simply been people who reacted to the invasion of their country, either by force of arms, or force of words. They may or may not have supported Saddam, but rather may have followed an idea, much as we follow the ideas of our own federal government. But the truth will never out itself, unless we are allowed to ask questions, to demand answers, and to hold our government accountable to the people, rather than holding its people accountable to the government.
Guantanamo Bay may be a grave injustice. It may not be. But it is not unpatriotic to ask, to question, and to insist that we get answers. It is, rather, the EPITOME of patriotism.