Don't Let The Criminals of Guantanamo Walk Free

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

I give no credibility to those who can can condemn the horrors of Nazi concentration camps and places like Auschwitz with the view that it couldn't happen here in the US. Here in the 21st century where we are supposed to be so civilized, "How would the German people have allowed that?" people will often say of the existence of Auschwitz and  Treblinka and Bergen Belsen.

Leaving aside the historical record that shows quite clearly that the modern nation state we call the United States was based on such activity; the genocidal wars against the native population that included biological warfare and ethnic cleansing for example, and more recently US capitalism killed some 3 million people in Vietnam air dropping chemicals on their food, the people themselves, and even their own troops.

But what is Guantanamo?  Most of the US population has no clue that after 911 and with the help of the feudal warlords it paid billions to in the war against the former Soviet Union, the US offered poverty stricken people living in a country trapped in a feudal bubble and with a centuries long history of struggle against colonial powers, cash if they would go out, find terrorists and hand them over to them---------so they did.

No US official responsible for this war crime has paid for the inhuman brutality inflicted on the people held in Guantanamo or Bagram or any other US government torture center.  The US houses some of the most efficient terrorists and killers on the planet. Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, George W Bush Obama and, through their political inaction most ranking members of the Democratic and Republican parties.

How can George W Bush not be seen as anything but a mass murderer?

Obama signed the Executive Order to close Guantanamo, a US occupied part of Cuba and promised it would be closed within a year, yet despite the Democrats in control of the House and Senate, nothing happened. This is not a rare occurrence but standard procedure. It was not an accident. This is one of the many lessons that some of the young people so enamored with the many new faces that have emerged from the last election will have to learn about the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party is a capitalist party and cannot serve the interests of the working class in America and never will. 

Trump is such a degenerate and vile human being that George Bush is being re-invented as some sort of cuddly character. He's best friends with Michelle Obama now, even offered her a piece of candy at the funeral of the dead bourgeois they all made fun of, John McCain. Michelle Obama, like her husband, one of the more cultured and refined representatives of US imperialism, has even been seen in the mass media hugging this mass murderer and referring to him as her "partner in crime" Class solidarity is strong among them.

The problem is that the capitalist media has been very successful in manipulating the working class population, blaming foreigners, immigrants, the poor for all our ills. The havoc the US war machine has waged on poor former colonial countries is barbarism to say the least. Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with 911, is no longer a viable nation state. After 17 years and thousands upon thousands dead including some Americans, Afghanistan is still a "failed" state. The largest and most influential of the failed states of course is the US---the guy with the big stick.

We should be sickened by what we see in the video above. Imagine how working there turned young people in to monsters, destroyed their humanity much as the humanity of the operators of the attack helicopter in Collateral Murder was destroyed.  Not only that, it is what drives what the Pentagon calls "terrorist" activity.   Read Wikileaks' The Gitmo Files and watch this "Collateral Murder" video, that's why they went after Chelsea Manning and why they want Assange, they brought us the truth about what our government is doing domestically and abroad.

A former co-worker Facebook friend put something up about how we "owe illegals nothing" in reference to the caravan and general immigration through our southern borders. Naturally, he has no clue why people from the south risk life and limb (always rape for women) to come to the US. They are not migrants, they are economic refugees fleeing conditions brought about through decades of US foreign policy in the region. Canadians aren't scrambling to come here.

The same post called for respecting veterans and he's obviously a Trump fan. Well, veterans are not respected by the US government, or any government for that matter. There are hundreds of thousands of them in severe physical and mental crisis leading to the statistic that more commit suicide than die in combat. All the flag waving is for when they're sent to kill or be killed not for when they return damaged goods; that's money out and suddenly there's a shortage. And it's not to defend our so-called freedoms, that the US ruling class is dismantling, but to enrich the likes of the war criminal Dick Cheney and other investors plundering the world's resources. 

Needless to say I don't need FB friends like this former co-worker who most likely, like so many of us, couldn't locate Iraq or Afghanistan on a map as taxpayer money was raining down on its citizens in the form of bombs and missiles.   Personally I am repulsed by that trick slogan, "Support our Troops" as all it means is to defend their actions, US corporate wars. I would do everything in my power to prevent a child of mine from dying or killing others in such a worthless venture that is not in our interest. The rich don't send their kids, they have better options. The best way to support anyone, troops included is not place them in harms way without cause.  A civilized society would provide better options for our young people.

Don't let what happened to these people the US war machine stuck in Guantanamo die without calling out the perpetrators and calling for their prosecution just as a matter of principle. I heard a young guy on TV talking about how "we" took back the House meaning the Democrats.

Imagine identifying with a political party owned and operated by billionaires. It is not without good reason that this party is referred to as the "death of all social movements".

That's the political hole we find ourselves in.