The topsy-turvy state of human rights
Throughout the Cold War, propagandists in this country consistently painted the US as the world's champion of human rights and the rule of law, while the Soviet Union and its member states were cast as paragons of evil. Although neither characterization was entirely accurate, the relative comparison between the two did highlight stark differences between the freedom of the West and the oppression of the Soviet sphere.
Things have reversed almost exactly 180 degrees during the Bush presidency.
Today marks the sixth anniversary of the establishment of the American gulag at Guantanamo Bay; this dark stain on the character and history of our country continues to make a mockery of the notion that the United States still stands for human rights or the rule of law. The Bush White House has systematically destroyed nearly all remaining vestiges of America's former claim to any kind of moral superiority in the world, and I cannot foresee any way in which our previous stature among the nations of the world can be restored. This administration continues to break national and international law by holding captives outside both civilian law and the constraints of the Geneva Conventions; our outlaw president has done critical and irreparable damage to the notion that this country respects the rule of law for anyone except the moneyed and the privileged.
We should observe the Guantanamo anniversary by reflecting on how we have allowed this country's founding principles to be bastardized with perverse, malignant impunity.
Meanwhile, the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan (which is not exactly a shining exemplar of human rights) has abolished the death penalty.
Today, a mere sixteen years after the Soviet Union collapsed, the US is the country building gulags, and the former Soviet republics are abolishing the death penalty because it's barbaric. Chew on that.