Proud To Be An American?....
Yes, Most of the Time
by James Glaser
January 16, 2008

The other day I was reading about the Peace Corps being 46 years old now, and how over 168,000 Americans have volunteered to serve over the years. The story went on about how they were looking for older Americans, Americans with experience to help out around the world. Stories like that make you proud of our country, and it tells us that we still do good things around the globe.

Then while you are thinking about something like that, it always seems to happen, a story about torture jumps out at you, and you realize that one torture story can wipe out all the good those 168,000 Peace Corps workers did. It is kind of like that phrase, "What have you done for me lately?"

Something like 12,000 government officials from around the world have signed a petition to get Washington to close out torture prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Right away, you start to remember the pictures of the Iraqi prisoners we tortured at Abu Ghraib. There were dozens of pictures the world saw. Then you think back and remember that there were really hundreds of pictures, but our government kept most of them secret, and one Senator who saw them said it was like a trip to hell. Things like that don't make one very proud to be an American.

Whenever there is a natural disaster any place around the world, America is Johnny-on-the-Spot with help, and that makes me proud, but then you read about another market in Iraq being blown up.

The other day I heard the story of how when asked about the 500,000 Iraqi children being killed because of the United States embargo on that country, our Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, said that she thought the cost of those children was worth it. This statement is so powerful I had to look it up, and here is how it went from the News Program "60 Minutes,"

Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price—we think the price is worth it.

Now something like that can not make any American proud, but that was a decade ago, and you would think we would catch on, but we don't. Remember how the world wants us to close our torture prison in Cuba? Well, that isn't the only one we have. Yesterday's headline from Inter Press Service was, Afghan Prison Looks Like Another Guantanamo. This prison is at Bagram Air Base, a United States military facility that has been in the news before.

In 2005, following well-documented accounts of detainee deaths, torture, and "disappeared" prisoners, the U.S. undertook efforts to turn the facility over to the Afghan government. But thanks to a series of legal, bureaucratic and administrative missteps, the prison is still under U.S. military control. And a recent confidential report from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has reportedly complained about the continued mistreatment of prisoners.

But after an investigation by The New York Times, the Army acknowledged that the deaths were homicides. The prisoners were chained to the ceiling and beaten, causing their deaths. Military coroners ruled that both the prisoners' deaths were homicide.

That's right. We hung prisoners from the ceiling with chains and then beat then to death. You read stuff like that and the pride level goes right down the tubes. Secret Prisons? Yes, we have secret prisons, and we torture people there. How do I know this? President Bush told the world we did, and you know what else? We put Japanese officers to death after World War II for "waterboarding" some of our troops that they captured. Today, our President and our Attorney General don't see anything wrong with waterboarding.

I tell you this, we need a lot more than one article on the history of the Peace Corps to counter-act what our government in Washington is doing. We need something good coming out of the United States every day for the next ten years before we can all hold our heads high and be proud of our country again. That will only work if we stop the horrors we are inflicting on the world right now.

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