Many liberals decry the existence of the U.S. Naval Base Detention Center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (GTMO). And they do so rightfully. It should be a universal outrage, no doubt. How can a freedom-touting country allow it's government to create a prison in which people can be held indefinitely without trial? It was placed in Cuba, so that the laws and protections of the U.S. somehow wouldn't apply. And, we're supposed to be ok with that? It's almost universally understood that the treatment of the prisoners there is inhumane. Torture of various types has been inflicted. We know this. Many have died. And keep in mind that these are prisoners who have never been given the due process of law, never to have their cases heard by a jury of their peers, never to have an impartial judge hear the arguments, and thus never been convicted. They've only been accused. Yet, despite this, they have been imprisoned, beaten, tortured, degraded, and many have been killed. And, again I ask, we're supposed to be ok with that?
Sadly, on the original Facebook post, I saw many comments primarily in support of the prison. It was mostly obviously uninformed people assuming the guilt of those imprisoned there. Really? How ironic it is that this support heavily hails from those who claim to love the USA and would cheerily accept 'patriotic' as an appropriate adjective for themselves. These people who love freedom and the protection of rights for all people, yet are simultaneously in support of a government who would strip that freedom and those rights away simply on the basis of accusation alone? It's not ironic. It's contradictory.
Worse yet, many of these prisoners have been "released" many times over from the various oversight committees involved citing that the prisoners in subject weren't believed to have ever been involved in the crimes of which they have been accused. Yet, they've not been let go. They remain incarcerated. To date, 166 prisoners are locked up there, 86 of which have been cleared for release.
I would venture to say that the real enemies to the U.S. are the corrupt government officials displaying Anti-American values who allowed this to be created in the first place and the ones currently in office who aren't actively and legitimately seeking to bring an end to it.
That being all said, it occurred to me while reading the Facebook post that the politically right-leaning self-proclaimed patriots in support of this heinous practice aren't alone in their hypocrisy. The vast majority of the politically left-leaning crowd on this subject is also displaying a gross inconsistency. While the more liberal crowd is almost unanimously opposed to GTMO's Detention Center, simultaneously they almost unanimously support the legal allowance of abortion.
The parallels between these two injustices are astounding. Let's look at some from off the top of my head.
- Both are denying the rights to live as free individuals.
- Both are having a sentence carried out while being denied a trial.
- Both involve human beings being treated inhumane.
- Both have the majority of their advocacy by individuals who either don't know what is actually happening in the process or don't want to know.
- Both are advocated by those who support freedom of everyone BUT the individual who is receiving the sentence.
- Both are advocated by people the majority of which wouldn't be emotionally capable of carrying out the sentence if asked.
- Both sentences would be an illegal act in the U.S. if the location of the one receiving the sentence was on U.S. soil.
I could go on if given enough time, but I bet you get the point. One cannot be against one and not the other. It's not logically consistent.
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