Becoming monsters.

When we spend our rhetorical energy demonizing the terrorists who would attack America, we make it easier for some of us to become monsters ourselves. When you dehumanize your enemy, you make it easier for some to abuse them. The Department of Justice has been foot-dragging on hearings at Gitmo, and most of the world had a suspicion as to why.

That suspicion is confirmed by reports from the Red Cross that Americans are engaging in intentional and systematic human rights abuses at Guantanamo.

These reports would confirm the claims of those who have been released from Gitmo, as well as those attorneys who have been representing detainees. (A PDF document enumerating some of the abuses at Gitmo, as reported by former detainees, is available here.)

Need The Malcontent remind those readers who feel less-than-sympathetic towards those who have been abused that such actions increase the risk to our soldiers and civilians abroad and, perhaps just as importantly, cede the moral high ground that we generally, as a country, prefer to claim for our own? We didn't think so.