Kill Them All!

by Dennis Green

There is a simple solution to closing Guantanimo, and one that would please Republicans. Just kill them all, all the inmates there, whether they’re guilty or not, prisoners of war or “enemy combatants.” Just shoot them all in the head.

Whoops! They’re dead.

But here in America, we pretend that we regard human life as sacred. Why else would we murder abortion doctors for slaying all those fetuses? Why else would the American Council of Catholic Bishops insist that terminal patients be kept alive, regardless of their wishes, or those of their families? Why else would we slaughter so many Muslims in the Middle East?

So let’s just, for once in our tangled history, be consistent. Kill ‘em all. Just off ‘em. Why the hell not?

We kill them “over there,” in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, anywhere we can. So why not just close Guantanimo, that tragic symbol of our national viciousness, by finishing off the last of the detainees?

Since 9/11, and the murder of almost 3,000 Americans, 4,500 or more have died in combat, and by some estimates 10,000 Iraqis who would still be alive had we not invaded that nation. Another four million Iraqi refugees have re-settled in other countries, and still, the massive suicide bombings go on. So much for the “Surge.”

“Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!” went the battle cry in the Pacific Theater in WWII. So it wasn’t surprising that we’ve been the only nation on earth to use nuclear weapons against a civilian population, dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, after the Japanese warlords had been attempting all that summer to surrender, just to show Joe Stalin who was boss.

So much for President Harry S. “The Buck Stops Here” Truman.

But if we can kill more than 200,000 Japanese with our A-Bombs in 1945, and thousands more from radiation poisoning over the subsequent years, we can certainly justify the execution of only 200 inmates remaining at Guantanimo, which, according to the current administration “has damaged national security interests and become a tremendous recruiting tool for al Qaeda.”

Our respect for human life can obviously adapt to a sliding scale of morality. It already has. If that Commandment, after all, “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” were really meant to be taken literally, or even seriously, we would be in serious trouble, if not deep shit.

But if we can pick and choose which killings are murder and which are not, we should certainly be able to justify a little ethnic cleansing of that Marine Base in Cuba. And wouldn’t that be far better than possibly endangering American lives with yet another maximum security prison on our own soil? And even if they’re innocent, by now, if we simply release them back to their home countries, they’re probably so turned against us that they can’t be trusted.

So I say, Off ‘Em All! My God, if we got so upset every time an American airliner went down in flames because of Canada geese in its engines, or pilot error, or faulty insulation, we’d have our knickers in a twist all the time, and who wants that?

©2010 Dennis Green