andygates: (Default)
andygates ([personal profile] andygates) wrote2006-06-13 02:51 pm

Gitmo

The latest round of stories are even more disgusting than usual. This is really a question for the Americans who might be reading: doesn't the whole thing, nearly five years on, fill you with shame? If not, why the hell not?

[identity profile] simoneck.livejournal.com 2006-06-13 02:17 pm (UTC)(link)
I thought the comments about the suicides being publicity for the Jihad were appalling.
Howabout publicity for the shocking desperation of having spent 5 years in prison, without any charges or even rights and no sign of due process or an end point.

[identity profile] andygates.livejournal.com 2006-06-13 02:31 pm (UTC)(link)
Agreed, but that's a British viewpoint (interesting to see Tory Boy agreeing though ;) ). I just wonder what the Yanks think...

[identity profile] ravenbait.livejournal.com 2006-06-13 02:51 pm (UTC)(link)
Tory Boy?

Tory Boy has just realised that while he might survive grazing on Wubya's fæces, breathing it just means he's gonna drown himself in shit.

Gods but I'm cranky today.

[identity profile] simoneck.livejournal.com 2006-06-13 09:17 pm (UTC)(link)
By Tory boy he means me.
And isn't it Labour (or at least Tony) doing the sucking up to 'Wubya'?

[identity profile] ravenbait.livejournal.com 2006-06-13 09:22 pm (UTC)(link)
Apologies.

I thought he was referring to the Mr Tony Blair. Because...

Oh I don't know why. Because my brain has been up the spout today. Tony. Tory. There's only one letter in it and I always think that Harry Enfield's Tory Boy is more like Mr Blair than anyone else. They're all the same.

[identity profile] simoneck.livejournal.com 2006-06-13 09:15 pm (UTC)(link)
Interesting you should say that, but I'm not sure why a tendancy towards free markets and small government should make me like guantanamo more than anyone else.
And I can't see how the US justify it internally, other than ignoring it I suppose. It just makes such a mockery of the 'truth, justice and the american way' type message they are trying to send out. Maybe if 9/11 was in the UK we'd feel differently. 7/7 was bad, but not the same defining event that the attack on the twin towers was.

[identity profile] andygates.livejournal.com 2006-06-14 08:10 am (UTC)(link)
Actually you're right - you're not so much a tory as a free-market liberal. ;)

It only makes a mockery of the American Way if you assume that the American Way is scaleable to everyone else. But I don't think it is - I think it's predicated on the idea of American exceptionalism *exactly* the way the British were at the height of Empire. The rest of the world can be "improved" or exploited depending on their malleability and usefulness.

But no Americans have commented, bah!

7/7 was bad but nothing significantly different to what we're used to, and certainly nothing worse than Madrid or, frankly, the daily shelling into civilian areas that the Israeli military do. 9/11 was iconic for its scale, but mostly it punctured the idea of exceptional status: you get blown up just like the rest of us. I still think it's outrage born of wounded *pride* that is the main effect of 9/11.

But this is drifting waaay off-topic.