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Guantanamo: What Goes Around Comes Around

Two American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, were arrested by North Korean border guards last month (March 2009). Ling and Lee worked for former Vice President Al Gore’s media venture Current TV, based in San Francisco . Since their arrest the world has heard almost nothing about them. Even our own State Department has been reluctant to talk much about this arrest, hopefully because the have important back channel negotiations going on that they don’t want to screw up because of something said in an angry press conference.

The North Korean government eventually announced that Ling and Lee would be put on trial and could face up to 10 years in a hard labor prison. (Are there any other kind of prison in North Korea ?)

While our government has been tight lipped about the arrest of two American journalists, American journalists have been rigorously inquiring about the two captives, asking where the women are being held, asking if they are being treated well, or are they being beaten, tortured, or starved. I remember when North Korea seized a Navy ship, believed to be spying, and the treatment of our military men was harsh enough to be made into movies. Journalists are naturally concerned about the treatment of fellow journalists. What happens to Ling and Lee could easily happen to other journalists. The response to U.S. concerns about the well being of Ling and Lee was finally responded to by North Korean officials.

" We are not Guantanamo .”

I think of the wisdom that comes from school yard trash talking boys:

“What goes around comes around,” or “I’ll give you a taste of your own medicine.”

A country that has a history of torturing prisoners, who allows their own people to starve while they spend millions on developing missile technology and atomic weaponry scoffs at the United States for daring to inquire about the treatment of prisoners. Why? After all, the North Koreans arrested people IN their own country. The United States took hundreds of people from their own country and sent them to Guantanamo , and tortured many of them. (Let us not quibble over whether water boarding is torture or not. Let’s just remember that after World War II, those Japanese officials convicted of water boarding our soldiers were executed because what water boarding was torture. At one time the United State government arrested, prosecuted, convicted, and executed people as war criminals because they did what we have done in Guantanamo .)

We, the United States took people that were suspected of hostile actions or perhaps people who could possibly have knowledge of terrorist planning and we water boarded them, and used other “enhanced interrogation techniques.” The hundreds imprisoned in a make-shift prison just off the shores of our country have been held for seven years, not charged with any crime, their families and their governments have been told nothing about their well-being, our government has denied these prisoners or delayed for years these captives access to attorneys, the Red Cross, or communication with their families.

North Korea and the rest of the world watched as the United States ignored the rule of law, broke their own anti-torture policies (the Geneva Convention, the US Army Field Manual on Interrogation), their response is something akin to: We’re bad, but we’re not that bad, not as bad as what you have done. The North Korean response to the US asking about the imprisonment of our citizens is akin to the cliché: Isn’t that the pot calling the Kettle black?”

What the United States does, is seen by the rest of the world. You might say that those bad things happened under the Bush White House, and we have a new smarter, more perceptive and compassionate leader in President Obama. We could make that argument, except for one thing: the United States , under President Obama has, as of this writing, done nothing about the torture perpetrated by the Bush - Cheney regime. Our government, has not even had the will to convene a Guantanamo Truth Commission. We have government officials that plan and implement torture on people not even charged with a crime and our government hasn’t got the spine or the will to even inquire about what happened and under whose authority it was authorized.

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