Whats in Word?

Everyone has heard the phrase “sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me.” Well this morning, I read some words in an article by Tom Hundley in the Chicago Tribune, and they hurt, went right through me. “People feel that if they vote for the radar, they are signing up for Guantanamo," a member of parliament from the Czech Republic was quoted as saying concerning the issue of a radar station to be placed in that country by the U.S., in tandem with missiles in Poland, to thwart any attacks upon the U.S. or Europe from a “rogue” nation, or so says the U.S. government.

Consider that someone who lives in a country dominated by the Soviet Union could now, in so short a time, think that if they aligned themselves with the United States, you are allying yourself with torture.

How did we allow ourselves to get to this point? To be thought of as torturers by the people who staged the “Velvet Revolution” where not a single life was lost in releasing themselves from the grips of tyranny and oppression.

From now on that one not so simple sounding word, Guantanamo, coupled with another hard to pronounce place Abu Ghraib, will forever be synonomous with torture and the United States.

But then we here in the United States have a history of double standards when it comes to lofty words like liberty, freedom and human rights, only to genocide one race while enslaving another.